MCViewPoint

Free association means allowing gay people to lead gay lifestyles, but it also means allowing others to disassociate with them.

They are in effect asking the government to use violence of the sort previously employed against them at Stonewall, and for many decades before that time, against their present victims.

https://fee.org/articles/a-libertarian-perspective-on-the-gay-rights-movement

Walter Block

One of the very, very high points in the history of the gay community, from the libertarian point of view, was their fight against the police in New York City in 1969. This was the Stonewall riots, and the homosexuals and their supporters were entirely in the right.

Up until that time, the police would raid bars, pubs, bathhouses, etc., frequented by homosexuals. They would do so with impunity, with little opposition from gay men or from anyone else for that matter. But upon this occasion, they were met with fierce resistance and the relationship between these two groups of young men was never again the same. (Yes, apart from sexual preferences, there was not that much difference between the two; both were young men, for example).

Why did the police continually raid establishments patronized by this group of people? That was because it was illegal for consenting adults of the same gender to have sexual relationships with one another. These places were used by members of this community to meet each other for, among other purposes, such illegal relationships. This sounds horribly out of date to the modern ear, but in some Muslim and African countries such behavior is still illegal, and often severely punished.

The libertarian perspective is clear as a bell on this issue. No consensual adult behavior, whatsoever, should be banned by law. The gays at Stonewall were entirely within their rights, and the police, the law to the contrary notwithstanding, entirely in the wrong. (The Nuremberg trials established the justification of ex post facto law; just because an enactment was on the books does not necessarily render it justified.).

One might think, then, that homosexuals, at least a large percentage of them, would be libertarians. They were then, in 1969, or at least they were acting in a manner compatible with this philosophy. Alas, if it were ever the case, it is far from being true nowadays.

From defending their rights to freely associate with one another for mutually agreeable purposes, they have in the modern era moved to violate the rights of other people.

For example, many gay people now insist that others have a legal obligation to not only refrain from violating their rights by preventing their associations, but to actively cooperate with them in promoting their lifestyles. Thus, they are now willing to coerce bakers, florists, and photographers to cooperate with them in promoting their marriages with each other. Gays have filed lawsuits in court the purpose of which was to force others (mostly devout Christians) to violate their own principles.

Are these gay people acting in a manner compatible with libertarianism in doing so? Of course not. They are in effect asking the government to use violence of the sort previously employed against them at Stonewall, and for many decades before that time, against their present victims.

See the rest here

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