I've spent a long time trying to work out my feelings on gay marriage from a political standpoint. It has been a difficult process due to the Libertarian leanings of my personal polictics. Part of my beliefs state I believe that government generally should not intervene in the personal lives of individuals in order to make them more moral. This varies from the "Christian Right" who believes in a less secular government. I feel this way because I believe it is important to have free will and I feel government is general ineffective in enforcing morality anyway.
The Libertarian view on gay marriage might go in a few different directions. This first could be that gay marriage should be allowed because anybody should be allowed to marry anybody. This belief will appeal to many Libertarians because it has simple logic. It's an easy universal rule. To maintain this position you have to fend off the arguments for polygomy and incest. Traditionally this is done by saying that the "polygomy and incest" argument is a slippery slope argument, which is arguable.
A second view on gay marriage could state that government shouldn't be marrying anyone. Tt's not the business of government what's going on bedrooms, gay or straight. If people want to be married they can just say that they are married. They can marry whom they want, when they want, how they want, as many times as they want. This argument is also logically appealing, as it takes government entirely out or the equation. I generally favor taking government out of the equation.
While I have Libertarian leanings, I'm not a Libertarian. I feel that Libertarians are Reactionary in a literal sense. They see all government action as unfavorable progress. In a camera on a street corner with a high amount of crime bad? Libertarians see this a violation of rights. I think the camera is fine within reason. Law enforcement must violate privacy to some extent in order to investigate crime. Your DNA and fingerprints are very personal information, but I would be happy if our government had everyone's on file. Libertarians also oppose military action without direct national interest, i.e. they're going to attack us. I think replacing tyrannical dictatorships with democracy is good even if our national interest isn't the foremost reason.
I feel that a pure Libertarian viewpoint also fails when looking at children. Adults of full mental faculties have the ability to make their own choices. Children do not have this. The responsibility for raising children lies primarily with the parent. We do not fully trust parents with children. We require parents to educate their children and we require society to pay for this. This is a reasonable mandate, although poorly handled by our government. This is an exception which must be taken within reason. The "children" excuse is often used to justify many pointless government programs and actual infringements of our rights.
To answer the question of gay Marriage, we need to know what purpose of Marriage. One possibility is that it exists for people to announce that they love each other and are connected. If this is the purpose, then it is fair to extend this to homosexual couples. Yet declaring love is not an important feature of government. It would be a completely feel good feature of government and would be best removed. Two people can declare that they love each other and are married without a piece of paper from the courthouse. Love could be extended further to the more rational religious view that only two people who are married can have sex with each other. This is not something that is a role of marriage in our modern society, at least in any enforced law. A married person can still have sex with virtually anyone.
The next possible reason for marriage is a matter of legal rights. Being a spouse may provide certain insurance benefits or similar rights. Being married also allows two people share property and to get divorced and split property when being divorced. For the benefits, companies can choose whether or not to offer benefits to same sex domestic partners (SSDP) currently. I believe this is a completely reasonable situation. They are a private institution and by not offering these benefits they will be standing up for their own morals by decreasing their ability to find quality employees. The business has the right to make this choice in a free market. I have heard that some hospitals might not offer visitation rights to SSDPs. While I think this is a silly policy, I think that in a free market a private hospital has the right to make this choice. A hospital is still a business and the hospital's business will go elsewhere with a policy like this.
Since I do not find the benefits and rights argument compelling, we can look at the divorce aspect. In our society currently, people who are straight and gay live together as couples for long periods of time without getting married. Somehow, despite not having the force of government on their side, these people manage to share property up and eventually break up and divide the property amongst themselves. I don't have any experience in the living together or marriage category so I can't say how they compare legally, but they both work. As for the divorce aspect, divorces for marriages are already legally complicated and messy. I fail to see how gay couples would benefit from being able to divorce each other. If there are legal obstacles for either of these categories they can easily be cleared up in ways that certainly don't require marriage.
As a compelling reason to have government marriage I have dismissed both love, legal standing (for now), and property. What reason would we have for legal marriage? Children. It's at this point I jump off of traditional Libertarian thinking. Society has a responsibility to raise children well. It is my belief that children are best raised in a environment with a mother and a father together. It is reasonable for society to encourage a mother and a father to raise children as a married couple. The laws regarding marriage should place a certain responsibility upon the parents of the children.
You might argue that I'm saying that marriages between couples who are too old to raise children or who will not have children shouldn't be allowed. All I'm saying is that those marriages are not legally important and that the power of government behind the marriage serves little purpose. I am also not saying that gay couples shouldn't be allowed to raise children; just that government should not sanction it. I won't argue the merits of the father and mother raising children versus and a gay couple raising children here to any great extent. Obviously any married couple is not always superior in raising children to a gay couple. I'm saying that a traditional family structure is more ideal for raising children and should be the only structure endorsed by the government.
It's taken me a long time to come to this conclusion, and it's not necessarily and easy one. The largest counters to my argument would be that either a father and mother marriage is not superior enough to any other marriage in regards to raising children to be worthy of government sanction, or that the marriage is only superior under my system or morals. I don't believe this is true, but it is open for argument. Additionally, I think there is an important factor about a man and a woman being able to have children without too much extra effort, but I can't reconcile a number of problems with this therefore it is not a part of my argument. Questions? Comments? Please mail me.
