http://thirdpartywatch.com/2008/03/05/phillies-blasts-obama-on-gblt-issues/ The 2004 LP Platform said: "We oppose adding women to the pool of those eligible for and subject to the draft, not because we think that as a rule women are unfit for combat, but because we believe that this step enlarges the number of people subjected to government tyranny." If gays qua gays were exempt from draft registration, would the Outright Libertarians say the same thing about LGBTQ folk as the 2004 Platform said above for women? I would hope that the Libertarians would oppose such blatantly bigoted government policies, even when they nominally decrease aggression against the targeted minority. George, I applaud the intent behind your effort to use gay marriage a wedge issue against gay-friendly Democrats, but I'd be surprised if someone as smart as you could think of no significant differences between Obama's support for separate but equal marriage for gays and segregationists' support for "separate but equal" schools for blacks. If we defenders of gay rights can advocate marriage equality as a path toward privatizing marriage, might not Obama simply be a friend of gay rights who sees civil unions as a path toward marriage equality? Is invoking Faubus supposed to suggest that Obama can be assumed to be somehow bigoted against gays? Wouldn't suggesting that run the risk of alienating the same gay-friendly voters we're trying to peel away from Obama? To ask it another way: when polls show that the 35% of Americans who support gay marriage rises to 53% when including supporters of civil unions, are we libertarians mistaken in saying that more than half of Americans want to move toward greater marriage equality for gays? Are you saying the 18% of Americans who support civil unions but not gay marriage are as bad on gay rights as Southern segregationists were on black rights? Searches against the Outright web site and blog reveal no definitive stance on whether advocacy of civil unions is commendable, but various postings suggest that it's at least a tepid step in the right direction. I tend to agree. Until we can get the government out of marriage, we can at least get the government's anti-gay bigotry out of marriage. And until we do that, we can at least use civil unions to bring immediate and practical relief to LGBTQ Americans while they add to the overwhelming evidence that their relationships are not a threat to anybody's values or institutions.
