Open Letter To Marriage Amendment Opponents
By Mitch Berg
To: Opponents of Gay Marriage Amendment
From: Mitch Berg, small-“l” libertarian
Re: Your Sudden Conversions
Dear Gay Marriage Supporters,
Over the weekend, as the House debated the Marriage Amendment, I saw a lot of you talking about “Civil Rights” and “Liberties” and “Principles”. About how civil rights are not, no-how, not never, up for popular vote.
Great! Today we are all libertarians!
So tomorrow, we’ll count on your support on…:
- Abolishing Campus Speech Codes. Young citizens are citizens too! And there is no “civil right” not to be offended! And just as you claim gay marriage won’t destroy breeder marriage, certainly being exposed to ideas that challenge or even offend them won’t destroy students’ education. Right?
- Second Amendment Rights. Unlike gay marriage, our Right to Keep and Bear Arms is in the constitution, right next to speech, assembly, the press, jury trials, searches and seizures and the whole gamut. You may not understand the Second Amendment – most “progressives” don’t – but it’s a right, not for trivial restriction – or how closely-knit it is with the Fourteenth Amendment – but I expect to see you calling your legislator the next time she votes against, say, the “Stand Your Ground” bill. It’s a civil right. And a human right. Pardon the redundancy.
- Enumerated Powers: You can stop calling people “Tenthers” and claiming that defendin the Tenth Amendment’s enumerated powers is akin to supporting slavery.
- Property and Possessions: You can not gabble about civil liberties without duefending the civil liberty that crosses all races, orientations, faiths, and other divides; the right to keep as much of what you earn as possible, as opposed to feeding it into the stifling maw of big government. You’re all gonna be tax hawks now, right?
- Self-determination: Government mandates to buy heathcare are a civil-liberties abomination. I’ll trust you’ll join me in attacking Obamacare.
I’ll expect the same level of civil-liberties absolutism that you have developed on the make-or-break issue of gay marriage.
See you at the barricades!
May 22nd, 2011 at 9:02 am
Mitch, you have to give DG and the other useful idiots at least some sense and continuity. They oppose the 10th amendment because if it were actually allowed to be in effect abortion, their most holy of “rights”, would not be a federal issue and they can’t have that. I mean, what would fall next, the “right to health care”?!
May 22nd, 2011 at 10:23 am
On the contrary, issues like this, where people have very strong feelings and where the question is undoubtedly a matter of public policy, is when a popular vote is called for. We are supposed to be a republic, a people who rule themselves. If the people aren’t competent enough to vote on this matter, why should they be allowed to vote on anything at all?
May 22nd, 2011 at 11:04 am
Exactly, Terry. This is just one ore example of why the people shouldn’t be allowed to vote on anything at all. The people are benighted, uneducated, illiberal oafs who need a healthy dose of noblesse oblige to guide them in the correct path. It’s just so obvious.
May 23rd, 2011 at 10:16 am
Yes, and . . . ?
May 23rd, 2011 at 11:48 am
…and unable to articulate a coherent comment.
May 23rd, 2011 at 2:15 pm
I’m on board with all that, Mitch, and you can continue on to farm subsidies, tax credits, LGA . . . .