15A036 Eire Goes Gay? by Jim Davies, 6/2/2015   

It might seem so, from the recent, stunning vote there in favor of "same sex marriage." A two-to-one majority, in one of the countries most deeply Roman Catholic. Amazing!

Eager as ever to consider how this might play out in the coming zero government society, I dove in to some of the post-vote online discussion. It was enlightening.

I found a visceral, passionate hostility to the Roman Catholic hierarchy. Eire's Archbishop Martin said his Church needs "a reality check" - a remark that drew a storm of scorn, enough to shock even this hardened atheist. Very many comments deplored the RC schools there, whose teachers apparently delight in delivering corporal punishment. After I suggested that the vote might have been a chance to take a whack at the Church and only secondarily to call for gay marriage, a host of sore respondents wrote of their painful experiences of being whacked by "Christian Brothers", just for the evil pleasure of whacking. I avoid using the term "sadistic" for the Marquis de Sade was not a sadist.

Nonetheless, the most credible comment came from one Kelly Davis-Jordan: no, "we voted so our fellow citizens would have equal rights. Sticking it to the church was just a bonus.."

So if Kelly is correct, young Irish people really do suppose that a change in the marriage law will make "citizens equal." That's what they believe. Are they right?

No. It may bring a marginal improvement, but that notion is absurd. What Kelly and all the other voters missed is that perfect equality requires the removal of government; that if it had not been for the existence and intrusion of government, perfect equality is the natural state of mankind and that but for government, that natural state would never have been disturbed. When government does exist, it necessarily makes us unequal.

In that natural state, which will obtain again after E-Day, we can speculate how folk will choose to make long (or short) term contracts to live together, share homes and beds, and raise kids. My guess is that a 1M-1F lifelong contract will remain the most popular by far; for it has stood the test of time. I further believe that terms like "marriage" and "wedding," "wife" and "husband" will remain attached to that kind of deal alone; for that is where those terms belong, by many centuries of common use. Some new words will need to be invented to describe other (perfectly fine) arrangements, for the four above are taken, and language is not to be changed arbitrarily by vote. If one calls a 1M-1M coupling a "marriage", must one also call a 2M-1F or a 3F-2M contract a "marriage"? Possibly so; but that would so dilute the term as to make it meaningless.

Other associated words have been twisted out of recognition. "Gay" for example actually means "showing a merry, lively mood; bright, showy, abounding in social pleasures" but those meanings, sanctioned by centuries of use, have been moved aside in the last few decades to relate to "of, indicating, or supporting homosexual interests or issues." Why? - why could not a new word have been coined, instead of stealing an old one? The alphabet has 26 letters and English, 250,000 words; a few extra will not hurt it.

But that's nothing, compared to what government has done to marriage - the regular, 1M-1F kind. In reality it is a voluntary contract between a man and a woman. But by asserting control over it, governments have made it subject to marriage laws! In order to get married now, a couple must obtain a government license! In some states they must submit to government tests! Government taxes people at one rate if unmarried, and at a different (lower?) rate if married. Should a divorce be needed later, the pair must submit to a government court for division of assets and children. Government violates everybody's natural right to remain silent by compelling him to bear witness against an accused - unless that person is his spouse. So now marriage, like corporations, has become a creature of the State. As such, Kelly Davis-Jordan, above, would not be far wrong; if marriage were properly a State privilege instead of a natural right, it would be understandable for laws to with-hold or grant permission to marry, in this or that kind of configuration, and the latter would make some sorts "equal" which previously were less equal than others.

Her mistake, and that of everyone who voted in Eire this month, is to suppose that rights come from governments.

That is impossible; they derive only from the fundamental, axiomatic right of self ownership. If lawmakers had, arguendo, the right to grant rights or with-hold them, we'd need to ask from where they obtained such a right or power. Only two possibilities exist: from God (but he is a mythological, anthropomorphic construct) or from The People, as in the prevalent religion of democracy; and to allege that People gave the State the right to grant the People rights, produces only an inelegant circle in which the State is 100% superfluous.

This nonsense will follow government into history's ashcan after all its employees have quit, and man- and woman-kind can implement their own preferences without constraint.

Eire - or rather the Irish people, for the State established in 1922 is not of interest - are already gay in the old, correct sense of the word, as anyone can tell by looking into a pair of twinkling Irish eyes, or listening to the delightful brogue; so no, they are not "going gay" more than any other society. But before long they will, I hope, having made good use of TOLFA, be going free of government; and so in that sense I wish them Erin go Bragh - Ireland Forever.