IS MARRIAGE A RIGHT? Mark Tardiff replies to Matt Taylor

Matt Taylor is correct in pointing out that the answer to the question will depend on one's view of rights in general. However, his description of the differences misses some important distinctions and his assertion that what he calls the "communitarian view" is the more traditional model for society is problematic. When I studied cultural anthropology in college it was impressed upon us that the nature of a traditional society is to enforce conformity to an accepted code of conduct that was established by the "gods" the "ancestors" the "order of the cosmos" or whatever. It is most definitively not conceived by members of a traditional society as having been established by society itself, but rather by something or someone beyond the present members of society. Hence a truly traditional approach to our question would state that marriage is a natural institution that society does not create but rather is bound to protect and support. Thus there can be no right to SSM since no one has the authority to change the nature of marriage.

Another problem with the approach that "we invent rights" is that it effectively abolishes rights. If it were true, rights would be whatever society made them to be, and there would be no grounds for protest. I could insist on being allowed to do something, but unless I can appeal to something beyond society itself the only reason I can give is that I want to be able to do something. The implication for our present discussion of the idea that we invent rights is that the court in Massachusetts just invented a new right to SSM, something that didn't exist before and something that was not, in any objective sense, due to the plaintiffs.
posted by Eve at 5:54 PM VOTE

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