On November 16, the Respect for Marriage Act achieved 62 votes for “cloture” in the US Senate, meaning that it will proceed to floor debate and likely — after reconciliation with the House version, which passed in July — become law.

That’s a good thing, but let’s not make it more than it is. The long title of the bill reveals its true purpose:  “A bill to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act and ensure respect for State regulation of marriage, and for other purposes.”

The bill has two core provisions.

First, it applies the US Constitution’s Full Faith and Credit clause to “marriage between two individuals.” If two people — ONLY two people — get married in Massachusetts then move to Texas, Texas has to recognize them as married.

Second, it requires the federal government to recognize a marriage “if that individual’s marriage is valid in the State where the marriage was entered into.”

Both provisions are all well and good, but “respect for state regulation of marriage” isn’t the same thing as “respect for marriage.”

Actual respect for marriage would involve getting both federal and state governments completely out of the business of deciding who can be, or is, married.  Not just “on the basis of the sex, race, ethnicity, or national origin of those individuals,” but completely.

Marriage is one or both of two things: A personal commitment (often, but not always, with religious implications) and/or a contract.

The personal commitment side is not and never has been any of government’s business.

As to the contract side, if there’s any role for government at all, it’s in adjudicating disputes between the contract’s parties with respect to the contract’s terms — and the number of parties to that  contract is irrelevant to that governmental role.

If I get in a car, turn the key, and start moving down the road, am I driving? Yes, I am — even if I don’t have a license from the government to drive.

Likewise, if I get married, I’m married whether or not I have a license from the government to be. I’ve been married for 22 years. No government license, and no need for one. It just so happens that I’m married to one other person rather than, say, five other people, but in the latter case I’d still be married, whether government “recognized” that or not.

The only relevant questions, where government is concerned,  surround whether the parties to a contract consented (and were competent to consent) to and complied with its terms.

If truth in advertising laws applied to Congress, the “Respect for Marriage Act” would be called the “Respect for Continued, Slightly Less, Government Meddling in Marriage Act.”

Good start. But let’s take this all the way.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

As cryptocurrency exchange FTX falls into bankruptcy and its principals seem likely to face various criminal charges over the activities leading to that bankruptcy, it’s time for another round of crowing from opponents (and would-be regulators) of cryptocurrency. Which means it’s time for another round of pointing out where those opponents and would-be regulators are all wet.

It’s too early in the day to even try to untangle what happened with FTX, but what SEEMS to have happened is a “Ponzi scheme.” That is, older investors in FTX and related enterprises such as trading firm Alameda Research seem to have been paid supposed “profits” from incoming investment revenues while the other money all went … well, somewhere.

Lots of money went to lobbyists to game government regulatory efforts. Lots of money went to Democratic and Republican campaigns and politicians. Lots of money went to expensive homes in the Bahamas. And so on and so forth. Maybe all that will come out in the wash. None of it looks very good.

And, believe it or not, none of it has anything whatsoever to do with cryptocurrency — Bitcoin, Ether, etc. — as such.

Yes, the allure of cryptocurrency was used to attract investors and customers.

Yes, cryptocurrency was among the media of exchange used in the alleged scams.

Question 1: How many scams throughout history have been perpetrated using the allure of dollars and using dollars as the medium of exchange?

Question 2: How many times has the dollar itself been blamed for, and tanked in value because of, those scams?

Remember the sub-prime mortgage crisis of 2007? How about the Savings & Loan crisis of the 1980s-90s? Bernie Madoff? Enron?

A lot of victims have lost a lot of money in a lot of scams.

We rightly blame the scammers for scamming their victims.

If we ARE the victims, we may blame ourselves for getting tricked into doing something stupid.

We also rightly blame government regulators, usually for the wrong reasons. Every time regulation fails to nip a scam in the bud, we’re told that more regulation will solve the problem — until the next time, when the answer is, once again, more regulation.

But we usually don’t blame the money, even when we should.

The Federal Reserve has been scamming you for more than 100 years by inflating/debasing government-issued money at will. That dollar bill in your pocket buys about 1/28th of what it would have bought in 1914.

Bitcoins, on the other hand, are produced algorithmically  at a fixed rate, and once a maximum number (21 million)  have been “mined,” there won’t be any more. That doesn’t mean your Bitcoin will increase or decrease in value, but if it does it won’t be because a government board has the power to magically create more.

The FTX scandal did hit cryptocurrency prices, and maybe it should have. The hit is a market signal to all of us. Message delivered, if we’ll listen: When you hand your money over to shady hucksters on the promise of unrealistic profits, bad things happen.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

The day after every midterm congressional election, conventional wisdom turns to “the presidential campaign starts today.”

In reality, the 2024 presidential campaign has been simmering for quite some time already, with plausible contenders out campaigning for co-partisans, giving “policy speeches” in Iowa and New Hampshire, and trying to raise their national profiles.

I could even make a case that US president Joe Biden has been continuously running for president for 50 years now, and Donald Trump (who, as I write this, is expected to announce for 2024 any minute) for nearly 25.

Biden didn’t formally throw his hat in the Democratic Party’s nomination ring until 1988, but he clearly had the gleam in his eye and was laying the groundwork by the time he entered the Senate in 1973.

Trump “explored” seeking the Reform Party’s 2000 presidential nomination, but dropped out when he realized Pat Buchanan would easily best him … and spent the next 15 years trying to turn himself into Pat Buchanan 2.0 before going all-in.

California governor Gavin Newsom and Florida governor Ron DeSantis are clearly ramping up and watching for an opening to jump in if Biden or Trump retire from the field or look beatable.

And other, darker horses have their eye on the 2028/2032 ball while holding out hope for earlier fumbles they might recover and run into the Oval Office end zone.

Exhausting, isn’t it?

It’s always been this way, but it didn’t used to be this way.

That is, up-and-coming politicians have always seen the presidency in their futures … but until the 20th century they mostly didn’t “campaign” for it in the way they do today.

At one time, prospective presidents denied interest, “reluctantly accepted” their parties’ nominations, and let their supporters do the fighting for them in the nation’s newspapers and debate halls.

In 1896, Democratic nominee William Jennings Bryan (one of the first “modern” campaigners) barnstormed around the country by train, delivering more than 600 stump speeches, while Republican nominee William McKinley ran a “front porch” campaign from home, addressing hundreds of thousands of supporters at his house. McKinley won.

These days, we spend two solid years out of every four listening to (or trying to tune out) a herd of hucksters telling us why they or the person they support should be elected president. And it’s always — always! — “the most important election in history.”

And the tuning out gets more and more difficult. You can’t turn on the TV or radio without a dose of Presidential Election Theater. The roadways are awash with signs and bumper stickers. Email inboxes overflow with “send me/us $3 to beat [insert opponent here].”

Why? Because we reward that behavior with our money, our votes, and most of all with our attention.

Maybe we should start punishing it instead, by sending campaign emails to spam and changing the channel when Presidential Election Theater comes on.

If we stop treating every election like it really is “the most important election in history,” maybe we’ll get better candidates, with better ideas, more calmly and persuasively stated.

But I doubt it.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY