This is a placeholder for a discussion on the sovereignty of individuals and where to draw limits on state power. A central tenet is tort law – collectives (municipalities, counties, states, federations of states) are granted power to regulate behavior of constituents where direct harm (tort) may occur. In the absence of direct harm, collectives have no regulatory authority.
By example, the Religious Right often laments that the institution of marriage is harmed by recognizing same-sex marriages. We take issue with this view from two perspectives. 1) Marriage is not a living thing and cannot suffer harm, therefore collectives (government) lack tort-based regulatory authority. 2) If marriage were a living thing residing in Astoria, Oregon, a reasonable man would be hard pressed to find a viable threat from a same-sex couple residing in Portland, Oregon, to say nothing of a same-sex couple in Portland, Maine and intervening jurisdictions. No direct harm, so no government authority to define the institution. Separation of church and state requires that differences of opinion between religious institutions forces government to remain silent on the issue. It is our view that government has no authority to regulate marriage in any fashion whatsoever, let alone restrict it to heterosexual couples. Where the Religious Right claims that marriage is not inherently a religious issue, one need only find one religion that accepts polygamy or same-sex marriage to nullify their argument.
The Obama administration has set its sights on health care reform, including the requirement that all residents of the United States purchase health care insurance or face fines and imprisonment. In return for a great expansion in the number of insured individuals, the bill would force insurance companies not to consider pre-existing conditions as well as preventing them from charging the elderly more than twice the premiums that they assess young adults. Such legislation oversteps government authority in several ways: 1) Mandating that residents purchase anything is not an enumerated power in the Constitution and doing so is diametrically opposed to the founders intent; 2) Individuals without health insurance don’t remotely threaten the life, liberty, or property of others. Government therefore lacks authority to override individual sovereignty; and 3) Although the federal government has authority to regulate interstate commerce, therefore policies offered by an insurance company incorporated in state A to individuals in state B, it has no such authority with respect to insurance companies selling policies to individuals within the same state.
…