Thomas Sowell is wrong on gay marriage

You would never guess from reading this piece, but Thomas Sowell is an articulate and thoughtful economist and commentator. While he discusses both affirmative action and gay marriage in the same article, I wish to focus on the latter.

Sowell's defines the terms of the debate as such:

"Marriage is not a right but a set of legal obligations imposed because the government has a vested interest in unions that, among other things, have the potential to produce children, which is to say, the future population of the nation.

Gays were on their strongest ground when they said that what they did was nobody else's business. Now they are asserting a right to other people's approval, which is wholly different.

None of us has a right to other people's approval."

The obvious (and ludicrous) implication of this argument is that heterosexual couples who cannot have children, or who choose not to, similarly have no business marrying. But the more interesting implication is that government should directly intervene into people's lives in order to advance collective goals. This is a bizarre position for a conservative economist to take, and at least one noted libertarian, Don Boudreaux, has taken notice:

"It's true that marriage laws emerged largely to deal with fact that heterosexual couples have children. But this fact does not imply - contrary to Mr. Sowell's careless claim - that "the government has a vested interest in unions that, among other things, have the potential to produce children, which is to say, the future population of the nation." Certainly in a free country, the state has no business governing in any way or for any purpose people's decisions on having children."

Sowell goes further, making a cruel and ironic argument on the rights of gays:

"While people may be treated the same, all their behaviors are not. Laws that forbid bicycles from being ridden on freeways obviously have a different effect on people who have bicycles but no cars.

But this is not discrimination against a person. The cyclist who gets into a car is just as free to drive on the freeway as anybody else.

The question is not whether gays should be permitted to marry. Many gays have already married people of the opposite sex. Conversely, heterosexuals who might want to marry someone of the same sex in order to make some point will be forbidden to do so, just as gays are."

I don't know how someone can say this and still be considered a serious part of the debate.

Gay marriage is not about "asserting a right to other people's approval" or imposing a way of life on anyone else. It is quite the opposite. Extending marriage rights to gays means removing government-sponsored opposition to sexual preference. It's about letting people choose their own path towards happiness, without needless interference from a nosy state. For anyone interested in the cause of liberty, the choice is clear.

But I can't say it any more eloquently than Keith Olberman: