Executive Director Brett Bittner Speaks Out About Marriage Equality (Libertarian Party of Georgia)

Last week, President Obama announced an “evolution” of his position on marriage equality.  As you can imagine, Libertarians were less than enthused.

I sought to share a Libertarian voice in the conversation, reaching out to The GA Voice, where they published this statement on their blog:

For each individual, marriage means something different. For some, it is a lifetime commitment between two people. For others, it is the beginning of a family. For others still, it is a unity between two people and their Creator. Whatever the reason for marriage, it is an undertaking for which there should be equality under the law.

President Obama’s statement defining a point along his “evolution” on the marriage equality issue does not change a single thing for residents of North Carolina or the other 49 states.  Not one federal law has changed, nor has anything resembling equality been set in motion.  In an interesting conversion, the President takes a federalist position on a single issue that does not coincide with his positions in areas where he chooses the supremacy of federal law. In states where medicinal marijuana is legal, he takes no issue with deploying a SWAT team under the guise of federal drug policy, but he takes the position that it is up to the states to determine their own comfort level via democratic referendum for a basic human right of free association?

This week, Libertarians across the nation returned from our national convention in Las Vegas, where we nominated former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson as our candidate for President. Governor Johnson did not require a media frenzy or a calculated, strategic political decision to cement his place as an ally of the LGBT community. He, like the Libertarians he represents, believes in marriage equality, because it’s none of the government’s business who you love, marry, or choose to start a family with. Today, he was quoted as saying, “What is the President saying — that he would eat a piece of cake at a gay wedding if the state the happy couple lives in allows it ? Where is the leadership? While I commend him for supporting the concept of gay marriage equality, I am profoundly disappointed in the President.”

I praise principled positions. I even praise evolved positions that root themselves in principle, but given his track record with regard to the LGBT community, as well as his lack of conscious regard for the 10th Amendment to the Constitution in other areas, his statement falls flat for those of us working to ensure the civil liberties of the smallest minority, the individual, are preserved.

That statement led to an interview with Bulldog 103.7 in Gainesville and WGAU AM-1340 in Athens about the President’s evolution and the Libertarian position on marriage equality.  You can listen to that interview here.

"Those that dream by night, in the dusty recesses of their mind, wake in the day to find that all was vanity, but the dreamers of the day, are dangerous men, for they may act out their dreams and make them real."