How same-sex marriage erodes personal freedom and enhances state power

By Phil Lawler ( bio - articles - email ) | Apr 11, 2014

Stella Morabito has done us all a real service, with her readable and cogent analysis of the drive for same-sex marriage, now appearing on the Federalist site.

This whole argument isn’t really about allowing homosexuals to marry, Morabito explains. It’s about abolishing marriage as an institution recognized by the government. And that, she explains, is a prospect that should fighten anyone, regardless of one’s attitudes on marriage.

With the legal recognition of same-sex marriage, government radically redefines the term “marriage.” Whereas in the past the state recognized marriage as a social reality pre-dating the state itself, now the state declares that it can decide which unions constitute marriages. That represents an enormous shift in power, away from individuals and couples and families and toward the government.

Morabito writes:

Without civil marriage, the family can no longer exist autonomously and serve as a wall of separation between the individual and the state. This has huge implications for the survival of freedom of association.

For centuries, society has recognized marriage as the institution that creates a family, and the family in turn as the fundamental institution that is the basic building-block of any civilization. An individual’s primary allegiance is to the family. The family home is the governed by the family itself, not by the state. Morabito again:

If marriage and family are permitted to exist autonomously, power can be de-centralized in society. So the family has always been a thorn in the side of central planners and totalitarians.

Now, in the drive to legalize same-sex marriage, proponents of a powerful central government have found a new means of breaking down that resistance. If the government can decide what a family is, it’s a very short step to add that the government will decide what the family does. To quote Morabito one more time, “The presumption of family autonomy and privacy informs our right to freely associate with others – through romances, friendships, business contracts, and so on. It would be catastrophic to freedom if we threw it away.”