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Contents:
A Message From the Editor Feature:
A debate on the recognition of Same-Gender Marriage
Review: The Zychik Chronicles
Welcome to the second edition of Freedom's Home Page Gazette. This edition may be a little late hitting the web--or your mailbox. The reason? A particularly interesting debate has hit the fan here in Missouri: the Libertarian Party is debating a resolution that would urge the state government to recognize same-gender marriages like those which will probably soon be solemnized in Hawaii. Contributing Editor Martin Lindstedt, aka The Renegade Intellectual, has penned a summation of his arguments against this resolution. Alan Easton of the Privacy Rights Education Project, agreed to write a column delineating his arguments in favor of it. As fate would have it, this issue arose immediately before the deadline for getting FHPG out on time. Since we're not a daily, or even weekly, publication, I thought a delay was justified.
An appeal: Freedom's Home Page doesn't ask for monetary support from its readers. I consider the page and the ancillary publication to be a "public service" which I provide for my own enjoyment. There are, however, some things I would like to ask of those who have visited and enjoy FHP:
1) If you have a page, please take the time to put a link to FHP on it. Others who haven't heard of us won't, unless you make it possible.
2) Visit Point Publishing's Home Page and recommend that FHP be reviewed and recognized as part of "the top 5% of the web." This award will result in an increased number of hits--and links. Point is located at .
3) Continue to email those suggestions and proposed links to Thomas L. Knapp.
Errata: In the first issue, I mistakenly identified Martin Lindstedt as Martin Linstedt. Profound apologies are profferred. Sincerely, Thomas L. Knapp Editor and Publisher Freedom's Home Page Gazette.
What is worse that the state co-opting a religious concept and redefining it as a law? The answer - the application of that law so as to exclude some classes of citizens. This is how I view marriage laws in America.
Before any discourse about same gender marriage can begin, the term "marriage"must be defined. To most Americans, marriage is the committed, loving union of one man and one woman in the eyes of God and community. The married pair are permitted, even obligated, to have intimate relations, and they are expected to start a family. Without question, marriage is a fundamental social institution.
Marriage is something besides this, however. The law has taken this religious concept and made it its own. The following appears in the Missouri statute books:
"Marriage is considered in law as a civil contract, to which the consent of the parties capable in law of contracting is essential."
With a few explicit exceptions (close relatives, people already married), this contract is available to all adult couples (opposite sex is assumed, not stated). This law has been on the books since before 1909. I suspect that civil marriage predates the founding of the United States.
What brings same gender marriage into the spotlight? In 1991, three same gender couples applied for marriage licenses in Hawaii and were denied them. The case went to the Hawaii Supreme Court which ruled, in 1993, that this denial violated the state constitutional prohibition on sex discrimination. The court commanded the state to show a "compelling interest" in denial of marriage licenses to same gender couples. Legal experts agree that this will be virtually impossible. Hawaii is set to become, within a year or two, the first place on earth to grant equal status to both same gender and opposite gender marriages.
Under the Federal Constitution's Full Faith and Credit Clause, states must recognize one another's judicial and legal rulings. Almost all marriages made in one state are recognized in all others. But what about same gender marriages made in the Hawaiian paradise? Will these marriage contracts be recognized in Milwaukee, or Birmingham or Truth-or-Consequences?
Many state legislators say no. Last year, Utah passed a law explicitly denying recognition of same gender marriages. Bills to do the same have been introduced into the legislatures of about 15 states in 1996. In California and in South Dakota, such bills have passed the lower legislative chambers. This is not a juggernaut, however. Anti-same gender marriage bills in some state legislatures have already been "killed" in committee or withdrawn. The Governor of the state of Washington has vowed to veto any anti-same gender marriage bill.
The issue is presented by these legislative initiatives. I say these bills to deny recognition of same gender marriage should be opposed. Knowing many gay and lesbian couples, I am convinced that, as a group, they are as loving and committed to one another as are members of opposite sex married couples. Two men and two women ought to be allowed to enter a marriage contract if they choose.
Civil marriages between two men or two women would not have to be recognized by any religion. No church or synagogue would have to perform a same gender wedding.
Legalization of same gender marriages would not force society at large to approve of them. After all, many people frown on interracial marriage, but it is legal today. Some ask,"If men can marry men, what is next: men marrying two men, children or animals?". My reply is, " Why should adult men's love for each other lead to bigamy, sex with children or bestiality any more than does love between and man and a woman?" We always have some freedoms and not others. Extension of marriage to gays and lesbians would not result in the granting of absurd future demands.
