Do you know WHY you support the issues you support?

I was listening to some discussion of Supreme Court Justice Stephens and his approach to the law and it got me thinking (what else is new?). According to the commentator, Justice Stephens is a supporter of abortion rights, but not because of the “Right to Privacy” that was in the original Roe v Wade opinion. A right to privacy means that the government should not pay attention to what you are doing in private. You could make the same case with the freedom from unreasonable search and seizure. Law enforcement can’t come in to your home or car (or body) without probable cause of a crime. But Justice Stephens justifies abortion rights using the Right to Liberty. The government should not get involved in your activities unless you are infringing on the rights of others. Since the fetus is not a person with rights, abortion does not infringe on the rights of anyone and so the government would need a very significant reason to prohibit it.

In the case of abortion rights, both philosophies support the rights. But other domains are different. Take same-sex marriage. A Right to Liberty would support same-sex marriage because it does not infringe on the rights of others. Some say that just the existence of these unions hurts the institution of marriage, but there is no substantial evidence of that that I have seen. But the Right to Privacy says nothing about same-sex marriage. Marriage is a public contract. It is done before witnesses. It comes with legal benefits and responsibilities. So if you support same sex marriage, you must believe in the right to liberty rather than privacy (of course you can believe in both if you want).

So here is what I was wondering. Take a third domain: single payer health care. To make this work, we would have to tax those with higher incomes to cover a substantial amount of the health care costs of those with lower incomes. In general, progressive income taxes can be justified in a variety of ways. Richer individuals benefit more from the trappings of society, so they should pay more for it. They have more to lose in an armed conflict, so they pay more for national defense. And so on. But with a single payer health care system, this would not be the case. Everyone would be eligible for the same care and the same medical benefits.

So we would be infringing on the rights of the more wealthy to pay for the care of the less wealthy. This goes against the basic right to liberty. That is OK, if you can justify it with a different right that you believe in and believe that it is a stronger argument here than liberty is. But if you support same sex marriage, it means that a single payer health care system violates a right that you believe in. So if you want to support both of these issues, you need to think of a different right that supports single payer but doesn’t contradict your other beliefs.

Do you have one? I know many liberal/progressive individuals who support same sex marriage and single payer. But most of them I think are just making instinctive decisions about how they would like things to be. But when one issue that you support contradicts another issue that you support, either you are being hypocritical or you have a third belief that resolves the issue. I am not calling anyone a hypocrite, I am encouraging you to think about your beliefs and figure out how you resolve the conflict. Do you think it is OK to infringe on the rights of the wealthy, but not homosexuals? That doesn’t seem right (and what about homosexual rich people)? If you can’t think of anything, then . . . .