Libertarian views on lgbtq
Libertarians Have Extended Led the Way on Marriage
The Declaration of Self-rule promised life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to Americans. Of course, not everybody enjoyed those rights at first. But eventually those ideas took root and led the abolition of slavery and later to civil rights and women’s rights. It took even longer for people to take seriously the idea of homosexual activity as a matter of personal freedom and to recognize gays and lesbians as a group deserving of rights.
It was the classical liberals, the ancestors of libertarians, who first came to that recognition. From Montesquieu and Adam Smith in the 18th century to the Nobel Prize–winning economist F.A. Hayek in 1960, it was libertarians who insisted that (in Hayek’s words) “private practice among adults, however abhorrent it may be to the majority, is not a proper subject for coercive action for a state whose dissent is to minimize coercion.”
Historians have often noted the general danger to minorities of a strong and expansive government. In his book Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality, the Yale historian John Boswell wrote that “gay people were actually saf
Libertarians, Gay Marriage, and Autonomy of Association: A Primer
How can a libertarian endorse gay marriage but also the right of businesses to decline to provide goods and services such as cakes, wedding dresses, and photographers for homosexual weddings? For many libertarians, it makes perfect coherent, philosophical, and legal sense.
But from the outside perspective, it often does not. As a result, critics looking for an opportunity to throw shade on the increased media and public interest in libertarian ideas can focus on just a piece of this mentality. We saw the Village Voice act just that recently, as media critic Roy Edroso incorrectly declared that we here are "more likely" to defend the rights of private individuals and businesses who want to discriminate against gays than the rights of same-sex attracted couples to demand marriage recognition from the government.
Reason Editor-in-Chief Matt Welch already responded by highlighting our lengthy history of support for gay marriage, going all the way back to 1975. As a male lover libertarian who writes frequently on both components, perhaps I can help illuminate some concepts here and explain why arguing that gays have the right to marry e
How Libertarians Failed Gay Rights
The current Libertarian Party abode page has tabs for a wide range of topics, from crime (solution: more guns) to gun laws (solution: more guns) to the environment (solution: less regulation). Among these tabs is a “Current Issues” section, featuring blurbs covering the “Bush/Obama Bailouts” and “Civil Liberties.” Conspicuously absent from the page: any mention of lgbtq+ rights.
Surprised? Don’t be. Despite myriad political developments in the last 10 years, not to mention three presidential elections during which Democrats and Republicans debated the topic at length, the Libertarian Party website has no section loyal to LGBTQ issues. To find that content, users have to dig around in the site’s archives. The results are laughably minor: The most recent press release mentioning “LGBT” came in 2010—all of it spent decrying President Barack Obama’s “inaction” on the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Behave and the U.S. military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Inform policy. LGBTQ Democrats are painted as victims suffering from the offensive catchphrase “battered gay voter syndrome.” Democrats, despite their recent efforts to expand homosexual rights, are labeled as oppres
Cato at Liberty Cato at Liberty
Justice Anthony Kennedy has been called the most libertarian member of the Supreme Court (though Ilya Shapiro finds his libertarianism “faint-hearted”). So maybe it’s no surprise that in the Lawrence (2003), Windsor (2013), and Obergefell (today!) cases, Kennedy wrote a majority decision discovery that gay people had rights to liberty and equal protection of the law.
As I note in The Libertarian Mind and in an article just posted at the venerable queer magazine The Advocate, libertarians and their classical liberal forebears have been ahead of the curve on gay rights for more than two centuries:
As the Supreme Court prepares for a possibly historic decision, most of the land now supports gay marriage. Libertarians were there first. Indeed John Podesta, a top adviser to Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton and founder of the Center for American Progress, noted in 2011 that you probably had to have been a libertarian to have supported same-sex attracted marriage 15 years earlier.
Just seven years ago, in the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Hillary Clinton all o
Is This Where Libertarians and the Lgbtq+ Community Part Ways?
Just one day before the Supreme Court ruled that states must recognize homosexual marriages, Cato Institute's Executive Vice President David Boaz took to the website for gay publication the Advocate to inform readers about libertarians' and the Libertarian Party's lengthy historical support for gay rights. Libertarian Party support for ending the criminalization of gay deed and for treating gay people equally under the commandment goes all the back to its first platform endorse in the 1970s.
In the 40-some-odd years since the Libertarian Party took such positions, we've seen the end of sodomy laws, the end of officially sanctioned government discrimination against gay employees, both civilian and military—and with Obergefell v. Hodges, the end of government bans on lgbtq+ marriage recognition. We've seen the conclude of just about every government policy that treats lgbtq+ and lesbian citizenry as somehow less than the heterosexual citizenry.
So: Is that it, then? Include supporters won, after all this time? Should we shift on to other issues of liberty?
Some gay activists are warning that no, there is still work to be done. The