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.
Gotta go, I hear Nelli getting ready out in the barn.
As you continue to. Must be by choice.
He was repeating the Supreme Court legal point that once you argue that the state can't sanction one criminal behavior, it must, logically then, cease to sanction all similar behavior.
Not rocket science.
Even if your statement were supported by fact, it remains inaccurate; this is a poor use of the word, specious; actually, a specious use of it.
On St. Valentine's Day, 1991, San Francisco began the registration of "domestic partners."
"What's so wrong with extending the same benefits that heterosexuals enjoy? Don't they just want to be left alone to live their lives?"
If that were so, just look at the self-inflicted disease they suffer from. If they'd listened to religion, they'd all be alive right now. We told them not to do that, and they went ahead and thumbed their noses at us, and did it. Now they're dying, and we're supposed to bail them out. They try to make all these plays for sympathy. Let them do what they want to? In other words, let them jump off the bridge if they want to? Let them play Russian Roulette if they want to? Is there any kind of behavior we shouldn't allow? So your neighbor moves in next door and starts having marital relations with a horse. Are you going to feel good about that? Are you going to feel good about raising your kids next to that guy?
We all have an interest in the general moral level of society, because if that level goes down, we all suffer, through diseases, for instance. Our kids grow up in this climate where they're encouraged to engage in these really bizarre behaviors, that'll end up hurting them. We have an interest in that.
Also, families are falling apart. One half of all children in California live in divorced families. A lot of kids have no mom or dad, so they're deprived of a parent they really need. Every child needs a mom, needs a dad. They need both, for their own psychological health. There was a study in the paper that said children from divorced families have a lot more psychological problems than children in families with both parents, where both parents are there. So now we have all these mental health problems coming up down the road.
Society has an interest in maintaining the INTEGRITY of the family, and making the family a really strong, stable structure, because that's where the new members of our society learn how to behave and learn to treat each other in a good way. So by allowing ANYBODY to come along and say they're a married couple, no matter what, that would DESTROY the family. And that's going to destroy our whole society, because the family is the basic unit of society.
The "Anything Goes" attitude is so destructive to not only our society, but to us individually. But people claim: "Oh, I tolerate homosexuals, because I'm compassionate." They try to use that argument. But actually, how about having some compassion for all the people who are INJURED by allowing this to go on? Not just the people who get AIDS, such as the kids that come up thinking that they should go out and engage in these activities and get these horrible diseases, and compassion for children growing up in families that are all split up and broken.
It's sort of a very one-sided "compassion."
Tolerating evil makes one just as guilty as the doer of evil. It is evil to tolerate evil.
Actually, this could not happen to anyone, you nitwit.
What can one say? The poor, oppressed managers, bankers, lawyers, employers, and all other lumpenjaded need societal protections!
OMfriggin'G......the moralist police are just tooooooooo much.
I would love to engage you again, but after the bijol and caldo fiasco of yesterday (I still don't have a recipe), I refuse to.
Your post is off topic.
I do not wish to argue Texas law.
The topic is Laws Violate Individual Liberty.
A self-evident and redundant post.
And a crummy way to argue for pro-pervert rights.
Happy Mother's Day!
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.