On Monday, Rush Limbaugh stated that supporters of gay marriage are misapplying or incorrectly defining freedom. However, at no point in his monologue did Rush provide us with a definition. The closest he came was to state that freedom requires virtue, morality and “proper constraints and restraints.”
“Constraints and restraints” means limitations and restrictions. Rush decried the notion that, “You do whatever you want, and as long as it doesn’t hurt anybody else, there’s nothing wrong with it.” We should not allow actions, such as gay marriage, he said, that would corrupt “any tradition that has demonstrated its usefulness, its primacy over hundreds of thousands of years….” According to Rush, freedom is founded on Christian morality, and that demands restrictions on whom may marry.
Rush claims that we should not allow gay marriage because it would corrupt heterosexual marriage, a tradition that has “demonstrated its usefulness… over hundreds of thousands of years.” Slavery has been “useful” for hundreds of thousands of years, but that is hardly a justification. But more significantly, how would gay marriage corrupt heterosexual marriage? Rush provides no answer, and the reason he doesn’t is because no rational answer is possible.
Stripped to its essentials, Rush’s argument amounts to: You are free to do as you choose, so long as you follow Christian morality. And if you choose to act contrary to Christian morality, then you will be forced to act contrary to your judgment. That is not freedom; it is theocracy. That is not the United States of America; that is Iran.
In truth, freedom is the absence of physical coercion. Freedom means that you may act according to your own judgment in the pursuit of the values that you choose, so long as you respect the mutual rights of others to do the same. Freedom means that the interactions between individuals are voluntary and uncoerced. A “freedom” that requires “constraints and restraints” is a contradiction.
Freedom is not founded on any morality, Christian or otherwise. Freedom provides the social context in which individuals can be moral, but freedom does not prescribe which morality that they must follow.
Rush would claim that I am advocating hedonism—the doctrine that the good is whatever brings one pleasure. I am not an advocate of hedonism. A series of sexual adventures might bring one temporary pleasure, but it certainly isn’t good for one’s marriage, as Tiger Woods demonstrated. Accumulating vast wealth through fraud might bring one temporary pleasure, but it certainly isn’t good for one’s physical or mental well-being, as Bernie Madoff demonstrated.
Freedom does not mean doing anything you choose. It means that you can act according to your own judgment, so long as you do not use force or fraud against others. Freedom means that your interactions with others must be based on their voluntary consent.
If Rush Limbaugh does not like gay marriage, then he has a right to shun gay couples, boycott businesses that provide benefits to gay couples, or take any other action he deems appropriate. Rush Limbaugh, like all human beings, has a moral right to act as he judges best. And so do gays.