The Paris Commune. It lasted two months before the French government sent in the army.

Show me a successful society in contemporary times with no government. Anarchy is for dreamers and idiots

The Paris Commune was the government. It made decrees and exercised power. That was the government.

Here's how you solve the whole "GLTB" "marriage" issue.
#1 Marriage is a covenant between a man, woman and God. As such, the US government should'n be able to regulate it at all because of the freedom of religion clause in the Constitution. (Yes I know I'm simplifying what the actual Article stipulates)

#2 The only reason the government gets involved is because legally marriage is a partnership. The government charges a fee for a marriage certificate so joined couples can show proof of their partnership. This proof then enables the married couple to receive certain benefits from their joining.

Solution. Government issues NO marriage certificates only union certificates. Anyone can union and the government doesn't infringe on anyones religion. The union certificates then become the proof needed to receive benefits.

If people still want to get married then they can find a church, synagogue or mosque and have that ritual performed by the appropriate religious leader.

It really is THAT SIMPLE. and yes, if gays can find an ordained minister to marry them, they could still get married. I don't believe that's the real issue though. For some, it may be.

Anyone who supports gay marriage but doesn't support polyamorous, incestuous, beastial, underage, etc. marriage is being a hypocrite. The fact is marriage is still going to be restricted to a select population. It's still not going to be open to everyone - so if you claim it should be the gay rights movement is being ineffective overall at best.

That said, marriage and government have no business having anything to do with each other. Abolish all marital status from the law.

Polyamorous: Sure. All participants are adults and able to enter into legal agreements. I have no issue with that.

Incest: Assuming its not underage, it maybe gross, but I don't think I have the right to dictate to others who they are going to fuck.

Bestiality: Because Old Bessie the favorite horse is a legal entity and has the power to sign a contract.

Underage: Same thing. Minors can't sign legal contracts without being countersigned by parents, far as I know.

Yes, I know alarmists would like you to think that gay marriage is the first step in the end of the world. But people said that about interracial marriage, about desegregation, about the end of slavery.

And now we look upon people who thought those things as backwards.

The future is ours. You can either be on the side of more freedom, or you can line up with those who think its ok to dictate to others how to live their lives. (when those lives harm nobody else). I don't want to tell you how to live your private life (again, so long as you're not hurting anybody), and I think we'd all be better off if that was how we handled private matters.

Polyamorous has nothing to do with government or marriage.
Beastiality involves something not able to enter into a contract, ie no marriage would ever work.
Incestuous is not illegal in many places, but it is frowned on for health reasons.
Underage is not illegal, with the consent and such of the guardian, though within reason.

Your post is a silly straw man, and not well thought through.

Our society, has incorrectly used the term "marriage" to define the legal bond in between a man and a woman. "Marriage" is a religious term for the contract between a man, a woman, and God. If we do allow same-sex couples to wed, we need to make sure they understand that it is not a religious sacrament. It's a legal bond. That's why I advocate renaming the legal contract of marriage.

One of my biggest concerns is "Where do marriage rights stop?" For example, I'm worried that one of these days, someone is going to go in front of a judge and say that they want to marry a horse. I'm worried that they're going to win. Then we have a society condoning beastiality. It's bad enough that our society condones homosexuality.

You guys may say that that example is unfair and radical, but we need to ask ourselves: "How far does the Constitution go?"

It's pretty f-ing simple. Legal adults should be able to marry whoever they want. No church has a monopoly on the term marriage, and the government does not have the jurisdiction to limit rights inconsistently for religiously motivated reasons alone.

Bestiality and pedophilia are both irrelevant and red herrings. You can't enter into a consensual legal contract with a horse. Full stop.

@Obiwan: I was pretty sure you've said you are a Christian.

@Jack: Freetown Christiana. Still has no government.

@Dexter: The government is NOT us. The government is a separate entity. I think I'll explain my analogy further. Person A is private enterprise, Person B is the government, Person B killing person A represents government monopolies on their services, and the $30 represents taxes. I will give the government taxes for their services once I'm an adult, but the government services in no way require me to obey or support the government.

