This is a subject that gets bandied about a lot in politics, what does liberty actually mean? Liberty is an abstract concept defineable in many measures. To conservatives and by all means I don't mean all conservative but rather mainstream conservatism seems to define liberty in purely economical terms, i.e. personal liberty is more of an extension to be wealthy without feeling social or economic pressures to give; giving is entirely personal and voluntary. Social liberty therefore springs from the concept of economics and personal liberty is measured by how much wealth a person possesses: the more you accumulate the more liberty you should experience. While this is somewhat grounded in reality I'd like to make a reposte: a person's wealth is not really determined by what is in their bank account.
Liberty, happiness mean many things, is a person more or less happy to have good friends and family, someone to love and share in personal substance than someone who is very rich but keeps everyone at arm's length? again, this is in the eye of the beholder. I have noticed though that conservatives seem to define social liberty more from what I'd consider a negative standpoint: defending an organizations right to not allow gay people to work for it, or legislating exclusionary defense of marraige and defintions of whom can get married and who can't. First off, the reason I call these negatives is one example of liberty that comes into question is, does your personal liberty infringe upon or harm another person's personal liberty? harm can be difficult to quantify; when a church for instance, is forced by law to admit gay's to it's pews it's difficult to quantify whether or not enforcing a person's right to sexual choice actually harms a religious person's right to personal morality.
Does permitting the rights of gays to marry result in societal harm? Though this question may seem silly on it's face; rather than insulting those who'd say "yes it does" I'd rather instead logically convince someone that aside from a person's squeamishness or bigotry that allowing gay people to marry does not in fact harm society; not allowing them to marry however, does harm liberty. Marraige is treated as an institution and I suppose that moniker does fit. So as an institution, a legal document it is in marraige's best interest to maintain stability for credibility; instability therefore causes harm. Without touching the easy question of divorce rate which has most definitely destablized marraige as an institution I'd like to in fact argue about whom in fact decides marraige to begin with. Marraige was for much of human history a contract brought about for political means, a house in conflict with another house might be forced to marry it's eldest son to the eldest daughter in royal disputes. Marraiges were also made to sew pacts between nations by binding ruling families together.
The only religious component to marraige was in fact a blessing given by the state church, and even this was often rendered with corruption at it's heart. In fact the very socio-religious aspect in Western terms does in fact spring from the period when the Catholic Church held absolute power over Europe and the Pope could decide by giving or withholding a blessing who in fact would be made king over many nations (emporer in the case of the Holy Roman Empire). Because this practice was done top to bottom even peasants felt compelled to seek a priest to perform a marraige ceremony for terms of legitimacy. So as this ceremony did in fact bind statecraft to religion it's easy to say any state with a state religion would consider marraige holy religious. This ceremony however lost it's all encompasing power when the Catholic Church was rendered persona non grata in governmental dealings in the 15th Century forward; as divine right faded, so did religion as a state institution faded.
In terms of modern times marraige is actually secular, a priest can still perform a ceremony but only the state can legally recognize a person's marraige. This change means that churches should not in anyway suggest that allowing gay couples to wed violates their right to free expression in regards to a state institution. Upholding their rights do however cause personal harm to gays; excluding them from being able to choose who'd they'd like to legitimately spend thier life with visa vie marraige does constitute an infringement of personal liberty. Since church and state are seperated upholding a religion's right to exclude based upon harming a secular institution is striking as passing odd. I'll make another argument, health care.
Recently there has been a debate about whether or not allowing a public plan in health care violates the liberty of those involved from choosing what coverage they should have and negotiating a price. From the absolutely hilarious notion of "death panels" and rationing, which by the way a persuasive argument can be made that private hospitals and insurance companies already have death panels; we know rationing already exists in the system. The motivations for rationing are why personally I oppose the private insurance system and would much rather see a single payer system in place; profits. Does a public not-for-profit plan violate individual liberty? yes and no depending upon your definition. Economically most definitely because a not-for-profit system removes the personal wealth creation consideration from insurance; there is no better or clearer example of a violation of economic liberty. But as we see from the growing numbers of unisured the high cost of a person seeking economic liberty in health insurance does in fact violate social liberty; that is a person's right to have at least basic insurance available when they are sick.
Insurance companies decided one effective means of rationing health would be to create what's known as the "pre-existing condition" clause. While an argument can be made the existence of such a clause does in fact violate the constitution's intent in regards to the bill of rights; i.e. excluding a person based upon their health I won't make that argument here. I will only say it violates personal and social liberty. If a person cannot go visit a doctor when they need to, conditions that are treatable can fester and serious illness and death can result. This method of rationing along with recision, rate increases based upon frequency of illness and other means to keep the sick out of the private system are the hallmarks of violating a person's individual liberty. Not to mention it's social darwinism, death panels and rationing all rolled up in one with the only argument to be made in favor of this continued practice being economic liberty.
I used those two examples to show that negative concepts of social liberty and economic liberty do in fact cause harm to the very populace that's supposed to have liberty in a free society. Therefore the correct position standing for liberty from a modern concept of intent and harm means that gay people should be allowed to marry as a correct expression of individual liberty without causing harm and insurance companies should either cease to operate as for-profit models or at the least should be mandated out of concerns to social and individual liberty to provide policies people can afford. Economic liberty being allowed to trump social liberty in this case does in fact harm a person's individual liberty and therefore measures should be taken to correct this. If conservatives do in fact stand on the side of the right of the individual to liberty, defending the insurance company practices is not just morally wrong but it violates any such profession of respecting individual liberty; unless they only respect individual economic liberty. I'd like any conservative who reads this post to clarify which is more important.
I'll delve into this subject again in later posts.
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