« on: July 15, 2013, 02:16:01 PM »
Excerpt:
On the other hand, we should be very worried about the implications of marriage’s redefinition for the liberty of Christian citizens and their institutions. How far are we, really, from a court ordering the Catholic churches of California to perform homosexual unions—and when the bishops refuse, fining the church into bankruptcy? Are we really that confident that future Supreme Court justices will see the First Amendment as trumping their inflated reading of the Fourteenth? Obviously, we have to fight. The issue is over what ground and with what weapons.
The ghost of civil marriage does not deserve our loyalty. In fighting for it, we are going against the grain of American individualism and goading libertarians to join our enemies—who will, as always, use them then toss them aside. Instead, we can make common cause with libertarians and invoke for our self-defense some cherished American principles, such as freedom of association, contract, and even religion.
. . . Of course, the Rousseauian left will not be satisfied: they will settle for nothing less than state-enforced “virtue†and mandatory “freedom.†But with this strategic retreat to more defensible ground, Christians and other social traditionalists will gain breathing room. We don’t need a Theodosius, but without a Constantine we may well find ourselves in the catacombs once again.
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/towards-a-christian-libertarian-marriage-alliance/
Logged
Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains on their own appetites. Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more there is without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters. —Edmund Burke
