The Freedom Bulletin

The recent court decisions about S.B. 1070, Arizona’s immigration law, and Proposition 8, the ballot initiative banning gay marriage in California, have something in common. They both involve people calling certain laws unconstitutional.

Last Wednesday, Federal Judge Susan Bolton ordered an injunction against some parts of Arizona’s immigration law in response to a lawsuit by the U.S. Department of Justice, which claims the law is unconstitutional because the federal government, not the states, should have the power to regulate immigration. This Wednesday, Federal Judge Vaughn Walker overturned Proposition 8, calling it unconstitutional.

I have a question for judges, lawyers, the Department of Justice, and America as a whole: if you’re going to be calling laws unconstitutional, aren’t there better laws to call unconstitutional than these?

I am opposed to one part of the Arizona law – the part that makes illegal “the failure to apply for or carry alien registration papers.” Simply existing, legally, in this country but without registration papers does not hurt anyone or violate anyone’s rights. But the rest of the law isn’t bad. Illegal immigration is a serious problem, and I applaud Arizona’s attempt to deal with it.

I don’t think that Proposition 8 violates anyone’s rights at all, because I don’t think that marriage is a right, per se. If the government cared about equality, they would stop granting government recognition to marriages entirely and leave this to individuals and private organizations. Rewarding people for committing to a relationship, whether gay or straight, sends the unfair, false message that couples are superior to single people.

Now for some laws that are really unconstitutional and severely violate people’s rights:

• The Durham-Humphrey Amendment: Nowhere in the Constitution is the government given the power to ban people from taking medications without a doctor’s permission. Has this law ever been challenged in court? Not to my knowledge.
• The TSA’s use of full-body scanners as a primary method of airport security screening: To perform highly invasive searches on millions of people who aren’t even suspected of any crimes blatantly violates the Fourth Amendment.
• The individual health insurance mandate: The power to regulate interstate commerce does not mean the power to force people to engage in commerce.

I understand that obviously, the particular judges who made the rulings in Arizona and California have never, to my knowledge, had the opportunity to address these other laws…so the individual judges are not being hypocritical. But it says something about America as a whole that the government calls two mostly good laws unconstitutional while at least three horribly anti-liberty laws are currently considered perfectly constitutional. Hopefully liberty’s brave friends at EPIC and in Virginia will change this.

Further reading:

Court Order about Arizona law (PDF)

Photo credits: Prop 8 rally by 1FlatWorld (CC ASA 2.0); immigration law protest by Fibonacci Blue (CC ASA 2.0)

Here are 9 things I wish for in 2009. Most of them aren’t very likely to happen, but here goes:

1. Obama makes a big blunder, causing people to realize the Democrats aren’t as great as everyone seems to think
2. The TSA stops using the naked machines at airports (and everywhere else too!)
3. The Massachusetts state government realizes that the only way to save their budget is to repeal the universal health insurance law
4. It rains less. Is it just me, or has it been raining a ridiculous amount the past few years? There definitely seems to be climate change occurring, but I certainly wouldn’t call it global warming.
5. Population growth slows down or, even better, stops. That would help solve the climate change problem.
6. Proposition 8 doesn’t get overturned
7. Oil prices stay low
8. Search engines stop tracking everything people search for by their IP address
9. Obama doesn’t make the tax system too, too unfair…

Since Proposition 8 was passed, outlawing gay marriage in California, liberals have been complaining almost nonstop that gay people’s rights are being violated. First of all, this irks me because the liberals creamed conservatives on election day, taking control of the presidency and Congress and killing Question 1 in Massachusetts. You’d think this would be enough to make them happy. But you’d be wrong.

Gay marriage supporters like to compare their struggle with African Americans’ struggle for civil rights. This is a completely inaccurate analogy. At various times in our history, blacks were subjected to slavery, were unable to vote, were lynched, and their property was vandalized.  All people have a fundamental right to vote, own property, make their own decisions, and of course own themselves, so the treatment of blacks described above violated their rights.

On the other hand, gay rights activists are arguing that their rights are being violated because they cannot get married. This isn’t true, because marriage is not a right. Gay people, just like everyone else, have the rights to own property, own themselves, make choices, and live without interference, but they don’t have a right to marriage.

By arguing that they have a fundamental right to marriage, gay people are themselves being discriminatory, because marriage is an inherently discriminatory institution. It discriminates against people who choose not to get married. Basically, marriage is when the government gives people benefits (such as tax breaks) for deciding to form a lifelong partnership with another person. By giving benefits to married people that it does not give to single people, the government sends the message that married people are superior to single people. This is simply wrong. There are many reasons why individuals would rahter be single than married: maybe they are asexual, maybe they would like to live alone and be in control of their own house, maybe they would rather date lots of different people instead of committing to one. Whatever the reason, single people are just as good as married people, and being single is just as desirable a state as being married.

When people claim that gays have a right to marry people of the same gender, they are actually saying that gays have a right to be treated in a way that discriminates against single people. It makes sense to argue that gay people have a right to form any consensual relationship they want. It does not make sense to argue that gay people have a right to form a lifelong partnership with someone of the same gender and get government benefits for it.

I am not being anti-gay, since I don’t think straight people have a right to marriage either. Instead, the government shouldn’t be in the business of granting recognition to relationships in the first place. People should be able to form whatever relationships they want and call them whatever they want to.

Owning property, making one’s own decisions about medicine, and bearing arms are all examples of fundamental rights. These rights are currently being violated due to the 16th Amendment, the Durham-Humphrey Amendment to the Pure Food and Drug Act, and the Brady Bill, respectively, acts which, interestingly enough, are predominantly supported by liberals. It’s awfully hypocritical to oppose the rights to own property, make decisions autonomously, and bear arms, while claiming that there is a fundamental right to marriage.

After my (appropriately) depressing post about the election yesterday, I thought I’d recap the few good decisions voters made. Yes, I said that America did the wrong thing on almost every choice, but “almost” is the key word. Here are the few things voters did right:

• It looks like Proposition 8 is going to pass in California! I’m very pleasantly surprised that a state with such a liberal reputation is actually trying to put an end to gay marriage. Marriage is not a right, and the voters have every right to ban it. I hope the state government doesn’t somehow try to overrule the people’s decision like Massachusetts did.
• Arizona and Florida approved resolutions to ban gay marriage, too.
• Nebraska voted to end affirmative action. This discriminatory practice is insulting and unfair to people of all races and genders.
• Washington voted to allow doctor-assisted suicide. Committing suicide does not hurt anyone and is not immoral, so there is no reason why people shouldn’t be allowed to do it if they choose to.
• Colorado rejected an amendment that would define “person” as “any human being from the moment of fertilization.” In philosophy, a person is defined as a rational, autonomous being. Fetuses (and babies, by the way) are therefore not persons, and to define them as such would be contrary to the rules of the English language.