Posted on 05/11/2003 7:04:33 AM PDT by RJCogburn
IN AN April 30 essay titled "The Libertarian Question," my fellow National Review Online contributing editor Stanley Kurtz argues that laws against sodomy, adultery and incest should remain on the books largely to protect the institution of heterosexual marriage.
By stigmatizing sexual relations outside that institution, Kurtz believes "the taboo on non-marital and non-reproductive sexuality helps to cement marital unions, and helps prevent acts of adultery that would tear those unions apart."
Kurtz also states that keeping adult incest illegal will reduce the odds of sex between adults and their minor relatives. Anti-pedophilia laws, virtually everyone agrees, should be energetically enforced, whether or not the child molesters and their victims are family members.
But Kurtz overlooks the fact that anti-sodomy laws can throw adults in jail for having consensual sex. Approval or disapproval of homosexual, adulterous or incestuous behavior among those over 18 is not the issue. Americans should remain free to applaud such acts or, conversely, denounce them as mortal sins. The public policy question at hand is whether American adults should or should not be handcuffed and thrown behind bars for copulating with people of the same sex, beyond their own marriages or within their bloodlines.
If this sounds like hyperbole, consider the case of Lawrence and Garner v. Texas, currently before the Supreme Court.
On Sept. 17, 1998, Harris County sheriffs deputies responded to a phony complaint from Roger Nance, a disgruntled neighbor of John Geddes Lawrence, then 55. They entered an unlocked door to Lawrence's eighth-floor Houston apartment looking for an armed gunman. While no such intruder existed, they did discover Lawrence having sex with another man named Tyron Garner, then 31.
"The police dragged them from Mr. Lawrence's home in their underwear," says Brian Chase, a staff attorney with the Dallas office of the Lambda Legal Defense Fund (www.lambdalegal.org) which argued on the gentlemen's behalf before the Supreme Court. "They were put in jail for 24 hours. As a result of their conviction, they would have to register as sex offenders in Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina. If this arrest had taken place in Oklahoma, they could have faced 10 years in prison. It's kind of frightening." Lawrence and Garner were fined $200 each plus $141.25 in court costs.
Ironically, Chase adds by phone, "At the time the Texas penal code was revised in 1972, heterosexual sodomy was removed as a criminal offense, as was bestiality."
Even though some conservatives want government to discourage non-procreative sex, those Houston sheriff's deputies could not have apprehended a husband and wife engaged in non-reproductive oral or anal sex (although married, heterosexual couples still can be prosecuted for the same acts in Alabama, Florida, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Utah and Virginia). And were Lawrence caught naked in bed with a Rottweiler, consenting or otherwise, the sheriffs could not have done more than suggest he pick on someone his own species. However, because Lawrence preferred the company of a willing, adult human being of his same sex, both were shuttled to the hoosegow.
"The point is, this could happen to anyone," Chase says. "This was the result of a malicious prank call made by a neighbor who was later arrested and jailed for 15 days for filing a false report."
As for grownups who lure children into acts of homosexuality, adultery and incest, the perpetrators cannot be imprisoned quickly enough. The moment members of the North American Man-Boy Love Association go beyond discussion of pedophilia to actions in pursuit thereof, someone should call 911 and throw into squad cars the men who seek intimate contact with males under 18. Period.
The libertarian question remains before Stanley Kurtz and the Supreme Court. Should laws against adult homosexuality, adultery and incest potentially place taxpaying Americans over 18 behind bars for such behavior? Priests, ministers, rabbis and other moral leaders may decry these activities. But no matter how much people may frown upon these sexual appetites, consenting American adults should not face incarceration for yielding to such temptations.
Here is the libertarian answer to this burning question: Things deemed distasteful should not always be illegal. This response is one that every freedom-loving American should embrace.
And neither of them has a nexus to the concept of "marriage" and "family"?
How many times has your application to MENSA been refused?
Exactly.
But arguing sodomy on its merits would go nowhere.
