What is immature about the notion that government involvement in private relationships should be as limited as possible?
You confuse immorality and illegality. Libertarians do not say that there should be no general moral rules. Rather, they say that government's power to enforce morality only extends to the previously mentioned person/property arena. That does not mean that people cannot shun or shame those who are immoral. It just means government cannot throw you in jail for your immorality.
Thank you for demonstrating that your idea of "conservatism" would include the right of a sadist husband to beat to death his "consenting" masochistic wife.
I didn't realize we were talking about murder in the S&M example. In that case, we can go back to my suicide example: unless you can show me that the consent to be murdered was given rationally and without coercion and that the woman did not suffer from some form of mental disorder that prevents her from giving willing consent, the government can step in and prevent/punish such a killing.
Conservatism includes the right of citizens to utilize the state to enforce traditional sexual morality in many cases.
There are some CINO's who love the government as much as liberals. Unlike people like Ronald Reagan, they do not want to roll back big government, they simply want big government to do their bidding.
If the state ever wants to ban my perfectly conventional sexual expressions, I will not be alone in remembering and exercising the real purpose for which God created the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.
And yet, you advocate giving the government the power to ban the consensual sexual practices of other adults. You really don't see the rational disconnect there?
In fact, it is the position of Nanny Statists that is immature. Mature people recognize that sometimes they just have to put up with being annoyed if they cannot show legitimate cause why the annoyance rises to the level of a violation of their rights.
I had an uncle who contracted tuberculosis in the South Pacific during World War II. He spent two years in required quarantine at Fort Devens, Massachusetts knitting afghans to while away the time and never expressed resentment even once through his death last year at having been quarantined. He understood that his desire to live normally in society did not trump the right of others to live free of TB. It is only in the case of the "politically correct" HIV/AIDS virus that priority is placed on the "right" of the diseased to infect others. TB was curable. Thus far, HIV/AIDS is not.
"As limited as possible" is NOT a term of legal art. It is a weasel phrase to place the default position on the right to practice of immorality at the expense of the general public.
If something is NOT immoral. why on earth would that something be prohibited as a matter of criminal law. We very much need a return to the notion that crimes ought to be limited to malum in se, acts evil in and of themselves: rape, murder, manslaughter, robbery, theft, sexual acts that are against the natural law, etc., rather than malum prohibitum, evil ONLY because prohibited: speeding, "hate" crimes which are actually thought crimes (assault is evil in itself but no more evil just because the assailant's thoughts are poliically incorrect), owning and possessing and carrying a firearm in conformance to the RTKBA but in violation of statutes passed by liberal legislatures in defiance of the constitution.
I acknowledged that libertarians favor a few general moral laws. Their list is grossly insufficient. So is shunning and shaming which is the classic libertarian solution to everything. As Ludwig von Mises shouted to Ayn Rand at his 75th brirthday party: "So you are the silly woman who believes that you may have liberty without God!!!!"
Insisting on the morality of natural law is not a moral disconnect. One need not defend the sexual relation between man and household pet or between Catherine the Great and the soldier of the evening (or worse) or between lavender and lavender of whatever sexual equipment in order to defend the sexual relationship between one husband and one wife in a marriage inclusive only of the two of them. Indeed, the moral connection between prohibiting and punishing all but the last of these while upholding the last of these would seem obvious to the moral at all times and more obvious to the immoral in better times than our own.
Your arena of permissible governmental prohibition or regulation seems to be that devised by libertarian theorists and not by conservatives. That is my primary point. There is some room for libertarianism among conservatives as demonstrated by the late Frank Meyer's In Defense of Freedom but note that Meyer, raised as an atheist, and an anxious agnostic for much of his later life, converted to Roman Catholicism and was baptized on his deathbed. Conservatism itself need not yield its very name to those who seek to establish a community of a godless form of capitalism (a la Rand) coupled with a laissez faire attitude toward sexual abominations.
If the name libertarianism has not gotten very far in the election of public officials, that does not justify the pose that conservatism is somehow exclusively libertarian as to matters of personal morality.
Should we regulate "consensual" sado-masochistic "marital" relationships by requiring of the couple that they take lessons on how far they may go safely in pursuit of the desired injuries? On the actual definitions of terms in the contract that may produce the injuries? On the attitude of the potentially deceased as to punishment in the event that things go so awry as to convert a "consenting" but not suicidal party of the second part into the corpse of the second part through negligence?
I remember that Ronald Reagan opposed the Briggs Amendment in California which would have denied public employment to lavenders. I also remember that he vigorously special rights schemes for lavenders as well. I remember that early in his governorship, Ronald Reagan signed into law the most permissive abortion legislation in the nation to that time and that a mere two years later, realizing his tragic mistake, he was personally, as governor, walking petitions door-to-door for an initiative seeking repeal of that permissive abortion law. Ronaldus Maximus, as president, was notable for many things. Shrinking government or even slowing its growth significantly was not high on his agenda much less on his significant list of accomplishments.
You may be talking about LINOs but you are not talking about CINOs. I do not care for big government that sticks Planned Barrenhood's nose into the education of children in government schools. Heck, I do not support a government big enough to maintain government schools. The use of "big government" in the context of your argument is misleading. It does not take vast bureaucracies to investigate, prosecute and convict perpetrators of gross immoralities. Further, whatever SCOTUS may imagine, such enforcement is quite constitutional unlike most functions of government.
What is immature about government that abandons moral responsibility is that it subsidizes through inaction the attitude that people are entitled to do as they please, regardless of consequences so long as it is in the area of sex and drugs.