Republican Congressman Steve King makes the most bizarre argument yet against same-sex marriage:
KING: Well, we’ve had a significant percentage of people that have come to Iowa as same-sex couples to get married. And that, that percentage is up there some place over a fourth, if I remember correctly on the data that I have seen, and I don’t know that anything is complete at this point. I said that if this is allowed to stand, Iowa will become the Mecca for same-sex marriage and that is becoming the case. I know that there have been buses that have been, have gone to Iowa with loads of people in them in order to get married under the judge-made law.
(…)
KING: But if, there also would be no rational argument against group marriage. And I just take this along the rationale even further and would say if relationships between individuals cannot be prohibited by the state legislature then there is no ban that can actually be constitutional that would ban group marriage. And it wouldn’t have to be for reasons of, let me say, love or lust. It could be reasons of profitability or avoiding taxes or accessing benefits.
So in the end this is something that has to come with a, if there’s a push for a socialist society, a society where the foundations of individual rights and liberties are undermined and everybody is thrown together, living collectively off of one pot of resources earned by everyone. That is, this is one of the goals they have to go to is same-sex marriage because it has to plow through marriage in order to get to their goal. They want public affirmation. They want access to public funds and resources. Eventually all those resources will be pooled because that’s the direction we’re going. And not only is it a radical social idea, it is a purely socialist concept in the final analysis.
Here’s the audio:
The truly sad thing is that there are people who will hear this and say “Hell yeah”
I say get married to whomever you want to marry and be married to however many people you want to be married to.
But underlying this messy debate is the assumption that the state ought to be directly involved in marriage at all. To me the state of marriage ought to be established by private convenants, voluntary communal relationships and/or religious beliefs (if that suits the participants) rather than by the dictates of the state.
My thesis is that historically marriage was considered a proxy for family with children. The state has a legitimate interest in protecting innocent children and operating in ways the recognize the very real obligations and importance of holding families together. But if there are no children involved, bug out I say. I think we need to evolve in a direction on how to organize in a way that suits familial relationships and the raising of children, but gets the state out of the contract, relationship-among-adults and morality games.