Writes Toby J. Clarkson, Sr.:

There was a Saturday morning t.v. show when I was a kid in the late 70’s called Wonderbug about the adventures of 3 teenagers and an anthropomorphic beat-up, old dune-buggy named SCHLEP that would transform into the Wonderful Wonderbug, a magical supercar that would come to the rescue for the show’s protagonists whenever they got into trouble.  In any given episode, as one of the show’s signature shticks, the female lead, Susan, would come up with an idea to solve whatever dilemma they were facing, and said idea would be summarily rejected by the other two male leads; however, in the very next breath, the “brainy” male lead, Barry, would suggest as his own the very same idea that Susan had just come up with immediate and enthusiastic approval from the other male lead, C.C.—this all to the chagrin of Susan.

Well…

Several months ago, we were having what you might imagine was a typical, “What’s the world coming to?/Woe is me!/We’ve got to take our country back!/What’s become of ‘traditional values'” type of conversation in my conservative Lutheran church’s Sunday-School class regarding Governor Lynch’s having signed into law the legislation legalizing same-sex marriage here in New Hampshire.  After several minutes of this line of discussion, my wife and I piped in with the heretofore unconsidered thought that instead of seeking to overturn this one particular piece of legislation, we ought to instead question at the outset whether the state should have a role at any level in the religious institution of marriage and that perhaps we should instead see governmental licensing of marriage of any kind as an inherently bad idea. (These types of arguments can be compelling to Lutherans especially considering Martin Luther’s Doctrine of the Two Kingdoms.)

Encouragingly enough, this line of thought seemed to spur on further discussion in several small groups after the class; in particular, I had a conversation with the chairman of the church’s Board of Elders who had been particularly adamant in the early part of the class with the “We ought to kick the bums outta office and get that law overturned” kind of thinking and had certainly never questioned the underlying assumptions of the state’s role in having to give its approval to a couple wishing to be married.  He never fully signed off on my ideas (E.g., he still defended the notion of having to get state permission and pay the state a fee to get married based on one of the state’s alleged grounds of preventing the spread of venereal diseases. “And what a success that’s been!” I pointed out to him. He laughed—as saying that lame notion out loud immediately made it sound as absurd as it is), but I could see his wheels turning.

Then, just this past week, after having been invited to be an elder at our church (if Laurence Vance knew me, he’d be proud of this fact), I attended my first Board of Elders meeting with that very same elder still serving as chairman.  Somehow the same-sex marriage issue came up again at the meeting with several elders groaning about the country’s moral failings, etc., just like in that earlier Sunday School class; well lo and behold, the chairman spoke up saying that he had recently shared an idea that he had come up with on this issue with a co-worker who was also upset about same-sex marriage in New Hampshire.  His idea was that churches, NOT the state, should be in charge of marriage, having to get licensed by/get permission from/pay a fee to the state to get married was absurd on its face, and that governments should have no role in the matter to begin with (adding that at best they could recognize secular civil unions)—he even reported that this notion was compelling to the co-worker he shared this idea with.

If there had been a video camera focused on me to capture my reaction and feeling as if this guy had done an end run on me on my idea, I would have looked with frustration into the camera, shrugged my shoulders, and shook my head, just like Susan on Wonderbug used to do when the others would take credit for her thoughts.  And to make matters worse (for me and my ego that is), the others in the room seemed to really like this guy’s thought—it just seemed to make a lot of sense to the others in the room (and you could see all of their wheels turning too).

But of course, I have to credit many others, including LRC and all of the greats associated with you for my anti-state, anti-war, pro-market ways of thinking; and it’s quite likely that I directly stole the thought from one of your columnists or blog entries to begin with!

And besides, the real victory in the whole situation was the fact that in some small way, the criminal fog known as “the state” has lost its grip on one of our fellow men.  Hooray!

The Best of Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.