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.
Your propagandistic appeal to universality notwithstanding ("It is obvious to everyone ..."), your premise is absurd on its face. How does marriage in any way constitute a more probable vector for the transmission of genetic defects than intercourse outside of marriage? Or are you so naive as to believe that the latter does not exist?
Furthermore, in your zeal to pursue your absurd line of reasoning, you've defeated your own argument. If indeed marriage is the principal vector for the transmission of genetic defects, that is the most powerful argument AGAINST the institution.
Whatever you do for a living, I hope you do it better than you argue.
Exactly.
Sodomy is really a special kind of mutual assault and battery. That is ALL it is.
How can consensual contact be assault? Now I understand that your zeal is just a vain attempt to mask your ignorance.
But actually your posts here are valuable. They chillingly illustrate the danger of letting people like you make law.
So do you believe homosexuality to be "normal" human behavior?
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.
Well, most states place restriction of marriage of new relations; such laws are probably based on the general correlation between marriage and procreation. It's interesting to note, though, that Wisconsin allows first cousins to marry iff the woman is over 50 years old.
Libertarians are simply conservatives without values or morals.
do you oppose states rights to proscibe conduct, sexual or otherwise?
"Committing what can be seen as a sin against God in gambling"? What the heck kind of church do you belong to? I strikes me you have taken about three steps beyond dementia here!
But, then again, I guess I am just a sinner for enjoying a pull or two at the EVILE slot machines! At least I don't associate with people whose poop doesn't smell...like you!
If that was satire...don't give up your day job!
It's worth noting that many of the founding fathers, including Madison, the primary author, were against a Bill of Rights. They feared that government would interpret it as meaning that only those rights listed were protected.
sinkspur may enjoy unrealitys.
A truth that it is not politically correct to point out.
"You need a Constitutional listing of the Bill of Rights."
I don't think I'm the one in need of a quick lesson on the Constitution and the Bill of Rights here.
"We the people are the government and what powers not given specifically to the Federal are supposed to be given to each state."
Amendment X.
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
It seems that you forgot "we the people" there.
" No the Constitution did not give "privacy" specifically as a right. Judges and lawyers in a court saw "privacy" but it is not a stated right."
It doesn't have to be a stated right, does it? You would know that if you had any sort of knowledge of the Constitution.
Amendment IX.
The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
I retain my right to privacy, and I will fight you, and any level of government that tries to take it from me.
I did notice however, that you refused to directly answer one single question posted. That was all the answer I needed.
"You know that gray world so many who have no morals like to live."
Unable to actually enter into a debate, you decide to begin the personal attacks.
It's not grey, it's black and white and written in our Bill of Rights. Simply because a right is not enumerated in the Constitution, it does not mean that it doesn't exist.
Not at all... Most libertarians tend to be fiscal conservatives and social liberals. Saying they "have no morals or values" is no different than saying "conservatives are simply hate-mongers and NAZIs," which is a statement I've seen more than one leftist make: And it's just as innacurate. Feel free to say that libertarians don't agree with your moral or values. But saying that they have none... Hmmmm... Maybe the leftists are right about the conservatives like you.
Mark
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