Keith Olbermann laid into Michael Steele last night.
Steele’s position is that Republicans should paint legalization of gay marriage as bad for small business owners.
Admittedly, that’s a diversionary tactic.
But Olbermann’s response was bizarre. He drew two non sequitars. First, the equivalence between:
- Gay couples spending their own money on themselves, and
- Small business owners spending their own money on other people (e.g., their gay employees’ partners).
Secondly,
- Gay couples choosing how to spend their own money, and
- Small business owners being forced to spend
their ownmoney (on their gay employees’ partners).
It gets worse. He stresses the economic benefits of adding gays to the marriage and wedding market. The thing is, nothing is preventing gays from spending their money this way – on what amounts to a big party - currently. In this regard, gays are in the same boat as small business owners: nothing is stopping them from voluntarily spending their money in Olbermann’s preferred way right now. Does that mean the solution to this lack of spending to make it involuntary? For Keith Olbermann, the answer is yes.
I think it’s very sad that so much of the gay marriage debate is about money not equality. A lot of people are in denial about that.
To see this, note that there are really 3 sorts of outcomes for gay couples: 1) they’re unequal to straight couples, 2) they’re equal and they both get extra benefits from society, or 3) they’re equal and they don’t get extra benefits from society.
With some issues – like visitation rights in hospitals – gay rights groups have made it clear that they would settle for either 2 or 3 (although 2 is clearly preferable).
But, when it comes to using the legal system to tell other people how to spend their money, choice 3 does not get mentioned.
When was the last time you heard a gay marriage advocate assert that benefits should be taken away from straight couples because they’re discriminatory?
Perhaps they should: one of the big successes of the (traditional) civil rights movement was the winning argument that equality meant not only more privileges for blacks but also less privileges for whites.
This isn’t getting said at all about benefits for gay spouses. I think a big reason for this is that privileges are a warm fuzzy, but job benefits are about filthy lucre.
And yet, the biggest benefit of all – a third-party payer healthcare system - is a historical accident left behind by Rooseveltian central planners.
Mind you – Rooseveltian central planners who, in keeping with the times, were pretty openly prejudiced against just about everyone, gays included.
The bottom line is that I feel alone: I have nothing against gay marriage, but I have problems with stapling it onto a policy that was supposed to be temporary and expedient but which now appears permanent and bloated. Why on Earth is the litmus test for gay sensitivity the willingness to feed gays into a system that slobbers rapaciously on all of us like Jabba the Hutt?
Hat tip to MJ.
