Privacy: a 4-digit pin!

The Same-sex Marriage Bill is a political stunt, reports the New York Times. Well, not exactly. The recent SCOTUS ruling has put US congress members of both parties on the edge of their seats because it has created a situation where senators and Members of the House have to state their position on various issues publicly. The political show is no surprise to anyone who regularly participates in political discourse in the United States. Take, for example, concerning same-sex marriage, the New York Times reports that the Democrats intended to force Republicans “to put their opposition on the record.” [1] And while conservatives will no doubt support any challenges to the legality of same-sex marriage, we should be clear as to why we oppose legislation on this issue.

We have been here before; if you read, The court’s decision is the court’s burden on the pro-life movement! you have seen that liberty-minded conservatism demands that we condemn heinous acts like abortion while demanding that the government’s say on those issues be as limited as possible. Same-sex marriage is no different.

Arguing for traditional marriage, conservative commentator, The Daily Wire’s Matt Wash–author of What is a Woman? – disagrees with this legislation on both moral and analytical (definition) grounds. His view mirrors that of G.W.F. Hegel, who argued that marriage between a man and a woman is ethical because it serves a higher purpose, namely that of creating a union based on love between two otherwise selfish, self-concerned individuals whose end is making a new life. Surely, this is one reason to oppose the redefinition of marriage.

For those unconvinced by Hegel or those who outright deny the value of the traditional family, privacy is one reason for opposing this legislation. Suppose same-sex marriage is really about love and only about love. In that case, the argument for privacy should be compelling enough to want any third party from granting validity to the marriage at all. Though we must admit, hardly anyone would be surprised to find this is not the case.

Regarding privacy, we have, unfortunately, already accepted that the government should sanction marriage. That was a mistake. A marriage between a man and woman was never moral, beautiful, or (dis)functional because the state deemed it to be. Marriage is beautiful regardless of its legal validity. Thus, asking whether the government should acknowledge same-sex marriage is not equivalent to asking whether same-sex marriage is as moral, beautiful, or (dis)functional as traditional marriage. Instead, it further concretizes the notion that traditional marriage is only meaningful because the state declared it to be so. We should not grant politicians that satisfaction. Instead, we should aim to have the government so far away from our lives that issues like same-sex marriages are as private as sex. In a world where privacy has become nothing but a 4-digit pin, public approval has become the cornerstone of much of what we do, and it is slowly destroying the beauty of much of what we can experience and create.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/20/us/politics/same-sex-marriage-bill-senate.html