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.
Liar.
So, my wife and myself are no longer able to call ourselves heterosexuals by decree of you?
Have you notified the Rabbinical council that they can go ahead and close the door now...you are in fact here?
Chidren are protected by consent laws, and their parents are responsible for protecting them. We are discussing the rights of consensual adults here.
The "for the children" argument is usually a tool of the left CJ.
Because of YOUR "objective" reality you mean?
Just because you can't imagine a life without fornicating or oral sex doesn't mean nobody else can.
I'm beginning to favor my "stuck in adolescent development stage" theory.
Shalom.
I'm saying you never would bother, any more than you would call yourself an air-breather because heterosexuality is normal and you don't define yourself by your sex life (or you shouldn't. Based on other posts you've made - but I digress.)
The only reason you would ever call yourself an air breather is if someone came up to you and said, "I breathe water, you?" Until then you would never think to define yourself by the fact that you breathe air.
But queers start by defining themselves based on their "sexual orientation." That's who they are. It's not a side note.
I will say this, there could be queers for whom sex isn't that important. If there are, I have no idea they're queer, which is exactly the way I want it.
Shalom.
There's only one objective reality. The fact that this weak-kneed argument is the best you have demonstrates that you know I'm right. Otherwise you'd put forth arguments as to why you don't believe it's reality.
Shalom.
By the way, check out what the Bible says about blood transfusions.
And yours is not it.
The objective reality here is that we live under the governance of a secular government, and a system created by some people who took great pains to, in spite of their strong beliefs, impose obstacles on religious zealots from duplicating the work of tbe Taliban in this country.
The latter of course being you.
Your continued need to persecute those whose behavior you do not agree with, or find personally offensive, will only strenghten their arguments in the eyes of the law; sodomites and queers have no greater ally than yourself, Kevin and the rest.
You wish laws enacted that you yourself admit to being unenforceable, and whose sole purpose is impossing your moral judgement on their behavior.
Congratulations...queers applaud you efforts, and are extremely grateful for the assistance you continue to provide them in the advancement of their agenda.
LOL!!!
Just because I accept the reality that people of all ages, and all walks of life engage in both, regularly and with great enjoyment, means that I base my opinions not in the vacuum of theoretical assumptions, but in real life.
Take a poll, if people tell the truth...unlike Kevin...you'll find my argument is backed by reality, while yours is not.
Which would you prefer?
One note, Webster's online indicates that the first instance of the verb "sodomize" ocurred in the mid 1800's
Main Entry: sod·om·ize
Pronunciation: -"mIz
Function: transitive verb
Inflected Form(s): -ized; -iz·ing
Date: 1868
: to perform sodomy on
[Hasty generalization] Statistics? Numbers? How many cases were enforced? Against whom? Keep in mind that sodomy laws are not exclusive to homosexuals. And whether the Bedroom Police are actually kicking in doors or peeping through windows, the laws imply they have the RIGHT to. I challenge that right.
tens of millions of AIDS victims, tens of millions of aborted children, the scourge of other aggressive STDs including anal gonorrhea and hepatitis B, the meltdown of the traditional family, and armies of fatherless young men forming criminal gangs in every major American city.
[Oversimplification, specious causality] Yeah, all these happened because restrictions on sodomy were relaxed. None had ever occurred before. (By the way, how can acts which, by definition, cannot result in pregnancy, create "armies of fatherless young men"?)
The dismantling of the sodomy laws--which had been in place since the founding the Republic--has been a powerful abrasive in the larger erosion of the quality of life in America.
[Specious causality] Utter bilge. While easing or recision of sodomy laws may be a symptom of declining morality, or at least the role of the state in regulating morality, there is no causal relationship between restrictive laws on sodomy and elevated quality of life. For those who enjoy the activity, the quality of life is substantially lessened by its exclusion.
This erosion has resulted, and will continue to result in massive socialism to pay for the self-indulgent, irresponsible excess.
[Slippery slope] What "excess?" Your whole argument rests on the notion that passing laws actually prevents certain activities. Prohibition should have been enough to disprove that. For a law to be effective, it has to have a substantial degree of popular support, something that is lacking in laws forbidding sodomy. So sodomites, as you like to call them, will flourish, laws or not. And whatever the costs are will remain about constant regardless of how many invisible laws are on the books.
At any time before this case became debated in public--at any time in the more than 150-plus years of Texas history--did you or any other Texan ever fear "bedroom police" coming into your bedroom? Absolutely not!
[Unsubstantiated presumption] Maybe you should have. And the fact that the law is at best selectively enforced makes it even more ludicrous, not to mention unconstitutional.
This bogeyman ... will culminate in pro-gay federal hate crime legislation (and entitlements) and gay marriage. You are helping to midwife these abominations into existence.
Too numerous to list] Hardly. You're making a logical leap that is unsupported by anything but conjecture.
Lies and bamboozlery, Luis. Like Clinton, that is all that you sodomy lovers and enablers have in your armory.
[Ad hominem attack] Now comes the name-calling.
The lies are fairly effective though. You've conned otherwise level-headed FReepers such as Iron Jack and sinkspur into supporting the aim-for-the-anus crowd; you've got them cowering in fear of your bogeyman bedroom police.
[Emotional appeal, charged language] Again, your conjecture isn't borne out by the facts. I haven't even read Luis' posts on this thread, with one exception. So if I'm cowering from bogeymen, they're bogeymen of my own creation.
What you preach isn't the gospel of conservatism. It is a decaying, disease-ridden corpse that you fob off as conservatism.
[Ad hominem attack, red herring] Sorry, Kevin, but you don't get to define "conservatism."
For those who would like to find some redeeming value in this jeremiad, I have taken the liberty of listing the author's propaganda technique in bold before my rebuttal. Many of these techniques are also known as logical fallacies, and should prove valuable to people who would refine their debating skills beyond mere inflammatory rhetoric.
It defines an aborrent behavior and describes it as any contact between one person's anal/oral cavities, and another person's genitalia. It qualifies this behavior as being "deviant sexual intercourse", then goes on to condone "deviant sexual intercourse" by heterosexual couples, and makes it a criminal offense by same gender couples.
Seems like Texans are quite fond of sodomy, just not homos.
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