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.
You are the one who made the assertion. As for more worthy, perhaps a dolphin is more worthy, or a great ape, or a garden slug. You need to support your own assertion.
Why do you believe you are worthy of anything?
Shalom.
I have seen no better description of the result of the French Revolution.
Does America really want to be like France?
Shalom.
By the way, logically, I don't have to prove any assertion I make. If you take issue with one that I make, it is your obligation to disprove it.
No, if I say the sky is black, you have reason to ask me to prove my statement. The only reason I would not have to prove it is if it were already agreed to by you.
But since I know you can't prove your statement I will move on to my point - your assertion that you are worthy is an assertion based on a particular worldview (or morality or religion). Any political position that you may take that is based on that foundation is a religious or moral position. Governments can't help but base their actions on a religious or moral foundation since people can't help but base their opinions and/or actions on the same.
If someone else has a moral foundation that says you are not worthy of your freedom that morality has as much place in the public square as yours and whoever can pursuade the most people will win.
Unless we can agree that there is one, universal moral foundation to which all opinions and actions must conform we are left with the tyrrany of the majority.
Shalom.
Next thing, you will assert a Constitutional right to murder because Jesus' name isn't in the Constitution.
Even without religion, some behaviours are seen as sick, disgusting, medically hazardous, and unacceptable by society, and all you can do is muster a weak attack on religion.
Pardon me if I find it strange (as the 'walls close in' on tobacco smokers) that you assert a right to buttf*ck because you don't see a reference to Biblical scripture or the Christian deity in the Constitution.
Go whine to the 40,000,000 children who haven't had a chance to choose their "orientation" since Roe v Wade.
Just because it is 'legal' does not make it right, or a Right.
But as an atheist, where do you get your unalienable (God given) rights?
But to them, government has jurisdiction over pretty much all aspects of life - the idea of inherent rights of man don't mean much when homosexuals are allowed to roam free.
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