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.
Easy question.
From MY perspective, morality is objective and defined scripturally. And we all fall short of the ideal.
Don't steal (not 'don't get caught'); don't murder; don't lie about others; don't get drunk (NOT 'dont't drink'); refrain from excess, keep to moderation in eating, drinking, etc.
The hardest part of freedom for most people seems to be allowing other people to do things that may be disgusting but that have no actual affect on them. How does any kind of sex between two consenting adults harm you? You might have all kinds of wierd sex going on right next door, but as long as they keep it private, you never know. And if you never know, that pretty much eliminates the idea that you are being harmed or wronged by their sex.
I think that gambling money is immoral, I don't do it, and the government should NEVER do it. But You will never find me saying that the the government should stop poker parties on private homes or clubs. Public gambling is another issue, as is public drinking.
Not by those who adocate libertarianism. It is unbalanced by those who hate it and misrepresent it. It is also unbalanced by the wackos who simply assume the label because they equate liberty with license.
Just go to the basic premises of not defrauding another or not initiating force or coersion against another. At that point, laws are in effect to define unacceptable behavior in those realms, since far too many cannot restrain themselves, and to provide a mechanism for punishment.
Contrary to what is represented, libertariansim works only for those responsible, mature and self disciplined enough not to harm others and to respect that others may do things that we don't like.
Just beacuse I don't gamble money doesn't mean I feel compelled to stop you from doing it even though you may throw away your life savings, may jeopardize your home and family and entire way of life. If, as a concerned friend, I see you doing anything that is harming you, I have an obligation to warn you, but no obligation or power to take away by force the free will that God Himself gave to you.
What is your definition of injured? The family is being torn apart by the agendas of the "hedonists". The so-called "blue laws" of each state, gave that state (the society within) the right to protect itself from what it saw as harmful to the overall community. Sodomy is not JUST an abomination to God. It is so unnatural as to affect the society as a whole. You named a few consequences of "gay" activity. I think you could expand this very easily and quickly see how public these so-called personal sins really are!
To a certain extent.
extra-marital sex,
Yes
group sex [etc.]
Yes
or anything above and beyond sex for the strict purpose of reproduction?
No - anything beyond sex for the strict purpose of creating a bond between a man and a woman for a lifetime. Of course, the concept of "criminalizing" needs some work, but your real question is do I believe society has a vested interest in the proper use and misuse of sex - similar to society's vested interest in the proper use and misuse of pharmaceuticals.
Who gest to define "sexual license",
I don't think anyone "defines" morality. I think we discover it. And I notice that you have completely ignored the issue of the millennia of historical precedent.
and last but not least, how will offending sexual activity be policed?
The same way it always has been - advertise and pay.
Or, don't ask - don't tell.
To emphasize a point you have not yet addressed (or are ignoring), prostitution has been illegal for as long as I have been alive. Yet I have never worried about an officer breaking in and asking me if the woman I was with was a prostitue. Isn't it odd that we have this sex-related crime, and yet it hasn't exploded into a bedroom police? How do you account for that?
Shalom.
It's such an odd question because it has no basis in the discussion at hand.
What two consenting adults (or even non-consenting) do in private is no harm to me whatsoever. And if queers had agreed to keep their sexual aberration to themselves there would be no discussion of the issue.
When they ask society for its blessing on their sexual aberration, and receive it, that degrades the society and every individual within it.
This is a public policy discussion about people's very public declarations about what kind of sex they like.
Shalom.
Of course not. There are all sorts of people who are denied their pursuit of happiness all the time. Of course there are reasonable and unreasonable pursuits of happiness. The idea that people might desire unreasonable pursuits probably never occurred to Jefferson or he might have qualified the phrase.
For example, I don't like cats. I might find it extremely pleasurable to spend my evenings hunting all the felines in my general area. Should I be allowed unqualified pursuit of that happiness?
I suspect (although I doubt you would admit it) that you consider the pursuit of sexual gratification an extremely important part of your life, one which would cause you great dispair to forgo. Unless you are an adolescent such an attitude is a problem. Sex is one aspect of your personality and sexual activity is one part of your life. One of the biggest evidences that queers have a mental illness is they actually define who they are by the sex they like to have. "Normal" people don't do this. In fact, the only time anyone would ever declare themselves to be heterosexual is in response to a challenge that they might be queer.
Shalom.
That is the definition that I say is unbalanced.
Shalom.
I thought not, considering the title of the thread. However, I may have misjudged your position.
I don't think that sex lives have any place in public policy. I'm not even in favor of sex ed outside of biology classes, let alone resrtrooms for his, hers, its, ustabees, wannabees, or undecideds.
What about the rest? Why aren't they against the law?
You missed my point. We have laws against prostitution. Yet we don't have bedroom police breaking into all sorts of bedrooms at all hours trying to ascertain if people are engaged in prostitution. Where does the idea come from that a law against buggery would create such bedroom police?
Shalom.
I'll put that strawman right back at you. Is that what they are asking for?
Shalom.
OK, or illegal? If you go down that road, I have a few instructions for you to follow from now on.
"Do what you want to, so long as it doesn't [apparently] hurt anyone [else] [immediately]."
Maybe you should keep to sex with your spouse only and you wouldn't have to worry about any chance of catching a disease.
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