The two topics wouldn't normally seem to go together but they are related, in the sense that both topics relate to highly foundational subjects. By that I mean that both the Treaty of Westphalia and the institution of marriage imply an awful lot of other things. In the case of the Treaty of Westphalia, repudiation is done purposefully in order to radically change the board. The reformers (Bush and Blair) both know and understand how wide ranging a change they are initiating. They've evaluated, as much as is possible, the consequences of shifting the foundations of the international law system. The emergence of significant national security threats from non-state actors requires the adjustment so a great deal of pain and shifting is justified by the survival of our way of life.
Gay marriage reformers, in contrast, are stubborn about how changing marriage to include them will change nothing else. They purposefully close their eyes and ears to the follow on effects and ask, no demand, that their plea be treated in isolation. This sort of approach is staggeringly irresponsible. And because the reformers have dominated the debate for so long, only now, with their goal in sight, are people starting to figure out that it's important to know what the follow on effects are. But even now you commonly find people wondering why government is getting involved in the first place. A single example suffices. The Social Security system has literally trillions in unfunded liabilities, liabilities that were assumed on the assumption that we would have a rate of population growth sufficient in perpetuity to fund this ponzi style scheme. Gay marriage, and its inevitable follow on variants, will have an effect of lowering total fertility, thus reducing the solvency of Social Security and increasing the punitive taxes necessary to keep the system running.
Thus Social Security (and most other entitlement programs) rest on the bedrock of fertility which is influenced by marriage policy. In the Westphalia repudiation, the surface effects of terrorists escaping justice by becoming stateless was a pernicious effect that is being dynamited by the repudiation. The consequences are desired. Is dynamiting our entitlements system with gay marriage an intention of gay marriage reformers? I don't think so.
Posted by TMLutas at March 23, 2004 11:04 AM