Marriage licenses should not be granted to gay couples nor to straight couples. Marriages should be private consensual agreements between any two competent, consenting adults. Or three or more, for that matter. Governments should not be involved: no licenses, no special privileges, and no special obligations for married couples.

However, the fact that an action is legitimate and non-coercive does not mean any term can be used to describe it. Gay couples should not call their agreements “marriage” because that term is taken. For centuries, it has stood for heterosexual unions in almost all cultures. Marriage might be called a “trade mark.”

Kim Davis is a hero. She is the county clerk in Kentucky who was jailed for contempt because she refused to issue marriage licenses to gay couples.

She bases her stand on her religious beliefs, but that’s not why she is a hero. If she were acting on secular philosophical grounds, her case would be just as strong. She is a hero for standing up to a central government that is smothering civil society, reaching its tentacles into all areas of life and strangling spontaneous freely evolved social order.

Of course, she is guilty of contempt. That’s only right, because the process that has led to her imprisonment is in fact contemptible. She is following a course of civil disobedience that I must admire, and I wish her well.