What do you do after you've won one of the most important Supreme Court cases in decades and shoved the state, kicking and screaming, out of your bedroom? Apparently, you beg the government to walk right back in. "The Marriage Revolution" has arrived, and homosexuals are the unlikely heroes of the quest to revive a fading institution.

-- Reason Magazine

A controversial essay by Megan McArdle (linked by Glenn Reynolds) has to be the most thorough and dispassionate exploration of the possible pitfalls of same sex marriage I've seen to date. It's well worth spending time to read the whole thing, along with all the comments. (Especially those from Sean Kinsell.)

I have to admit that I'm more than a little burned out on the subject, and over the years I've had so many pointless arguments that I just don't enjoy talking about it anymore. Megan McArdle is right: ideologues on both sides have long since made up their generally narrow minds.

All I can say is I'm just glad gay marriage wasn't there when I was young and having fun. As I have said many times in this blog, the gay lifestyle, while it isn't always a bohemian one, it often is. Certainly in my case, I loved the fact that if I was in a gay relationship, no one could tell me what to do. And culturally, who would? Certainly not the families of lovers. (Whether you call them "virtual in laws" or whatever.) All I ever asked was tolerance of the "leave me alone" variety.

The idea of being hauled into "Family Court" is outrageous in itself to anyone who wants to live his life outside the radar. And make no mistake about it: once there is gay marriage, there will be gay alimony, gay palimony and above all, legal jurisdiction of family courts over the lives of many people who didn't want that and don't need it. Blackmail could take on new dimensions.

There really isn't anything I could add to this essay, which pretty well covers my thinking on the subject. Excerpt:

How could I -- a libertarian, someone who believes in maximizing human freedom -- possibly object to gay marriage? Wouldn't this simply allow homosexuals the same rights allowed everybody else?

First of all, from where derives the assumption that I want to be like everybody else? Rights are one thing, but is it really fair to see marriage as a "right?" It is an entire institution -- one which I have rejected for almost my entire life. Who the hell has the right to impose it on me with the threat of governmental coercion?

If you don't think there is governmental coercion involved in marriage, then I ask you, right now, to leave your house, get in your car, or walk -- down to the nearest post office. Look around the place, and somewhere on the wall you will see posters offering rewards for people known as "deadbeat dads." I am not defending them, because I think most of them are either con artists or abysmal failures in life, but how many of them do you think see marriage as a "right?"

What do you think alimony is? Community property? These are rights, but they are also onerous burdens, because they can mean having to give up large sums of money (perhaps half or more of what you own) or else GO TO JAIL.

Rights? The "right" to be jailed if I don't pay up to someone I no longer love? How is that a right? How is it a right to be placed by new laws in a position where I can be compelled to do something to which I never consented, under threat of imprisonment?

What if I do not want such a right? May I simply opt out? Suppose I take pity on an unwashed, down-on-his-luck, young homeless person who'd otherwise be engaged in prostitution or other ruinous pursuits, and I take him in. Suppose I have more money than he does -- a lot more. Suppose further that we work a deal: in exchange for food and rent he takes care of the place and helps out generally. Suppose a mutual sexual relationship occurs. Suppose further that both of us benefit, that he gets a job and improves his life, but that after about two or three years I get tired of his sullen, studied ignorance and ask him to leave. No one has been harmed or taken advantage of.

What would stop him from marching off in a rage to the nearest lawyer? In a state with legal gay marriage why couldn't he simply demand his "share" of so-called "community assets"? Moral conservatives can complain all they want about the immoral lifestyle and how it degrades the courts to be cluttering up their calendars with such litigation, but what about me? What "right" would I have gained? The way I see it, I would have lost, big time, and I would have government in my private life in ways never imaginable before.

I saw too much family law, and I know how evil the system can be. I also know how vindictive an angry ex can be. There is nothing pretty about two people breaking up, whether heterosexual or homosexual. Until now the difference was that homosexuals were simply two free men (or two free women) and if they wanted economic benefits they would have to actually do things such as creating trusts, drafting wills, entering into adoption agreements, signing powers of attorney, and the like. If they didn't want to do those things, then they should legally remain two strangers.

In a word, before gay marriage, they were free. This is a freedom which I do not want to surrender, certainly not because a large and vocal group of people are demanding something they think is a "right."

No one wants to hear from those who seek neither.