Entering a marriage is voluntary. With the humorous exception of shot-gun weddings, and with due deference to peer pressure, no one is forced to marry. Breach of promise cases excepted, no one is thrown in jail for not marrying. People who enter marriage accept obligations (e.g. alimony upon divorce) and gain privileges (e.g. inheritance rights and joint custody over children). The state enforces the contracts, should either party not live up to his or her share of the bargain. If same gender marriage were legal, the state would be treating all adults equally with regard to the marriage contract. For this reason libertarians should support same gender marriage.
It seems to me so unlikely that the state will surrender its power to grant civil marriage that asking for its repeal is outlandish.
Yet, that is precisely what the Governor of Hawaii has proposed. Sounding just like a libertarian, he says that the government should not be in the role of sanctifying marriages. In his plan, marriage would be left to the churches. The state would provide to both opposite sex and same sex couples a contract referred to as a domestic partnership. His plan has a flaw: if state sanctioned relationships in Hawaii are not called marriage, they will not be recognized in federal law or the laws of other states. A committee in the Hawaii state Senate is considering a plan to preserve opposite gender marriage but offer equal domestic partnerships to all unmarried couples, opposite gender and same gender. If this domestic partnership concept becomes law, the Hawaii Supreme Court may concede that the law does not discriminate on the basis of sex, and the court may not require the state to grant marriages to same gender couples. Whatever the outcome in Hawaii, the issue of the legal status of gay and lesbian people remains. If we are a threat to society, then persecute us thoroughly: throw us in jail or deport us. If we are not a threat to society, treat us scrupulously equally under the law.
To paraphrase Voltaire: religious justifications to denigrate homosexuality may be old, but reason is older.
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Alan Easton is a biochemist who works in pharmaceutical research at Monsanto Company in St. Louis, Missouri. In his spare time, he is an active member of the Privacy Rights Education Project. This group lobbies the Missouri state legislature to repeal the law that criminalizes sex acts between people of the same gender. Mr. Easton identifies himself as a gay man.
At the January 1996 Missouri Expediting Committee Debate, Mr. Alan Easton introduced the following resolution for approval:
Because marriage is a basic human right and an individual personal choice,RESOLVED, the state should not interfere with same-gender couples who choose to marry and share fully and equally in the rights, responsibilities, and commitment of civil marriage.
BE IT RESOLVED THAT The Missouri Libertarian Party ENDORSES ABOVE MARRIAGE RESOLUTION.
The MoLP ExpCom, after trying to delay the vote, put it off, were called back to duty by myself and the above Resolution was voted upon by a huge margin, 7-2, with myself holding the minority viewpoint.
I made a short speech before the vote against this resolution on both political-reality and Libertarian grounds. Below are my arguments.
After the meeting, a general member of the MoLP asked me what I could do to get this resolution overturned or amended. The general member didn't have a vote in the ExpCom. Both general members present were against the above resolution.
I told the general member that to get the resolution overturned short of the General Membership Convention was impossible. But it could be amended and the issue raised when there was a greater possibility of success. Below is the proposed Amendment:
Because marriage is a basic human right and an individual personal choice,RESOLVED, the state should not interfere with {scratch: same-gender couples} ADULTS who choose to marry and share fully and equally in the rights, responsibilities, and commitment of {scratch: civil} marriage.
BE IT RESOLVED THAT The Missouri Libertarian Party ENDORSES ABOVE MARRIAGE RESOLUTION.
This issue is no longer mundane. Hawaii is on the verge of recognizing homosexual "marriages." If Hawaii recognizes these marriages, then the rest of the States very well may be compelled to recognize them as well under the U.S. Constitution's Article 4, Section 1 & 2 "Full Faith and Credit" clauses. Utah has passed a resolution saying they won't go along with recognizing gay marriages, other states are already engaged in "backlash" activities.
The amended resolution is far superior as it gets the government out of the morals-setting and selling-basic-human-rights-back-as-licensed- privileges business and is politically in tune with a far greater working majority. Mormon Utah, with its history of plural marriage, could support the amended Marriage Resolution, as could Hawaii.
THE DEFINITION OF MARRIAGE:
Marriage far predates the state. Over a course of millennia, marriage is defined by human beings as a union of man and woman for the purposes of raising children.
Nature itself supports the institution of marriage. Are not the sexes divided up roughly 50-50? And it is upon this basis in which the vast majority of children should be born, with the full support of both parents. No society on the rise allows unfettered, widespread copulation without consequence.
