WHEN MARRIAGE IS OUTLAWED, ONLY OUTLAWS WILL HAVE IN-LAWS (…sorry): Noli Irritare Leones has two–OOPS! three–worthwhile posts up on the whole sex-marriage-love-babies-and-the-law thread.

Camassia also replies to my two posts. Don’t have a ton of time here, but will say two things briefly: 1) I don’t think comparing laws against adultery, sodomy etc. to laws stipulating a certain definition of marriage really works. The issues are so different (privacy and enforceability alone are hugely different) that I’m not convinced we even need to go there to discuss marriage as a legal institution. Similarly, I’m not even sure how a government would try to figure out whether everybody who marries marries for the right reasons, so I don’t see the fact that govt doesn’t try to do that as a reason to “abolish marriage” as a legal institution.

2) Therefore, I worry that Camassia is falling into a stance that I see a lot (and have fallen into myself)–in my debating society it often got tagged as “anarchy or theofascism?” In other words, if you can’t legally enforce all of the consequences of your beliefs, you shouldn’t legally enforce any of them, because to enforce some and not others would be inconsistent. This stance IMO generally neglects, among other things, the problems of power (some laws against some vices can’t be enforced without tempting the enforcers to other vices), and the fact that politics is the art of the possible. I don’t think it is inconsistent to support a legal definition of marriage and oppose anti-adultery/-sodomy laws, but even if it were inconsistent, that wouldn’t necessarily be a dealbreaker in political life.

And finally, a reader writes to strongly imply that I shouldn’t be talking about this stuff at all, since I’m not married thus have no clue what I’m talking about. Many responses come to mind; but I’ll just give the most important one, which is that if this is really getting in the way of what I’m saying, please go read Maggie Gallagher instead. She’s married, she’s been thinking and talking about this for much longer than I have, and everything I say here is hugely inspired by her anyway.