Sexual freedom has long been a pillar of the libertarian philosophy. The idea that the state shouldn’t interfere in private affairs, including marriage contracts, is hard to refute in light of how most government crusades shake out for the common citizen. But after the courts have championed the cause of marriage equality, many Americans are finding out just how revolutionary the concept is – and they’re definitely not feeling the love.

Not surprisingly, social liberals are applauding the left-leaning courts of late, for striking down traditional definitions of marriage at an alarming rate. For all the precedent in human history validating the purpose of marriage as the foundation of the natural nuclear family, in only the last decade, most of the country including the federal government and the District of Columbia have either come out of the closet – or have been forced out.

Today, 36 States recognize same-sex marriage. As the Christian-based Family Research Council points out, all but three of these radical shifts in the definition of society’s most basic structure are the result of unaccountable, unelected and almost insurmountably permanent court decisions. To a libertarian, this should present a major problem.

Libertarians, both as a philosophical subset and as a political party, advance a cause of equality, including a laissez-faire approach to homosexuality and homosexual marriage, with a view that the state’s place is neither to discriminate against nor legitimize contractual unions between individuals. Under the rule of the courts, however, the ideal of equality that libertarians hold dear has been twisted into a nightmare rarely ever seen this side of the Iron Curtain.

Under the rule of the legislating judiciary, it’s not at all laissez-faire for many Americans. On the contrary, this radicalism on the part of the courts has real, harmful consequences regarding our understanding of the First Amendment. The second-order effect of creating a new right to a state-recognized homosexual marriage is that your freedom of religion is immediately abridged. Especially so, should you dare take your religion out of Church and into the workplace – for as it now stands, there is absolutely no legal protection for your conscience.

Aaron and Melissa Klein, owners of Sweet Cakes By Melissa, learned this the hard way, as they were just this week handed a livelihood-crushing $150,000 fine from the State of Oregon, which may be adjusted up to as much as $200,000 pending a March 10 hearing, for politely refusing to bake a cake for a gay wedding ceremony. The reason for their refusal? Aaron and Melissa are Christians and feel that participating in a homosexual ceremony would violate their deeply held religious beliefs. Because they dared to let their conscience guide their business practices, their mom & pop wedding business has been effectively stamped out by a gleefully coercive state, and they will be forced to surrender what probably amounts to four or more years of labor, all for having the audacity to hold a belief and act upon it.

They’re not alone either. In states that recognize homosexual marriage, Christians in the wedding service industry from photographers to bakers to wedding planners are being forced out of the workplace for not participating in the radical redefinition of marriage, and the wholesale persecution is just beginning.

Even the Church itself is threatened, as we have seen in Houston this past year when openly homosexual mayor Annise Parker attempted to subpoena the sermons of several pastors, to be scanned for defenses of traditional marriage that contradicted her idea of “equality.” Parker’s intent was to use the Houston Churches’ tax-exempt status to intimidate those pastors into silence. She would have succeeded in this blatant abuse, but for the loud public outcry that eventually forced her back into her place.

All told, when one honestly looks at what’s being done in the name of equality, supporting gay marriage turns out not to be very libertarian after all, but is actually very totalitarian when put to practice. The homosexual agenda turns out not to be about liberty, but instead is revealed to be just one more way for the state to control you and circumvent your rights.

For philosophical libertarians, the hard crux of the matter is that homosexual marriage erases more civil liberties than it protects. Or more properly stated, it erases “Inalienable Rights,” such as the Right to participate in the workforce without compromising your religious values, and replaces them with a false substitute: “Civil Liberties.”



Here we find yet another fatal flaw in allowing government to administer justice. Despite all the left’s rhetoric about liberty and equality, the homosexual agenda through gay marriage is being used as a blunt weapon against Christians, especially those who choose to do business based on their deeply held values. It’s also being used to undermine the rule of law and the democratic process itself. Defining marriage between a man and woman is overwhelmingly supported by voters, yet it’s a handful of activist judges who take it upon themselves to override those votes.

Protecting someone’s choice to engage in certain behaviors, and forcing others to affirm and support those behaviors against their will, are two dangerously different things. Proponents of gay marriage should not get away with packaging that abuse in any way that casts it in a light of fairness and equality, and libertarians who believe in true equality should take them to task about the deception.

Instead, let us propose an alternative view. It would be a far more “libertarian” question to ask why all marriage is illegal by default – that is, until we pay the state for a “license” to wed. And why do church clergy at religious ceremonies, despite being protected from the iron fist of government by that ever-illusive wall-of-separation, still invoke “the power vested in me by the State of…?”

Until those fundamental questions are resolved, it doesn’t matter if we argue for or against same-sex unions. It doesn’t matter if the supreme court upholds the several States’ right to define marriage based on the will and consent of their citizens. Until we figure out exactly what a marriage is, and where the authority to wed and have children comes from, both paths inevitably lead us to subjugation.

By Anthony James Kidwell – DontComply.com