The Czech has my favored solution to this issue. The term "marriage" is freighted with religious baggage. Lose the term, for everyone, and let people self-define their relationships, so long as they understand the nature of their relationship with the state is secular.

CM: I just did some basic research on Freetown Christiana.

1. Its totally within Copenhagen, thus benefits from the municipal government. It also has a population of less than 900 people. Not quite a city.

2. If it has no government, why was a journalist that attempted to build a hut there was violently threatened. Apparently one needed permission from the local council to do so. They also didn't think it was very amusing when he started to try to sell Coca-Cola and Israeli oranges on the street either.

Sounds like government to me. Just because they're pot smoking hippies doesn't mean that people don't form governments, however small.

Next?

@Conservative Man, in what way exactly do you plan to not obey or support the government? You say you're going to pay taxes... that's obeying and supporting the government in a pretty key way. (Unlike God, the government doesn't expect or require love or fear or attendance at ceremonies and such... pay your taxes and don't break any significant laws and you're probably OK).

I love how the anarchists/minarchists can only come up with examples of really small groups of people that are not truly independent, like Christiana, really short-lived and violent failures, like the Paris Commune, or long-term hell-holes, like Somalia. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see a successful example of anarchy on a large or even medium sized scale... but I'm not holding my breath. Its about as likely to change the world as Free Love and Flower Power.

As discussed, the Paris Commune had an organized government. That was violently suppressed by the army. :P

yes... its not even close to an anarchy - except in its utter failure and ineffectiveness. Also interesting to note how highly that Marx, Lenin, and Mao apparently thought of it. Of course they believed that its failure was in not being brutal enough.

Pfft, I couldn't give a crap about Mao thinks, some of the same with Lenin. Yes, the Paris Commune had an organised government, but one that was bottom-up. The communists and anarchists created it themselves, and let all participate, unlike now where government is mostly to-down.

it didn't exactly pass the test of time, now did it...

Dexter: The ONLY reason I'll pay taxes is because I use government services. Though I would prefer for the government to charge for it's services directly, because with taxes, it can take as much as it wants.

@Conservative Man:

I NEVER, EVER said I was Christian, and in fact I explicitly said I was not only not Christian, but that I disagree and stand in opposition to much of Christian dogma...so yeah, for the record, just take that in--not Christian, not at all, I'm about as Christian as Nietzsche was.

@The_Master_Warrior:

Where do we draw the line?

Simple.

Marriage applies to those human beings who are legally of age and consenting, regardless of race, religion, or gender.

No horse-man marriages.

There, defined, and simply.

Why does every arguement eventually fall down to, "Are you Christian" "Are you in High School" or "Are you high"?

Damn, I would like to be high right now...

I'm pretty sure you are, on Crack and Marijuana at the same time too i suspect.

No, just weed. But unfortunately not at the moment.

lol

+1 killer

Don't look at me, I didn't, for once, throw religion into this...

hahahahaha, killer +1

Hello everyone!! :)

I am just going to interject briefly to explain, once again, that anarchism does NOT, in any way, require a lack of organisation. On the contrary, the effectiveness of anarchist forms of government assumes that humans have both a propensity and a latent ability to work with other people effective.

What all anarchists have in common is that they all wish to see situations where one group of people rule or lord over another group gotten rid of. This would be accomplished by elminating structures of power and empowering the dispossessed.

Ananrchy means 'no rulers'. If you want to make effective arguments about 'anarchists in general', please keep this in mind.

If however, you wish to debate Conservative Man, feel free to skewer him, but please do not take his ideas to be representative of all, most, or even more than a few anarchists.

-----

On another note, I could give you a number of short-lived examples of anarchist organisations, but you are correct in saying that there are extremely few that have had a lengthy existence on any sort of scale. Why? States are extremely effective warmaking machines.

Does this make anarchism (or even minarchism) harder to achieve? Yes. Does this negate the justifications for anarchisms? No.