Disappointment in California

I was surprised and disappointed that Californians decided to amend their Constitution to ban gay marriage.

It would have been fun to see the hammer fall on Christians who believe in the mixing Marriage and State. I would loved to have seen them recognize that by mixing Marriage and State, they have mixed their own God with the god Demos, i.e., Democracy, a concept I'm borrowing from Doug Wilson:

Every state is inescapably theocratic. Every state is theonomic. The thing that separates one state from another is the name of the god, the identity of the theos involved. In some societies it is Allah. In others (like ours) it is Demos.

Well, Christians "won" this vote, and will probably never learn the lesson. Perhaps gays will.

The gay rights people had this coming. Instead of insisting on the Separation of Marriage and State, they instead demanded the same special privileges granted to married people at the expense of single people. Marriage should be a matter handled by the private sector, and should be a State matter only as a last resort of private contract enforcement. The State is the instrument of violence, coercion, and social engineering. It is in the interest of gays to restrain it, not to make it "work" for them.

But what about the children?

The custodial rights of a child belong to the mother, who literally labored for the child to be born, and with whomever the mother, by voluntary contract, decides to share custody. Marriage contracts can be drawn up privately, by churches, other organizations, or lawyers. If a mother chooses to sell her custodial rights to two gay guys, that should be her choice, neither prohibited nor imposed by the State.

But what about inheritances, living wills, hospital visitations, etc?

It seems to me that individuals should be able to designate other individuals to visit them or make certain decisions for them in the event of incapacity. These other individuals should not necessarily have to be blood-relations or sex-partners.

But what about my right to collect insurance benefits through my partner/spouse's employer?

You have no such right. The idea is ridiculous. Employers should pay wages. Individuals should provide for themselves and those whom they love.

Gays should have the same rights anyone else should have. But these are individual rights. Not collectivist privileges. No one has the "right" to gain half of one's spouses' property in a divorce. The widowed don't have a "right" to collect the pension (from government or a private agency) of a deceased spouse. No one, gay or straight, has the "right" to have custody of children somebody else gave birth to.

It's too bad the the gay rights movement has embraced collectivism. Gays are natural libertarians: "No one has the right to tell us what we can't do!" But Statism is the prevailing religion of our culture, and so they have clamored to gain the "respect" and be granted "rights" (i.e. privileges) by the god Demos.

Because Demos rejected gays yesterday, I hope gays will wake up and reject the State.