Arguing loss of liberty is everyone's hot button issue these days.
I expect race to be introduced here any second by the more intellectually-challenged.
Thank you, President Clinton.
I might.
But that still is not the topic of this thread.
Oh, that's right. I guess I missed the part where everybody who practices "sodomy" is murdering their partner or being murdered. Of course, I am aware that anal sex has a far higher chance of disease, and is far riskier than "regular" sexual intercourse. However, oral sex is also considered to be "sodomy," and my guess is there's a whole lot of that going on, both heterosexual and homosexual. And, when practiced using a condom, it's actually (statisticly) safer than either protected vaginal or anal intercourse.
So, your belief just doesn't hold water. Of course, you are free to believe that "sodomy" is wrong, is an affrong to G-d, or is just "icky!" But that shouldn't make it illegal. Not unless you propose a theocracy.
Mark
That wouldn't have made anyone bat an eye in the nineties...a century ago that is, in the 1890's AKA "The Gay Nineties."
Man, is your magazine of valid arguments empty!
Click...click...click
I don't care who buggers whom; but the language and its proper use does concern me.
Anyone, I'm bored and just felt like tickling someone.
Is the Constitution a listing of all our rights?
Does the Constitution per say, give you the right to shelter, i.e. buy a home?
Does the Constitution grant you the right to self defense?
Does the Constitution "offer" you the right to raise your children as you see fit?
If the right to privacy is non-existent, why are the authorities required to get a Court order to wire tap you, or to open you mail?
If the right to privacy does not exist, then what's wrong with the Patriot Act?
If the right to privacy does not exist, then you would support the placement of mind hidden cameras in public restrooms, and retail store dressing rooms to monitor illegal activity, i.e. shoplifting or deviant sexual behavior?
Texas statutes define this perversion as being contact between one person's anal/oral cavities, and another person's genitalia.
But it makes it ckear that heterosexual contact, or rather, heterosexual "deviant sexual intercourse" is perfectly fine.
Do you agree with the Texas law?
Basically, the sodomy laws were written and passed with an apparent understanding that they would not strictly enforced. There are almost certainly gay bars in Texas and hotels where people who meet in such bars go. If the Republic of Texas really wanted to enforce the sodomy statutes, it's clear it could do a much better job.
That isn't to say the statutes are intended never to be enforced. If two men were to start humping each other on a park bench in broad daylight, few people would have any problem charging them with the sodomy statute.
The issue is, in a sense, one of degree. If a cop is letting people by who are driving 60mph in a 55 zone, that would not interfere with his authority to ticket someone who was doing 70, but would all into question a ticket issued to someone doing 56.
The problem in the extant case is that there's no real sign that the people did anything significantly worse than thousands of other people whom the police could have arrested and caught if they had any interest in doing so. The arrest of these two individuals was due to entirely arbitrary circumstances.
I oppose the enforcement of the law in the extant case not because I support sodomy, but rather because an essential aspect of tyranny is the passage of laws which will be sparsely enforced and widely disobeyed, but which can be enforced at will against anyone the state doesn't like.
But it makes it ckear that heterosexual contact, or rather, heterosexual "deviant sexual intercourse" is perfectly fine.
Do you agree with the Texas law?
First of all, I think there would be great outrage if the state were to try to pass and enforce a ban on heterosexual oral sex, especially since many couples use it as an essential aspect of foreplay.
Secondly, I'm not sure I see any real biological distinction between corresponding types of homosexual and heterosexual sodomy. Homosexual anal sodomy is a very effective method of disease transmission, but I know of no reason heterosexual anal sodomy should be any less so.
Although a ban on anal sex would probably affect homosexual males moreso, and lesbian females far less, than heterosexual people, I think such a ban would probably be more justifiable than a ban on all forms of homosexual sodomy which ignored all forms of heterosexual sodomy. Of course, maybe there are some straight couples who really like anal sex, but to my mind restrictions should be based on the specific activity rather than the sex of the participants.
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