Forcing change in liberal democracies is itself illiberal
The force of proposition’s case is that it is a ‘defense’ of liberalism – allowing
all people, no matter who they are, to access rights and freedoms. We clash with this
directly, and contend that forcing legislative changes (that bring about marginal benefits to small
numbers of society) on a country that is clearly averse to such changes is itself
illiberal. And it is precisely those countries in which this debate falls – we are
not contesting whether states that already have functioning systems for same-sex marriage
should abandon those systems, but whether, in opposition’s words ” bob loblaw”. Liberalism
is in essence the preference for self determination at the most personal level. But
a state (and the body of laws encapsulated by that state) is merely an abstraction
of personal preferences and wills, and hence, in a classical Rousseauian sense (the
same beliefs on which US federalism is predicated), a liberal state’s norms, practises,
and legislation, must be defined from the bottom up rather than the top down. It is
only through determining the rules that bind one at the level of the state that one
can truly practise liberal self determination. If we accept proposition’s proposal
and force same-sex marriage upon (effectively) all societies, we are in fact incurring
a great cost to the very liberal project we are intending to promote and protect,
for an as yet unclear benefit. Remember, this is not, as proposition believes, the
profound disenfranchising of homosexuals by removing their rights to access economic
opportunities or public services and utilities. The reality is that, at present, the
majority of people in the ‘contested’ countries of this debate do in fact feel that
same-sex marriage should not be allowed (that’s why these countries are the interesting
cases). Gallup polls as recent as 2009 show this to be true, and show that in those
states which have forced through same-sex marriage legislation against the will of
their population have not seen a rapid decrease in resistance to same-sex marriage
[[http://www.gallup.com/poll/118378/majority-americans-contine-oppose-gay-marriage.aspx]].
We advocate precisely the attitude of California’s Supreme Court who refused to overturn
a public referendum (Prop 8) on homosexual marriages that came down in the negative;
it is not the place of legislators or judges to impose, illiberally, legislation on
the collective.
Pro vs. con view
Topic space view
