Supreme Court DOMA: 5 Reasons Conservatives Should Want SCOTUS to Allow Gay Marriage

If you've found someone you love and you want to get married, you should be able to do it. Ask your priest, pastor, rabbi, imam, or what have you. But you shouldn't have to ask your government. Equal rights should be a given. Here are five reasons why even conservatives should go along with that.

1. Freedom Of Contract

A marriage is, among other things, a legal contract between two adults. If two free people consent to something, what right does the government have to say that they may not enter into a contract?

This "freedom of contract" principle was last in the news about a century ago, when the Supreme Court ruled that it could intervene in contracts between an employer and his employees. A baker by the name of Joseph Lochner wanted to hire bakery employees for less than the minimum wage. He argued that the government, by instituting a minimum wage, was interfering in a contract between two consenting parties. He lost.

The same idea that allows government to institute a minimum wage higher than the market value of labor is the same idea that allows government to decide who may or may not marry.

2. Shrinking the Government

Conservatives are already against the government picking winners and losers in the economy. We don't like government subsidies, and we don't like disproportionate taxes. The idea of conservatism is a level playing field.

If the government shouldn't be deciding which company gets what — and if, as the Supreme Court has told us, "corporations are people" — then it follows that the government should not pick and choose who can get married.

People of the same sex enter into agreements with one another every single day, signing housing leases, business contracts, and so on. If justice is to be truly blind, she can't decide to lift off her blindfold when it comes to marriage contracts.

3. More Children Growing Up in Stable Families

There are lots of people who want same-sex marriages. There are lots of people who, once entered into those same-sex marriages, hope to become parents someday. These are would-be parents without kids.

There are over 400,000 kids without parents — kids in foster care — in the U.S. today. If even a small fraction of the gay couples who want to be parents end up choosing domestic adoption, that could provide stable and loving homes for thousands of kids.

4. "I think that freedom means freedom for everyone." - Dick Cheney

When Dick Cheney, of all people, agrees with the Democrats on something, that's how you know it's a no-brainer.

The attached video shows the one and only Jimmy McMillan, of The Rent is Too Damn High Party, advocating for marriage equality in the blunt style which made him famous. "You wanna marry a shoe? I'll marry ya." He and Cheney have figured out the same thing: Freedom is for all, and the freedom to marry a person of the same sex will have no bearing on heterosexual marriage at all.

5. It's the Right Thing to Do

I consider myself a religious person.  I know what the Bible says about homosexuality.  I also know that God has given us the ability to think and reason, and I know about the Bible's explicit direction to love and to care for each other.  

Marriage is an institution designed to help two human beings do both of those things, "until death do us part."

There is no benefit — none — to keeping apart two people who want to be legally recognized as together.