Isilion

On one of my MeetUp mailing lists someone quoted a post on the Yahoo group “lpsf-discuss · San Francisco Libertarian Discussion” wherein the poster, in discussing an interview with Ron Paul on “Free Speech Radio News,” a program on Berkeley’s KPFA community radio station, said

Of particular note to this group, Paul mentioned that “marriage is a religious institution, not a government one” and since the separation of church and state is codified in the Constitution, he therefore supports same-sex marriage, and even says the government has no business sanctioning civil unions. Marriage is a contract between individuals, and the government should have no involvement in such matters.

I felt compelled to respond thusly:

I think you read a bit much into Ron Paul’s statement that “Marriage is first and foremost a religious matter, not a government matter” (http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul160.html) to say he “supports gay marriage.” In fact one could argue that based on his co-sponsorship of the Marriage Protection Act of 2004 (http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul197.html) that he is against gay marriage.

The fact of the matter is I’ve never heard him come out and say one way or the other. If anyone else has I’d like to have a cite, please.

This question is one that is sure to come up more when Ron Paul is the Republican nominee and his position on this and other “social” issues such as the abortion and the war on drugs are compared to those of whoever his Democratic opponent is.

One of the things I admire about Ron Paul is that he does not let his personal opinion color his reading of the Constitution, especially when it comes to the powers granted to the federal government by the states.

We all know that he is personally opposed to abortion, but that does not stop him from saying “Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided, but not because the Supreme Court presumed to legalize abortion rather than ban it. Roe was wrongly decided because abortion simply is not a constitutional issue… Under the 9th and 10th amendments, all authority over matters not specifically addressed in the Constitution remains with state legislatures. Therefore the federal government has no authority whatsoever to involve itself in the abortion issue. So while Roe v. Wade is invalid, a federal law banning abortion across all 50 states would be equally invalid.” (http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul301.html)

To me that is quintessential Goldwater, who once said “I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is ‘needed’ before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible.”

My point in all this is to say Ron Paul is not like any other politician on the scene today. He will not say one thing and then turn around and do another. He will not tell an audience what he thinks they want to hear only to vote the opposite way when they aren’t looking.

We should not be doing the same thing. We should not be trying to force his positions to sound like something we think a potential supporter might like. It makes us and him look dishonest.

Without a clear statement one way or the other about whether he supports or opposes something like gay marriage (which based on his religious convictions I suspect he would be personally opposed to), it would be better to say what he has plainly said: Ron Paul is opposed to the federal government having any role whatsoever in defining marriage, legislating controls on it or allowing the federal courts to impose any restrictions on any state’s exercise of it’s sovereignty in such matters.

The bottom line is Ron Paul supports the right of the individual states and the people to set their own policy on those issues that are not the concern of the federal government.

While some liberals might interpret that as “support” for gay marriage, others might see him being opposed because he does not want a single federal policy legalizing the matter.

Conservatives could also see it as “opposition” to gay marriage because he would not support blanket federal legalization, but conservatives might oppose him be cause he does not want a blanket federal ban.

Each group has members who think the federal government should be imposing one-size-fits-all solutions to complex social issues. We will never win the support of those people. Each group also has members who realize that in a free society morality cannot be imposed from the top down. Those people need only be made aware of Ron Paul and what he stand for. They will come to the conclusion that he is the man for our time without us dressing up his words to make them more palatable.

(Side note: it occurs to me that I have lately taken to quoting Ron Paul’s speeches and essays they way I used to quote scripture when arguing points of Christian doctrine. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but it is kind of amusing.)