Posted on 05/11/2003 7:04:33 AM PDT by RJCogburn
Let me restate: laws regarding incest have no impact on marriage, since incestuous relationships can -- and do -- take place without regard for that institution. They are neither constrained nor promoted by the presence or absence of marriage. Any "social" benefit that derives from those laws stems from the fact that preventing incest lessesn the transmission of undesirable genetic defects across generations.
Obviously laws forbidding adultery go to promote marriage. I admitted as much in my original post.
While I've never been rejected from MENSA, it's obvious you flunked your Dale Carnegie course. On the other hand, you could franchise your unique ability to be a jerk.
My dictionary defines "specious" as "superficially logical but fundamentally flawed." I stand by my usage.
That's the point I've been trying to make. The cost of such intrusive laws is high in terms of individual liberty, while the benefit to society of laws regulating sodomy is dubious. The state cannot prove a compelling public interest in regulating its citizens' sexual activities, where such regulation is accompanied by such a direct threat to freedom, are so selectively enforced, and are inherently antagonistic to our Fourth Amendment rights.
If sexual "deviancy" offends God, then let its practicioners take it up with Him. I want no part of judging peoples' bedroom antics, lest they be empowered to judge mine.
A thinking man has to wonder why God wasted His time -- since the men of Sodom were all so obviously homosexual, He could've just waited 50 years or so and the city would be dead already.
In the final analysis, there's isn't a dime's worth of difference between a libertarian and an anarchist.
What piffle. What a gold-plated moronic statement. The disease and early deaths left in the wake of sodomy-vectored AIDS alone exceeds that of World War I. Worl War I was pleny expensive. To pretend that no similar cost has attended the rampant sexual perversion of sodomy requires a special kind of ignorance.
Al laws are based in morality. Did someone take your good sense out, seal it up in a mayonnaise jar, and bury it in Harry Browne's cellar??
Anti-sodomy laws are not enforced. So how are they going to avert the cost you allude to?
AIDS, anal gonorrhea, hepatitis B . . . and don't forget to add up all the taxpayer-related costs.
You tolerate it at great expense.
I would argue natural law, but the only argument that soul-dead economic libertarian-conservatives even understand is the law of the bottom line.
Such laws cannot be practically enforced within the confines of the home, and that's perfectly fine. There are many, many laws that cannot be effecvely enforced within the home. Mutual assault and battery is by far the most frequently committed crime in the home that cannot be effectively prosecuted.
BTW, "consensual" sodomy (in the home, out of it, . . . who cares where?) by an AIDS carrier can result in a death more painful and hideous than any torture devised by man. To a lesser extent this is also true of anal gonnorhea and hepatitis B. Of course, now that we spend more taxpayer money on AIDS research than the other top three diseases combined, we've been able find, fund, and distribute a cocktail of drugs enables sodomizers to again indulge their perversion relatively freely--at taxpayer expense, of course.
To do away with such laws wholesale by fightening people with threat of bogeyman "bedroom police" which have never existed and never will exist, is disingenuous at best. It's a bald-faced lie at worst.
When we eliminate the laws wholesale in the idiot belief that we must be open-minded and tolerant, the only message we send (or that is heard) is "Party on ,dude! Someone else will clean up you mess later for you!"
What WOULD happen is that police would be empowered to kick in peoples' bedroom doors and haul them off to the jug because they were engaged in a sexual activity as old as Man.
The cost is obvious; the benefit dubious.
In addtion, your argument is grounded in the notion that socity has the right to regulate any activity that may adversely affect the collective wellbeing. Where does THAT power end? If the cops can spy on my bedroom, can't they also spy on my kitchen? My garage? My bathroom? Do you really want to live in such a world?
By the way, you might try making your point with a little less vitriol and a little more substance.
Depends on how broadly you define "morality." A lot of laws are simply utilitarian. There is an obvious direct benefit. Not all laws reflect notions of "good" and "bad," or even "right" and "wrong."
Did someone take your good sense out, seal it up in a mayonnaise jar, and bury it in Harry Browne's cellar??
Your pedantic assertion does not constitute a valid argument, nor does your childish name-calling. In fact, they barely constitute human communication.
Sodomy is really a special kind of mutual assault and battery. That is ALL it is.
As they are in mine, and they should be. I don't want to even see heterosexuals engaged in flagrante in public places, and I believe the laws against public lewdness cover that.
Of course, you recognize that with this statement:
Such laws cannot be practically enforced within the confines of the home, and that's perfectly fine.
That's all I've been saying for the past two weeks, except that such laws have no practical effect, and could be repealed, as they have been in over 20 states, with no detrimental effects whatsoever.
Should the fact that the state makes no effort to pursue such acts in people's homes be a basis for a laches defense in cases like the current "Texas sodomy case"?
Still tapdancing around the main point I see.
Completing the above paragraph (as well as quoting the original in its entirety; an innocent ommission, I'm sure) would highlight the nonsensical nature of what prompted my original response.
It is obvious to everyone that the most likely means of transmitting those genetic defects is through marriage, a reality you attempted to dismiss out of hand.
I don't think so.
What about my liberty to control all aspects of your life?
Don't you understand that I have a God given right to control what you do in the privacy of your bedroom?
Where have you been? I clearly have the power to control what foods you eat, what you smoke and what drugs you may take. I have the right to force you to wear seat belts in your car and helmets on you motorcycle. I have the right to decide that you can not and must not own firearms. I have the right take away as much of your money as I need to build ballparks or whatever. I have the right to not allow women to control their reproductive functions from conception to delivery.
How dare you try to take away my inalianable right to control you. You must be a right-wing-communist-religous-fundamentalist-conservative ACLU member.
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