Gay marriage and socialism

Today I learned that a congressman in Iowa referred to Gay marriage as socialist. This is my initial response to that:

Dear Congressman King,

Yesterday, you said that same-gender marriage is a “purely socialist concept”.

According to The Advocate, what you said was:

“If relationships between individuals cannot be prohibited by the state legislature, then there’s no ban that can actually be constitutional that would ban group marriage, and it wouldn’t have to be for reasons of, let me say, love or lust, it could be reasons of profitability or avoiding taxes or accessing benefits,” King said.

“So in the end, this is something that has to come with a, if there’s a push for a socialist society, a society where the foundations of individual rights and liberties are undermined and everybody is thrown together living collectively off one pot of resources earned by everyone; this is one of the goals they have to go through is same-sex marriage because it has to plow through marriage in order to get to their goal,” he said.

“Not only is it a radical social idea, it is a purely socialist concept in the final analysis,” King said.

What is socialism? It is a system where relationships between individuals are determined by the government.

Socialism is the doctrine that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that his life and his work do not belong to him, but belong to society, that the only justification of his existence is his service to society, and that society may dispose of him in any way it pleases for the sake of whatever it deems to be its own tribal, collective good.

Ayn Rand, For the New Intellectual

A society where relationships between individuals can be prohibited by the state legislature is a society where the foundations of individual rights and liberties are undermined. What meaning does liberty have if individuals are not free to enter into any relationships they choose - personal, social, economic, political, whatever?

In a genuinely free society - that is, a laissez-faire capitalist society - individuals would be completely free to form their own relationships on whatever basis they chose. In fact, the sole function of the government would be to protect their right to do so.

What makes the right to marry a person of the same gender a legitimate one? Simply, it is the fact that what is being protected is the freedom to act, not an entitlement. No one's leg is being broken and no one's pocket is being picked when two men or two women marry each other. Their right to do so is a recognition of their freedom to act on their desire to spend their lives in the company of a person of the same gender.

I submit that it is the right to same-gender marriage that is the true hallmark of freedom, while it is your desire to prohibit relationships between individuals that is socialist.

Rob Abiera