Gay Marriage and "The Margin"
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Jane Galt has a confused, rambling non-sequiturfest at Asymmetrical Information in which she essentially calls on same-sex marriage advocates to "chill out" --
Hogwash.
Jane cites four mini-case-studies — income taxation, public housing, welfare benefits and liberalized divorce — to argue what we all know already: that changing government policies changes people's behaviors at the margin.
Um, so what?
The mile-wide blindspot in Jane's tome is that all her examples are non-discriminatory. Look at the income tax: two clones with exactly identical financial profiles pay exactly the same income tax — whether that tax is too high is an entirely different discussion. Yes, libertarians — or anyone — can disagree about whether "taxes are too high," but I would hope that a tax policy that discriminated against gays — or blacks or women or immigrants or any other group — would unite libertarians in saying "Now hold on a minute..."
In other words, we may, qua libertarians, dislike the income tax, but we would dislike it far more if it were discriminatory (which, admittedly, it generally isn't). For example, look at the sometimes intense nonpartisan indignation over something as relatively insignificant as the so-called "marriage penalty." Taxation and other fiscal policy discrimination against gays under DOMA is light-years beyond that, but I'm supposed to sit tight because of "the guy at the margin"?
Um, no.
Ditto for Jane's other non sequitur examples — yes there may be some room for debate as to whether they were or are wise or unwise to the extent that they did or did not properly anticipate changes in people's behavior. But they generally are not discriminatory — if they were, libertarians would be far more outraged and far more united.
I don't give a damn whether recognizing same-sex marriage affects anybody else's behavior "at the margin." I'm being discriminated against, and I want it to stop. The margin be damned.
No intellectually honest libertarian can be opposed to same-sex marriage. Putting "the margin" above the Constitution is the hobby of central planners, not libertarians. (As for the utopists who want "government out of the marriage business," I torched that straw man here.)
UPDATE: Jane responds in the comments, basically by defining down the word "discrimination" to meaninglessness. Okay fine, whatever.
If I had it over to write, I would have said that JG's four examples all concern welfare-statism or interventionism rather than "discrimination."
But I stick to my core thesis — all her examples are non sequiturs that totally blank out the fundamental questions of fairness over gay marriage. And someone who would deny an insular minority the protection of their basic individual rights simply because it might have unintended consequences "at the margin" has no business calling herself a libertarian.
Obernews also has a good response to Jane. See also these two Catallarchy posts.
My only request is that people try to be a leeetle more humble about their ability to imagine the subtle results of big policy changes. The argument that gay marriage will not change the institution of marriage because you can't imagine it changing your personal reaction is pretty arrogant. It imagines, first of all, that your behavior is a guide for the behavior of everyone else in society, when in fact, as you may have noticed, all sorts of different people react to all sorts of different things in all sorts of different ways, which is why we have to have elections and stuff.
Hogwash.
Jane cites four mini-case-studies — income taxation, public housing, welfare benefits and liberalized divorce — to argue what we all know already: that changing government policies changes people's behaviors at the margin.
Um, so what?
The mile-wide blindspot in Jane's tome is that all her examples are non-discriminatory. Look at the income tax: two clones with exactly identical financial profiles pay exactly the same income tax — whether that tax is too high is an entirely different discussion. Yes, libertarians — or anyone — can disagree about whether "taxes are too high," but I would hope that a tax policy that discriminated against gays — or blacks or women or immigrants or any other group — would unite libertarians in saying "Now hold on a minute..."
In other words, we may, qua libertarians, dislike the income tax, but we would dislike it far more if it were discriminatory (which, admittedly, it generally isn't). For example, look at the sometimes intense nonpartisan indignation over something as relatively insignificant as the so-called "marriage penalty." Taxation and other fiscal policy discrimination against gays under DOMA is light-years beyond that, but I'm supposed to sit tight because of "the guy at the margin"?
Um, no.
Ditto for Jane's other non sequitur examples — yes there may be some room for debate as to whether they were or are wise or unwise to the extent that they did or did not properly anticipate changes in people's behavior. But they generally are not discriminatory — if they were, libertarians would be far more outraged and far more united.
I don't give a damn whether recognizing same-sex marriage affects anybody else's behavior "at the margin." I'm being discriminated against, and I want it to stop. The margin be damned.
No intellectually honest libertarian can be opposed to same-sex marriage. Putting "the margin" above the Constitution is the hobby of central planners, not libertarians. (As for the utopists who want "government out of the marriage business," I torched that straw man here.)
UPDATE: Jane responds in the comments, basically by defining down the word "discrimination" to meaninglessness. Okay fine, whatever.
If I had it over to write, I would have said that JG's four examples all concern welfare-statism or interventionism rather than "discrimination."
But I stick to my core thesis — all her examples are non sequiturs that totally blank out the fundamental questions of fairness over gay marriage. And someone who would deny an insular minority the protection of their basic individual rights simply because it might have unintended consequences "at the margin" has no business calling herself a libertarian.
Obernews also has a good response to Jane. See also these two Catallarchy posts.
Posted by KipEsquire on
3 April 2005
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