The Ugliest Step-Child of Libertarian Politics

Why Libertarians Should Care About Gay Issues

By: Allan Wallace

Every libertarian activist has heard it time and again, “Oh, that's the party of Druggies, Gun Fanatics, and Queers.” My answer to this is usually, “No, the Libertarian Party is for everyone, but how the government treats these people is an indication of how they will eventually treat you.”

Because these three are seen by some as a reason NOT to support the LP, many LP members have decided that these issues (sometimes minus their favorite one) should be at least de-emphasized and that it would be better to pretend that our support for these issues simply don't exist.

Each of these issues (The Drug War, The Right to Bear Arms, and Equal Rights for GLBT people) are considered “ugly step-children” by some, but the reason we support them is they all involve attacks on people's rights. As such, they all are legitimate issues for the LP to support and even to emphasize when appropriate. However one of these has never been a Front Line issue for the Libertarian Party and has been consistently moved to the “back-burner” during campaign years. But the other two issues, drugs and guns, have been publicly presented as a key issue for the party's success, more than once. And because these two have louder advocates, Gay Rights issues are usually dumped first.

But the key to victory is not in who we dump, but in who we include. We must become the advocate party for ALL those who love liberty and have no real political advocate with the demopublicans. And our success then could be built not on emphasizing any one, except under special circumstances, but in advocating all such issues. When we successfully communicate that message, people will be more eager to jump on our bandwagon. And we can start this process by learning why we should include, not necessarily emphasize, GLBT (Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgendered) individuals and their issues.

For most libertarians the fact that gays have civil rights is a forgone conclusion. Our live-and-let-live attitude is fundamental to the principles we live by. But libertarians from conservative political or faith backgrounds sometimes have trouble reconciling the times when what they've been taught clashes with principled action. So here is what your parents and preachers didn't know or wouldn't admit about homosexuality.

One: Sexuality isn't All or Nothing, straight or gay. Of the 10% of the population that loves differently, somewhere between 6 and 8% are bisexual to varying degrees.
TWO: Homosexuality and Bisexuality have always been with us. History is filled with examples. And all the best data currently available indicates that the frequency of homosexuality (including bisexuality) in society has always been about 10 percent.
THREE: Sexuality is NOT a “Preference!” No one chooses to be ridiculed, reviled, and hated unless they are serving a higher purpose and that is the job of a mystic leader or a Messiah. All the credible research in existence points to the fact that sexuality is set before the age of six. Genetic influences, pre-natal hormonal influences, and post-natal environmental and emotional influences are the determining factors and these play roles in varying degrees in different people. But if a person's sexuality is set at so young an age, it cannot be a matter of choice or preference. Conservatives desperately want sexuality to be a person's choice because it is easier to hate people for making bad choices than it is to hate them for something they cannot control.
FOUR: There is absolutely NO clinical evidence that suggests that a person's sexuality can be changed or even influenced long term. All of the Ex-Gay movement's “successes” are straight leaning bisexuals who have chosen to deny or ignore that small part of their nature and many such bisexuals are capable of that without the help of the Ex-Gay Ministers.
FIVE: Almost all gays and bisexuals are raised in straight families, with straight expectations, attending straight churches enforcing straight moral agendas. When all that can't stop their sons or daughters from being bisexual or homosexual, what makes them think that anger, threats of punishment in this life and the next, mental and physical abuse, and rejection will?

We as Libertarians have a unique opportunity to be among the few that will stand up for a down trodden minority, a party that stands up for this most modern of civil rights issues, a party that does the right thing when everyone else is doing the emotional thing. Because the Republicans have made the rights of gays to marry an issue in this campaign and the Democrats have baled on the gay community, we Must speak out against the civil inequities and against their abuse of our national and state constitutions.

Why Gays are so Insistent on the Right to Marry

And in spite of what Religious conservatives and others would have you believe, there is only one common thread that is found in ALL definitions of marriage. Marriage always creates a wholly new family; not even the concept of one man marrying one woman is as pervasive as that.

The right to create a family through marriage has been specifically denied to gays and lesbians. But the natural human instinct to bond together into family units is not lost or diminished in gay men and lesbians, just forbidden by law. This human need to create family is at the heart of the gay marriage movement because so many gays and lesbians have been thrown out of their own original families because of their sexuality. And this need of the heart extends to an actual legal need as well.

Gays and Lesbians have tried everything possible to protect their rights through legal means; Wills, Powers of Attorney, Contracts, etc. And still, a blood relative and any Judge can easily throw it all out the window after a brief hearing in court. They can deny access to a dying lover's hospital room, they can remove a child from its only remaining loving parent, and they can force the sell of a surviving partner's home and business. Nothing short of full civil marriage will protect our rights fully in the current legal climate. In a libertarian society none of this would be necessary because the courts would not be allowed to ignore legal documents and contracts in favor of a bigoted blood relative.

None of the arguments against gay marriage hold up under scrutiny. For example, if protection of marriage really were their real goal, they would try to ban divorce and make adultery a felony. But that limits their own freedom, not ours. And, if the concept of “one man, one woman” were truly the common thread through all definitions of marriage throughout time as the conservatives claim, then there wouldn't be so many examples of cultures with multiple marriages in various forms. Orthodox Mormons are still bitter about the government's interference in their religious beliefs.

What these efforts to write discrimination into our Constitutions really do is to deny us the right to create a legally recognized family. We don't want to dictate their church's definition of marriage, nor their own personal definition. All we want is our equal rights under the law, nothing more, but nothing less will do.

Just once I'd like to see the Libertarian Party put Equal Rights for Gays, Lesbians and Bisexuals on the “Front Burner”. And the LP has such an opportunity - this year, an election year, and on a constitutional issue at that. This year a number of states and even the federal government are trying to pass constitutional amendments to limit Marriage to a union between one man and one woman. Georgia is one of them. If nothing else, this is yet another attempt to abuse these Constitutions, documents meant only to limit government, not to limit the freedom of US citizen's.

If we do nothing, we will be morally guilty of the inconsistent application of our own principles. If we let this issue pass us by, we will become NOT the Party of Principle, but the Party of Fear. If we do nothing, we will never again be able to look people in the eye and say we will stand against the powers that be for your civil rights.

Will the Libertarian Party take advantage of this opportunity? Will it do the right thing as some state LP's have done and speak up when people are suffering or will it cower in fear of ruffling too many feathers? The Democrats have flip-flopped yet again on this issue; will the LP take advantage of this to prove to GLBT individuals that WE are the only party that consistently supports them? Or will the LP prove once and for all, that the GLBT community is it's Ugliest Step-Child?

Allan Wallace is a co-founder of Outright Libertarians, 2003 & 2004 Membership Chairman for the Libertarian Party of Georgia. He is also the author of the Libertarian Party of Georgia's new 2004 Platform Plank supporting the equal rights of gays and lesbians to marry under the law and denouncing all attempts to amend the state or federal Constitutions to limit that right.