Government Recognition of Gay Marriages  Blue Eagle editorial January 2000 As usual, the wrong questions are being asked and the wrong issue debated. The question should not be whether homosexual marriages are proper. That question cannot be answered objectively. The relevant question is whether there is sufficient societal benefit to justify granting government the power to sponsor homosexual marriages by granting financial benefits to homosexual "spouses" at taxpayer expense. The answer is "No," and here's why: Let's start by acknowledging that in fact government cannot "permit" or forbid marriages in the first place -- they can only permit or forbid legal recognition of marriages. A man can "marry" a grapefruit if he wishes, or a couple can declare themselves married by merely jumping through a hoop, and there's nothing the government can do to stop them. They just can't obtain any legal benefit by such marriages (e.g., joint income tax filing, petitions for alimony, survivor benefits, etc.). Next we must ask why government involves itself with marriages in the first place. This is why: encouraging the existence and welfare of the family structure was (until recently, at least) considered of utmost importance to society. For families with children to prosper required at least one spouse (generally the woman) to have trained from an early age for a career in raising a family and maintaining a household, rather than for a private sector (money producing) career. In order for women to be able to freely make this choice, there had to be some societal protection for them lest they be abandoned or otherwise lose the financial support of a spouse later in life. Allowing government to recognize and register marriages gave women this security, and so encouraged marriage. The eventual existence of children in a marriage could not be a requirement, since a woman almost always had to train for, and take on the obligations of a marriage, well before she could know whether she and her husband would be able to have children. Expending public resources to provide such governmental legal protections obviously makes no sense in the framework of homosexual marriages, since there is generally no expectation of the necessity for one spouse to spend her productive years raising children. In homosexual marriages there is no necessity for either spouse to forego training for, and participation in, a financially rewarding career. A spouse in an "unrecognized" homosexual marriage has no financial risk that a single person does not have. Therefore no special financial protection is required. Of course, the same can be said of heterosexual marriages in which there are, and will be, no children, and in which neither spouse has neglected preparation for a business career. Whether governmental involvement is still necessary or desirable in such heterosexual marriage situations - or in any marriages in today's America - may be debated. And certainly government should impose no restrictions on whether homosexuals - or anyone else - can declare themselves married and live together as such. But neither is there any pressing societal purpose for government to provide "recognition" of (i.e., public fiancial support for) homosexual marriages, except to benefit the political ambitions of various activists, and for statists whose true goal is governmental control over every aspect of each individual's life. Revised January 2004 Click here for an index of other Blue Eagle editorials. 
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