This is the Libertarian Platform. . . . This is the Barr/Root position

Here's what the Libertarian Party Platform (as apparently adopted in Denver) says about same-sex marriage:

Sexual orientation, preference, gender, or gender identity should have no discriminatory impact on the rights of individuals by government, such as in current marriage, child custody, adoption, immigration, or military service laws. Consenting adults should be free to choose their own sexual practices and personal relationships. Government does not have legitimate authority to define, license or restrict personal relationships.

Here's what Bob Barr says:

The Defense of Marriage Act insofar has provided the federal government a club to club down rights of law-abiding American citizens, has been abused, misused, and should be repealed, and I will work to repeal it... Regardless of whether one supports or opposes same sex-marriage, the decision to recognize such unions or not ought to be a power each state exercises on its own, rather than imposition of a one-size-fits-all mandate by the federal government -- as would be required by a Federal Marriage Amendment, which has been previously proposed and considered by the Congress.... The decision today by the supreme court of California properly reflects this fundamental principle of federalism on which our nation was founded.

Here's what Wayne Allyn Root says:

Abortion is a states' rights issue. Education is a states' right issue. Medical marijuana is a states' rights issue. Gay marraige [sic] is a states' rights issue. Right to Die (typified by the Terri Schiavo crisis) is a states' rights issue. Come to think of it, almost every social issue of our day is a States' Rights issue. Let's get the federal government out of our lives....

*I support gay rights and civil unions. Gay marriage however is not a federal issue. It is a States' Rights issue only.

If I read English correctly, the Libertarian Party Platform says Government should not be involved in determining who can be married, but the Barr/Root position is only that the Federal Government should not be involved in determining who can be married.

States' rights is a traditionally conservative concept with a history that goes back through massive resistance to segregation to the defense of slavery to Nullification of Federal taxes to the Virginia & Kentucky Resolutions.

So, in the spirit of Thomas Knapp suggesting we help the Barr/Root ticket find its Libertarian voice, here's the question that our national candidates need to answer:

Do you support the plank of the Libertarian Platform regarding Personal Relationships?

A Yes or No will suffice.

A Libertarian Martin Luther King Jr. Day post

In which we travel into interesting waters . . . (for a fairly long trip, so be prepared) Dr. King's 1968 book, Where do we go from here: chaos or community? , is profound in that it criticizes anti-poverty programs for their piecemeal approach, as John Schlosberg of the Center for a Stateless Society [C4SS] observes: King noted that the antipoverty programs of the time “proceeded from a premise that poverty is a consequence of multiple evils,” with separate programs each dedicated to individual issues such as education and housing. Though in his view “none of these remedies in itself is unsound,” they “all have a fatal disadvantage” of being “piecemeal,” with their implementation having “fluctuated at the whims of legislative bodies” or been “entangled in bureaucratic stalling.” The result is that “fragmentary and spasmodic reforms have failed to reach down to the profoundest needs of the poor.” Such single-issue approaches also have “another common failing — ...

Libertarian National Committee Deathwatch Part 1

As the LNC continues to lurch towards collapse, with the latest news of mass layoffs at HQ, I've decided to begin tracking those things leading the national party to irrelevance, even as state and local parties gain power. As news, rumors and rhetoric break out, I shall chronicle them in this ongoing series at Delaware Libertarian. Organizations approaching failure have a number of characteristics. One of the most striking is renunciation of their purpose and effort to reinvent themselves as a "me-too" provider of services in the marketplace. In this, the LNC has been on a collision course with destiny for a while now. Recently, for example, it hired Republican Party web site developer TerraEclipse to redesign the LNC web site . Terra created a web site very similar to those of the clients it brags most about -- far-right Republican conservatives like Tom McClintock and BJ Lawson. A quick look at the web site they built for the LNC is instructive. The tagline on the ...

Soda tax debate reveals fundamental progressive assertions about your lack of individual rights and the "responsiblities" of the State

I thought it would be at least amusing to use the Delawareliberal comments as sub-headings regarding each category of what is wrong with the proposed tax on sodas and juice drinks. But there are so many different little strands of each comment that it would be impossible to pull them all out. So, instead, I'm going to let you read them in more or less the order they appeared, and note the assumptions. pandora: I’m perfectly okay with taxing sodas and juice drinks. Mainly because they’re total crap, and one of the main reasons our country’s children are overweight. They are also dirt cheap. Assumptions here: (1) Because "I" am perfectly okay with a new tax it should be imposed on everybody; (2) it is the government's responsibility to keep children from being obese; (3) the cheapness of the product to be taxed justifies charging people more for it. John Manifold: Soda fattens your kids [and you and your husband], shortens their lives, costs more than water [a...

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