I have nothing to say on the California gay marriage decision that has not been said better by someone else, namely by Rod Dreher and Patrick Deneen. How about some Deneen:
To my mind, what's most striking about the Court's decision is the language of the inviolability of "individual liberty and personal autonomy." These are the legal and Constitutional grounds on which a decision about the basis of marriage are being grounded. On the basis of such grounds, can there really be marriage at all, at least in a form that is worthy of defense? Aren't we really talking about an advantaged tax and property arrangement, one that can and should be altered at the will and inclination of the individual's "liberty and autonomy"? It is really nothing other than the contractual partnership defended in Locke's Second Treatise, sans the children (or at least conceived by the couple in question). And doesn't it permit any possible form of coupling, including ones not limited to couples (e.g., polygamy, etc., between consenting adults?)
Ah, the joys of "individual liberty and personal autonomy." Family and local community find themselves eviscerated by an ideology and as a consequence the isolated and weakened individual turns to the only means of collective action with any legitimacy, the state. This is how libertarianism ushers in the omnipresent state, demolishing the very liberty that gives the libertarians their label.
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