From this union, stable families are raised, the younger generation is socialized to learn how to live in civilized society, customs and laws are passed on. Civilization is the art of learning to live together in peace. So if there are no stable families, there can be no stable civilization.
No other living arrangement other than between husband and wife has ever been recognized as marriage. Any other form, such as polygamy, has been recognized as special forms of marriage, but they ALWAYS involve men and women. Always.
This beloved union has acquired a meaning and a vigor far beyond any rule-book's technical jargon. Marriage carries with within its very meaning so many rights and responsibilities in the human psyche that any attempt to degrade it or mine it for its moral value ensures resistance to such degradation.
And that is what we have with the same-sex "marriage" special interests. They, seeing the moral grandeur of marriage, wish for their couplings to have the same moral status. So they go to the government and ask for the government to hand over something that the government doesn't own, moral equivalency, and give it to them. To top it off, they ask the Missouri Libertarian Party, an organization which usually stands against government attempts to rob Paul and Mary to pay Peter and Dick, to pass a resolution favoring this moral robbery!
Let me reiterate the fact that the state should not be in the morals business, first because they are the least qualified to do this, but secondly, how can the state take something that doesn't belong to it (as marriage predates the state) and sell it (taking a right to marriage, converting it into a privilege, then selling it in the form of a civil marriage license) to someone else? Would it not be the same as two individuals making a deal, a contract, with each other, and then expecting a third party, to deliver the goods from the personal store of a fourth and fifth party? While this action could be defined as fulfilling and enforcing a contract (civil marriage), it could also be declared as contracting for stolen goods, waiting for the burglary or robbery to occur, and then receiving the stolen goods. It would convert our "party of principle" into a receiver of moral stolen merchandise.
These same-sex advocates are not rebels. All they want is a diminishing share of the zero-sum pie.
But say they do get what they want. Now all marriages must be a civil matter and state recognition is the end-all and be-all of defining moral conduct. The state sanctifies same-sex marriages and says, "It is good." The formerly seething Patrick Buchanan multitudes have been pacified by fiat of law and social conditioning. Will that be the end of the matter?
No. Like I wrote in a letter to Mr. Easton:
The problem always comes back to semantics. The majority of mankind defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman. You would make of it a civil contract and thus expand the definition to include same-gender "marriages."But you can only stretch a word so far until it loses the meaning, and, in the case of marriage, the former honor and privileges, the full flavor, the MEANING that the word has in the human heart. By stretching the meaning of marriage, the majority will indeed think that homosexuals have robbed, have stolen under color of law, the moral status of their beloved relationship.
Think I exaggerate? Then consider this:
Say you get what you want and same-sex coupling is recognized as marriage, except for a few sullen hold-outs. What would be your response to some guy saying that he prefers sexual congress with a sheep and a few assorted chickens and now HE wants a marriage license? Would not the acceptance that you sought in seeking a new definition of marriage become ashes in your mouth as you realize that what you sought had become sullied, worthless? Would you demand that a marriage license be granted to the man and his menagerie?
You would have to. Every single argument that you would speak against condoning bestiality with a marriage license has already been mouthed against doing the same with homosexuality.
Acceptance of same-gender marriage in and for itself will NEVER be accepted as valid by the vast majority of humanity. Hasn't been since Rome fell. The common acceptance of homosexuality happens at the same time the society goes under. This is not a cause-effect relationship. It is more a common-symptom relationship. Libertarians voting for the same-gender marriage resolution would be the same as voting to repeal the law of gravity, then jumping off a 7th story ledge. Political suicide does not do our party any good.
POLITICAL REALITIES AND FORGING NEW ALLIANCES:
Right now, the Patriot movement and other assorted freedom seekers (but only for themselves!) are beginning to question the government's claim to taking human rights, converting them into privileges, and selling the reduced mess of pottage back in the form of taxes, licenses and fees. Just as some of them are declaring themselves sovereign citizens, refusing to buy drivers licenses and file income taxes, forming militias and common-law courts, some of them are beginning to say, "A marriage license! Why do I need to buy a stinking marriage license from the f#%&ing government! This is a matter of concern only between me and the little lady and maybe a church, if she wants such a wedding and I got the money to pay for it."
They are right. The Bill of Right's Ninth Amendment is a catch-all amendment that guarantees that the people retain all rights not granted specifically to the States or Federal government and that they retain them still no matter what the rest of the Constitution says!
