Been sort of busy for a minute...

Between the fresh job and all the goings on in NOLA in the first quarter of the year, I haven't had much time navel gazing or blog posting. 

I do have a few thoughts on our most recent round of social media outrage...

Gay marriage, at least for the rationally liberty minded, would seem to be a given but seems to have become the newest fashionable cause célèbre.  People change their profile pics on social networks, post and repost quotes and videos, and DEMAND that the government do SOMETHING RIGHT NOW!!!! 

1.  Free people's right to form covenants and private contracts is not a privilege bestowed upon you by the state.  Demanding the government grant marriage equality tacitly says that you hand over these rights to the state to dictate to you the terms of your personal relationships.  Bigotry, equality, and unfairness are not the problem.  The fact that the state has any say so in these proceedings is the problem.  Marriage equality would be a decent first step, but in the bigger picture freedom from intrusion by the state is the true answer.  Your love is already equal, your rights are not a gift from regulators on high.  Instead of demanding new laws, you should be demanding the removal of the bureaucracy from your personal legal life. 

2.  You can disagree with the actions of others, but if you feel the need for the state to restrict consenting adults from forming any kind of private contract that does not infringe on the rights of others to live as they wish you have lost the right to call yourself a supporter of liberty.  Life does not happen in absolutes, but one cannot exist with the other.  If you would deny another a chance at life, liberty, and possible happiness because their lifestyle conflicts with your ethos, you are, by definition, a restrictor of the rights of others.  This does not just apply to the arguments for or against gay marriage, but can be extended to any personal choice.  Put plainly, it doesn't matter if you like gay marriages or pot smokers or gun owners as it's none of your damn business what citizens of a different stripe do with their effort and emotion when it does not harm you.

3.  To those paralogics who insist on trying to extend the "well if we allow gay marriage, what's next...?" please, please get over yourselves.  LGBT folks don't want the right to marry children or animals.  No one outside of NAMBLA is making a case that anyone but consenting adults should be getting married.  This is grasping at the slimmest of logical straws in the worst way.  The fact that you feel the need to imprint your morality on those around you and lack the ability to see another's point of view has no bearing on whether that person should be free to marry how they like, ingest whatever chemicals they like, form whatever mechanism of exchange that they like, or vote how they like.

Free people do not ask permission from an oligarch to form a union.
Free people do not ask permission from their neighbors to live their lives as they see fit.
Free people do not ask permission from the small minded to manage their affairs and make decisions.