"In a free republic, the well-being of children is everyone's responsibility."---Cultural Jihad
What page is that from CJ?
And you call me a Liberal?
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.
Bias is not made more acceptable -- or constitutional -- by being universal. If this law did not single out homosexuals, it could be considered constitutional. But in creating an unequal class of offenders, it creates an inequity under the law, which is specifically forbidden under the Fourteenth Amendment.
Use the words that I used, not the ones I did not. You said that you thought I was a more level headed individual, by the same token, I thought you were more honest than to put words in my mouth.
The right of children to their own innocence exists in that place where the right of privacy exists. The children's parents, not Hillary Clinton's (or your) global village, are responsible to defend and protect that innocence until such an age as they are believed to be adult enough to be responsible for their own decisions.
"...but adults have a right to pollute the culture with their perversions."
Individuals have rights, cultures do not. If that were the case, the culture that supported slavery, Jim Crow, and no rights for women would still exist today.
"If children are walking outside and are exposed to it, then it's all the fault of the parents, apparently."
All acts of public indecency are illegal, so I'm not sure what you're talking about...other than raising boogey men, and propping them up with straw men. I will say that living and working in South Florida, I have yet to ever see what I would consider some sort of activity by obviously homosexual couples (including two sets of neighbors) that would even hint at their sexual orientation in the presence of my children. I wish I could say the same for the teenaged couples that attend the movies when I take my kids.
"Your moral-liberal argument tries to excuse and laud the adult-centric sewer of the Democratic/Socialist/Communist/Greens/Libertarian Party."
You seem to be all about labeling people who do not agree with you...what's that all about?
My argument is real simple.
I don't want the government to spend its time and energy policing who is buggering who behind closed doors. I don't care who buggers who.
I want my government to do what it is supposed to do, and the Church to do what IT is supposed to do. I don't want the roles blurred, nor do I want lines crossed.
I believe that weak laws lead to bigger problems that those which they seek to address...example the Texas anti-homosexual law.
The end result of Texas passing a bad law, has created the very real possibility of having the SCOTUS setting a precedent that would define homosexuals as a protected class of citizens, and laws that impact them receiving heightened scrutiny by the Courts.
If you want to make sodomy illegal, make all sodomy illegal, for everyone.
By targeting laws at homosexuals, you are playing right into their hand, and actually strenghtening their arguments in the eyes of the law.
So, if you want to be level-headed about this issue, quit arguing from a purely emotional point of view.
What page is that from CJ?
And you call me a Liberal?
I keep emphasizing that sodomy is NOT limited to homosexual sex. All homosexual sex is sodomy, but not all sodomy is homosexual. The constitutional violation supersedes state law and has since the early 19th century.
This could also be seen as "Caesar" imposing his will on the states.. Which is a violation of the Tenth.
Except that this is INCLUSIONARY logic, while yours is EXCLUSIONARY. This does not "remove" any rights, but applies them across the board. Your way would remove rights from a certain group, but grant it to others.
Further still, if you can make a 14th amendment argument for legalizing homosexual sex at the federal level, you are one argument away from forcing homosexual marriage on the states also.
No, as I said, one is simply inclusionary, requiring that a law be applied to all persons equally. There is no law requiring that heterosexuals get married; there is one that ALLOWS heterosexuals to get married. However, there is no active law that PREVENTS homosexuals from getting married.
The marriage issue is far more complicated than sodomy, since there are both sacred and secular dimensions to the former. But that's straying a long way from the subject of this thread.
Yes, it is discriminatory.. like other laws, it discriminates on the basis of behavior and it does so equally.
Again, the distinction is based on behavior & everyone treated equally.
Just as laws against bestiality and pedophelia single out people who engage in those behaviors, this law singles out people who engage in homosexual sodomy. It only applies to them and it applies universally.
I see no 14th Amendment problems unless you equate sexual behavior with something such as race, which is not a behavior at all.
Article III. Section 2.
The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution...
Two citizens residing in the State of Texas, brought a complaint to Texas Courts about a Texas law which they believe violates their rights under the Constitution.
The SCOTUS is the mechanism set in place for citizens to do such a thing, once they have exhausted all venues at the State level.
If the Democratic-Socialist-Libertarians hadn't passed their garbage-legislation, which you claim to support, and had they not overturned a millennia of proscriptions based upon the kindness of honoring and fostering the very lives you seem willing to sacrifice upon the altar of moral-liberalism, then the mall owners would have a recourse to turn them out, and children would be allowed to visit Santa Claus in peace without being exposed to organized perversion and the assault upon their innocence.
Ah, but apparently it's all the fault of parents for taking them to the mall to begin with, we are told. Heaven forbid that we expect children to visit a mall in safety, lest we be compared to Hillary, (who by the way agrees 100% with your moral-liberal views on sexual perversion.)
"I keep emphasizing that sodomy is NOT limited to homosexual sex. All homosexual sex is sodomy, but not all sodomy is homosexual. The constitutional violation supersedes state law and has since the early 19th century."
No one arguing in support of the Texas law will acknowledge your argument, because in doing so, they destroy their own.
Everyone is allowed to kiss in the Malls. Frankly, I find all manner of public displays of affection distasteful, your problem is that you do not want your right to kiss in public vilated, but want to violate someone else's right to do the same.
We are all created equal, we are all endowed with the same rights, and we should all be subject to the same laws.
Either make kissing in public unlawful for all citizens, or be subjected to bahavior which you do not approve of.
You keep ignoring the facts that in this nation, laws apply to all equally.
No. Liberals can have some redeeming values. I called you a 'moral-liberal.'
Parental neglect.
And what do the moral-liberals of Little Havana say to that as they turn away from the spectacle of kids playing in a busy boulevard? "Well, if anything bad happens to them, that'll teach the parents! I have no responsibility to the members of the larger family of humanity. If parents are neglecting them, then that's all just too bad, and so what, and who cares?"
Ah, yes. Somehow we must allow bestiality, lest the bestialphiles become a protected class of a behavioral minority! Right.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.