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.
Hatred is to tell people to go to hell in a handbasket, for all you care.
What part of "consenting adults" is it that you don't seem to understand?
Unless you can convince me that you are Dr. Doolittle, you will not convince me that the sheep you are sleeping with consented to your advances.
Not directly, but you and I have a moral responsibility to mitigate the damages, rather than just shrugging.
So pined Al Capone, but we don't call him a conservative on that account. Supposedly the Founding Fathers who oversaw the institution of our self-governance, which included laws against homosexual sodomy, were not conservatives according to the moral-liberal Luis Gonzalez. It is the allowance of perversion which bloats the government, Luis, not the proscription against irresponsibility.
You don't sound too happy yourself there buddy. Any immoral desires to go with your anger?
And Love requires that we throw the poor sinners in jail.
Common sense allows the state to discourage disease-spreading, early death-inducing behaviors such as sodomy--by jail if necessary.
Of course, you may lack common sense and not understand this.
Where are these laws in the Constitution?
These Founders also owned slaves, and Ben Franklin was quite the fornicator and adulterer.
Some of these diseases are so hideous that the sufferers might wish they were at ground zero in Sodom instead.
But keep defending it.
When I said 'laws' I didn't say 'Constitution.' Speaking of which, where is homosexual sodomy a protected right in the Constitution? Or bestiality? Or prostitution? Or necrophilia? Or usury? Or drug abuse? These are all supposedly consensual behaviors, too, which the Democratic-Socialist-Libertarians extol.
To which he replied:
Where are these laws in the Constitution?
These Founders also owned slaves, and Ben Franklin was quite the fornicator and adulterer.
You replied:
Was Ben Frankin a sodomizer like yourself?
Mr. Curry, this just a bit out of bounds, don't you think? Franklin's eccentricities are well known. Do you have to be so rude to Luis?
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