"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
This Amendment, so modest sounding, is so powerful, so deep in its implications for freedom under law! The militant Second and the besmirched Tenth Amendments are but limited restatements of the powerful Ninth.
But these people, in the main, are not great supporters of gay liberation. So how are political alliances formed between the gay activists and the FreeMen? By promoting a resolution such as the amended marriage resolution. It strips government of the power to regulate marriage. Show these people that by granting freedom to all, their freedom is enhanced, and that by restricting freedom that all lose. They will never love homosexuals much, but they hate the government more.
I have read so much in Mr. Easton's literature about the fear in all but the ACT-UP circles about the coming "backlash" in the state legislatures and on the part of ordinary "straight homophobic" Americans. Well, that fear is indeed justified. A backlash will indeed happen if the government imposes same-sex marriages right down the throats of fundamental Christians and Conservatives, violating deeply held beliefs as to what constitutes marriage. These people don't have a real voice that speaks for them, but they do have belligerence.
Right now is the high-water mark for abortionists and gay-libbers. The Hawaiian law may well pass and spread to such places as New York, California, maybe even parts of the East and West Coast. But the reaction, starting in Utah, will spread to the South and West.
Backlash?! You have not yet begun to see a backlash.
It is far more sane to not create the conditions that lead to backlash in the first place. But some people would far rather sit in front of a fire and read about where somebody froze to death in Alaska, or form anti-defamation leagues to protest a holocaust done in another country and thereby their countrymen who disagree with them, or, in the case of some in the homosexual rights crowd, deliciously shudder as they read about wearing pink triangles in a Nazi concentration camp and daydream about some vicious blond Aryan SS officer falling in love with them.
What idiocy!!!
Such is what happens where there is a dearth of common sense. Name me anybody smart who wants a backlash. And a backlash, like a fire, is easily prevented by simply not storing political combustibles in the social-order house.
Paradoxically, by forming alliances of freedom with all those who have had enough of arrogant government, the gay-rights movement could defend ground otherwise soon lost by the ebbing tide and in the face of a moderate backlash brought about by fools.
By defining limits on government's ability to legislate morality, freedom lovers of all sexual persuasions defend each other's rights. They may not like each other much. Some things will remain socially unacceptable. But eventually sodomy laws will be repealed. So will the racist, disease-spreading, narcotics laws. The State-God Moloch will be toppled, his bureaucratic police-priests routed, and everyone will be free to live in peace, without anybody forcing their will upon others.
Is this not a Libertarian utopia?
So please, general membership of the Missouri Libertarian Party, please support the AMENDED Marriage Resolution. If you read it carefully, you will find that it simply states that the government shouldn't interfere with gay and lesbian couples, but begging for special rights from the biggest thief that stole them all in the first place is a foolish policy. I would harbor suspicion of anyone who would have it any other way.
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Martin Lindstedt lives in Granby, Missouri, is a Libertarian Candidate for either Missouri's 7th Congressional District or for Governor, editor of the seditious newsletter, "The Southwestern Missouri Libertarian," a militiaman, and a 7th Congressional District Delegate to the Missouri Libertarian Party's Expediting Committee. He is a contributing editor to FHPG.
The Zychek Chronicles are the never-ending weekday work of Joe Zychik. This excellent, Libertarian-oriented political commentary comes in two flavors, one via e-mail (jzychik@via.net ) and one via his World Wide Web page (http://www.via.net/~jzychik).
A visit to Zychik's home page will reveal a clean, crisp, utilitarian style of web page design. Also featured as an aside is information that most people didn't know about Zychik's heroes, Walt Whitman, the American poet, and Sir Ernest Shackleton, the South Pole explorer. But the crown jewels of this page are Zychik's daily observations about the political realities gleaned from his readings of the papers, usually "The Los Angeles Times."
Every weekday since January of this year Mr. Zychik reads the paper, does a little bit of thought, and writes an average of 10,000 bytes of information concerning the local and national follies in the news for that day. He usually posts his latest work on his web page by 3:00 p.m. (Pacific) after he e-mails it off to his subscriber list by 10:00 a.m. (Central). On the sixth and seventh days he rests.
Most of Zychik's columns consists of approximately fifteen articles.
