Damn straight, you'd be on your own (but you'd come to cherish it)

I recently threw a wrench into family relations.  I sent my sister-in-law a private Facebook message, on the assumption that she had her head on straight, asking what could be done to persuade her daughter, who is one of those who, at this late date still outspokenly gushes over the Most Equal Comrade, to rethink her views before election day.  The response was indignant in tone.  She said her whole family embraced the pro-MEC view.  She asked how I "could support a candidate who is against gay rights."  We have to assume she means Romney.  I responded, "You have no idea how sad and horrified I am" and have left it at that.

The continued exchange I have run through my mind since then, though, goes something like this:

The place of homosexuality in our society is not even one of the top thirty most pressing issues in our nation at present.  Still, since it's the subject at hand, I do have a question: What, pray tell, is a "gay right?"  We know that all American citizens, and by inference, per the Declaration of Independence, all human beings, do have certain rights.  This is true for people of any demographic group.  Is there some special kind of "right" above and beyond these that homosexual people have?

At which point, the response would probably be something along the lines of  "They are denied the right to get married in most states."

Um, no, they're not.  It's just that homosexual people aren't interested in exercising that right, as it entails bonding with someome of the opposite gender.

The exchange might then go to the matter of homosexual couples not getting the same benefits packages from their workplaces.

What that presents is a compelling argument for decoupling health insurance and retirement programs from employment.  Just pay people a salary or wage and let them see to their own health care and provisions for their sunset years.

At which point a likely rejoinder would be, "Well, benefits packages have become so entrenched in our society that it would be prohibitively difficult at this point to change that expectation."

Bingo.  Now we get to the heart of the matter.  That's what it all comes down to.  The real war we conservatives have been waging for a century is against entrenched assumptions.

Government is not here to provide a bulwark against risk, against change, or against the thoughts of one's fellow human beings, be they fleeting opinions or deeply held values.

The United States government was created to protect your individual sovereignty, period.  What you do with that sovereignty is up to you.

That's the real reason Freedom-Haters find our core principles unacceptably scary.