Lenin Lives!

In the time-honored blogging tradition of referring to a longer blog entry which refers to an even longer blog entry, as an exercise in lazy reductionism, here's a link to an entry on John Jakala's Grotesque Anatomy, in which a married het male atheist answers the exhaustive arguments of Eve, an unmarried bi female Catholic, against same-sex marriage. There's some interesting stuff there; go read it.

One of the most interesting (to me) points that John makes is that Eve's (and most opponents of lettting gay people marry) argument is focused entirely on the institution of marriage, and casually dismisses the individual aspect of the question. Conservatives always used to preach against the evils of (for example) Communism because it put the presumed interests of the larger society ahead of the right to freedom of the individual. Planned economies, the state deciding what you're job's going to be based on what jobs it needs filled, etc. were horrible things and would lead to either the enslavement of humanity, or the eventual downfall of that system (depending on the message of the day).

But here they are (many of the same pundits, and their ideological heirs) insisting that the state should limit who your legal spouse is going to be based on what would be better for the community as a whole. It's just a bunch of Leninist social planning.

Which brings me back to my first online comment on the topic, which I'll reproduce here rather than make you click to it: "Against gay marriage? Then don't have one."