Zychik condenses these daily stories using the style of an AP writer. Then the next to the last sentence or so transitions into Mr. Zychik's punch line. Sometimes Zychik's humor is subtle and clean, like a taste of white wine or a dagger. Sometimes Zychik's humor is as direct as a broadaxe dripping gore. But in all cases, Mr. Zychik always makes his points about the folly of big government and the value of human beings living in freedom. While Mr. Zychik's viewpoint comes mostly from the 'liberal' side of libertarianism, socially conservative libertarians find much to enjoy and nothing to openly criticize, although some may feel that there is something to disagree with that they can't quite put their finger on right off.
The last story is usually a human-interest piece, much like the nightly TV news. But unlike the Great White Gliberals from journalism's Seven Sisters, the person profiled is someone who was dealt a bad hand by fate, but instead of whining about it, they pick themselves up without begging for a government handout by becoming professional victims. Persons who rescue themselves from the shithead factories of publik skuling are predominantly mentioned.
When I get Mr. Zychik's e-'zine, I always save it as an ASCII text file and read it as I put it in 80 character columns. I know that agree or not, Mr. Zychik's Chronicles are something well worth saving, much like anything and everything from Thomas Sowell.
Now I will detail my three favorite articles from The Zychik Chronicles that speak for themselves:
From the Feb. 2, 1996 Zychik Chronicles:
Who is Steve Forbes:
One of the network news shows, I forget which one, showed a clip of Forbes at an Iowa rally. When he was asked if he considered a homosexual couple representative of family values, he hemmed and hawed. Finally he said that it's OK if they live together but they shouldn't be considered a normal family. What I read on his face was a reluctance to condemn homosexual relationships, yet a reluctance to defend the right to choose who you love and marry. Interesting reaction, considering that his father -- the guy who left him all that money -- was gay.
This is my favorite ZC article. While I am no supporter of gay "rights," this piece answered the posed question and told me all about who Steve Forbes is: Some chickenshit politician. Why? Because even if Forbes had said he was all for gay rights, I would have respected (and liked) him far more if he would have stood firm by his daddy, the one who did so much for him, giving him everything Forbes got. If Forbes can't be loyal to his father, how is he going to be loyal to me or his country or anybody else?
From the folks who brought you crime:
Clinton's response to the death of Sgt. 1st Class Donald A. Dugan: "I was deeply saddened by the event." The media's response to Clinton's reaction can best be summed up by Rita Braver, a CBS News correspondent: "There's no mistaking his anguish." Clinton and Braver are from the school of progressive thinking that puts more emphasis on how a person feels than what a person does, especially when it comes to crime. So, let's look at what Clinton did. He wouldn't let Bosnia arm itself and thus contributed to the death of 250,000 Bosnians, most of them unarmed civilians. When Serbia was about to overrun Bosnia - and give Clinton a humiliation he probably wouldn't have recovered from - he sent in the troops. Legally, he put the lives of 20,000 US soldiers at risk to save his political butt. Morally, it's murder, plain and simple. Now, like most manipulative murderers Clinton moans and whines on cue - so well he could teach OJ Simpson a thing or two. So, let me put this in terms that even a pinhead progressive might be able to comprehend: The Commander in Chief's real soulmate is OJ Simpson.
Tough, fiercely logical, and at the last sentences Mr. Zychik's humor is applied like venom on the edge of a broadaxe. This article ties in the morality of OJ Simpson, the First Crook, and gliberal journalists, revealing their common intellectual and moral heritage. Heaven help the already perjured reputation of any politician Mr. Zychik finds in his sights!
A voice of truth:
(New York Times) The media hate him. CNN, especially. He's not a politician, he holds no government office, he is not rich and he's not powerful. He is Joey Skaggs. For the last 28 years Skaggs has suckered the national media into running a dozen untrue, ridiculous stories. His latest one was reported on by The Orange Country Register, The San Francisco Chronicle, numerous legal journals, and CNN. It was called the Solomon Project. Skaggs devised this hoax in response to the Simpson verdict. "Solomon" was a supposed computer program that could deliver jury verdicts - and remove the human element of decision making. Skaggs pretended to be Joseph Bonuso the supposed creator of the software. CNN even sent a camera crew to interview him and ran a news story on it. So far, CNN refuses to retract their story about "trial by mainframe." Skaggs makes his living by touring the lecture circuit and telling people about his hoaxes. Skaggs' goal is to get the public to regard the media more skeptically. So far he's doing a great job.
I'll be danged if I didn't read something about that recently in my local paper, The Joplin Globe. Of course, The Globe didn't retract their foolishness.
So by all means, point your browser at http://www.via.net/~jzychik Mr. Zychik's WWW page and get your subscription to "The Zychik Chronicles." You will find something to savor.
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