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.
Let's start arresting people on the basis of what they might do.
"Why does YOUR right supercede the rights of others with a different point of view? Don't they have the RIGHT to live in the society they want to live in?"
SELF-PRESERVATION. If their behavior destroys our society, then we have the right to forbid their behavior. If people are going to go out and commit sex-acts, that result in their getting diseases of all kinds, that pollute our blood supply, that bankrupt our health research and free health care system, we have a RIGHT to forbid their behaviors.
If people are going to try to engage in behaviors that wreck the family, which is the bedrock of our society, then we have the RIGHT to forbid those behaviors that do that. We have a right to have laws against unmarried couples living together. We have the right to have laws against adultery, because adultery wrecks families. Who supports the children? How are the children taken care of?
We have a right to preserve ourselves and our society. When people engage in behaviors which are destructive to society, then we have a right to forbid those behaviors. We don't have to sit around and allow our society to be destroyed by a lot of self-indulgent fools, who can't see beyond tomorrow, who are too blind to see the EFFECTS of their actions, who live only for instant gratification. Who cares what happens afterwards? Well, WE care, because we have to pay the consequences.
Society can make those kinds of determinations. We can just look around and see all the terrible effects, and say: "No more! We can't afford it! We want our society to continue! We have children coming up! We have grandchildren! We want them to have a society to live in, too!"
If these people with their behaviors are going to spread all these diseases, and wreck families, we have a right to forbid that.
Public school graduate? Yes, a magnet school consistently ranked in the top 50 high schools in America(that's public and private, simpleton.)
He who is a simpleton is he who cannot spell 'brilliant.'
Well, you deserved it when you crowed about graduating from a top-50 magnet school. ; )
When there are total limits on what government can prohibit a state of anarchy exists.
 It's called 'due process' within a framework of 'self-governance.' You are free to renounce society if such issues are just way too much of a personal burden for you to bear a minute longer.But be sure to not renounce your watch so that you know what time it is to beg your renunciation paste from the tourists. |
No...I see it too. YOU have logic; they do not.
Besides, making an issue of supposed gay marriage, which is at the root of this issue, grants a veil of apparent legitimacy to an incredibly promiscuous lifestyle.
After all, this has diddley squat to do with rights to perform sex acts in the privacy of one's home. Anyone discreet can already do that.
This is just appears to be a small but integral portion of an overall agenda to legitimize and license perversion, then get the rest of us to pick up the tab.
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