1. Analysis of the Question
1.1 This question concerns ethics, the study and practice of right and wrong behavior and motivations. The question essentially asserts that individuals should be allowed by civil law or by convention (even if civil law disallows) to do and say what they wish without sanction or disapproval. The one condition here is that individuals’ actions or words not have "unintended consequences" for others who are not consenting parties to the action or words.
1.2 When the question refers to "conduct," it means both actions and words, since words are treated as equivalent to actions in law in certain instances. Nevertheless, most readers would likely take the question to refer primarily to actions.
1.3 The question advocates in the form of an assertion, the ethical positions of both hedonism (or Naturalism) and relativism. Hedonism (technically egoistic hedonism) is defined as the seeking of pleasure for the benefit of the seeking individual alone. Sometimes it is also called Utilitarianism, but this is only a modern label for a similar idea (Utilitarians do go beyond individual ethics). Relativism takes several forms.
Sometimes it means that what is "good" or "bad" for one is not for another. It is also a denial that there is some objective standard of ethics. Thus, one is free to choose whatever makes him or her "feel" more pleasure or less pain, apart from others’ perceived well-being. In short, the individual seeks pleasure as his or her highest goal (or less pain) and does so without belief in transcendent ethical norm. The question asserts that both the former and the latter are good.
1.4 But the question does not posit an unlimited hedonism. It stops short by adding a qualification that this hedonism and relativism are good to the point at which pain (cost in economic terms) will be inflicted on someone else or other people. This represents a modified form of hedonism, which has been a topic for discussion for ethics since hedonism was first written about in ancient times (to note, hedonism is a distinctively Greek ethical idea in its origin; it has no basis in the Hebrew Bible or the New Testament literature).
1.5 This assertion is also sometimes made by those on the "conservative" side of the spectrum. Those who call themselves "libertarians" and are consistent, advocate an essentially hedonistic position with respect to ethics, though not completely relativistic. Libertarians are in general "economic conservatives" and "social liberals." That is, they favor very little or no government intervention in any area of life, even the moral or ethical realm, so long as there are no negative external effects. Thus the question here may also apply to that specific movement’s system of thought, even though at first glance it might seem to apply only to those we would label as "liberals."
1.6 We should note that this question reflects a common popular conception among many people that what they do "privately" will in fact have no effect on others who are not directly involved in the action. In fact, many speak of purely private activities in which no other person is involved except the hedonist. Private actions are commonly believed to have no "external" effects to speak of. Whether this conception has a basis in reality remains to be seen below.
Even so, we must still consider that, if God exists and if He is the God of the Christian Bible, is it still possible to say that "no one" is in any way "affected" by a hedonist act? It will be possible at least to speak of a God who has established a standard of law, the violation of which would offend against that law regardless of whether any human person was affected. In other words, will an external, objective standard negate hedonism/utilitarianism?
1.7 Finally, the problem of "subjective guilt" must be raised here, even though it is not explicitly mentioned in the question. Implied by the question is that a supposedly private act can and even ought to be done without fear of guilt as a result (so the egoistic hedonist would say). Evidence however suggests that guilt very often follows even the most private actions. We will address this issue in greater detail below. ***
3. Conclusions
3.1 To posit a relative ethical or moral standard is self-refuting, for to make such an absolute statement is to adopt an absolute as an ethical standard.
3.2 It is not true that ethical and moral standards are in any way relative if one adopts Scripture as his or her source of ethics and morality. It should be added that every person does have a moral and ethical standard at any rate, and in many instances individuals will extend their own standard to others, even while professing to be relativistic in approach.
3.3 The ultimate source of ethics and morality, the standard which is external to the individual, is objective, and is absolute, is the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, properly interpreted (objectively) and properly applied to individual cases.
3.4 As one writer has put it, "It is not possible to separate off any ‘private’ or ‘personal’ aspect of an individual’s life which does not involve relationships with other people and hence falls outside the basic principles" of Biblical ethics (Marshall, "Personal Ethics" in Baker’s Dictionary of Christian Ethics, p. 505). The point is that one’s actions will inevitably affect others and so there can, in reality, be no situation where ethical decisions of a single individual could be ignored as irrelevant (and thus relative).
3.5 Moreover, even if, theoretically, an individual’s acts affected no one else—if they were so private that no other person was involved, even indirectly—they are still "open to God" and represent a violation of God’s absolute standards (see Marshall, Ibid.).
3.6 In summary then, it is not legitimate as a Christian, to speak of relative ethics, for the several reasons elaborated above. Nevertheless, some may object in any event, asserting that they simply cannot agree to such a supposedly rigid system of ethics and morality. But such an objection cannot be made on logical grounds unless one rejects outright the veracity of the Scriptures (a position a Christian could not take even if he or she questioned some aspects of the Bible). Otherwise, the objection would be on irrational grounds, the objector wishing to excuse or justify his behavior and to be freed from external constraints to pursue his or her perceived summum bonum.
SODOMY : Homosexual Agenda Unrelated to Civil Rights Movement, Conservative Blacks Insist
SODOMY:Why Is the Church Silent... Again?
The Gay Embrace Homosexuality: It's the issue mainliners want to talk about and not talk about, depending on who does the talking and their agenda. It's old news that "gay" activists in the mainline churches have pressed their agenda and clamored for dialogue about ordinations and blessing homosexual "unions." Having earlier secured access to baptism and Holy Communion for practicing homosexuals (largely because few churches have upheld traditional restrictions), the gay lobby long ago moved on to the sacraments of ordination and marriage. (But don't expect them to embrace more sacraments: They won't anytime soon be clamoring for more time in the confessional or for access to vows of celibacy.)
Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 US 186 (1986) The Constitution does not confer a fundamental right upon homosexuals to engage in sodomy.
BURGER, C.J., Concurring Opinion Decisions of individuals relating to homosexual conduct have been subject to state intervention throughout the history of Western civilization. Condemnation of those practices is firmly rooted in Judeo-Christian moral and ethical standards. Homosexual sodomy was a capital crime under Roman law.... During the English Reformation, when powers of the ecclesiastical courts were transferred to the King's Courts, the first English statute criminalizing sodomy was passed.... Blackstone described "the infamous crime against nature" as an offense of "deeper malignity" than rape, a heinous act "the very mention of which is a disgrace to human nature," and "a crime not fit to be named." W. Blackstone, Commentaries . The common law of England, including its prohibition of sodomy, became the received law of Georgia and the other Colonies. In 1816, the Georgia Legislature passed the statute at issue here, and that statute has been continuously in force in one form or another since that time. To hold that the act of homosexual sodomy is somehow protected as a fundamental right would be to cast aside millennia of moral teaching.
Thomas Jefferson on Sodomy Sect. XIV. Whosoever shall be guilty of rape, polygamy, or sodomy* with a man or woman, shall be punished; if a man, by castration, a woman, by boring through the cartilage of her nose a hole of one half inch in diameter at the least. Peterson, Merrill D. "Crimes and Punishments" Thomas Jefferson: Writings Public Papers (Literary Classics of the United States, Inc. 1984) pp. 355, 356.
Hundreds rally for '10 Commandments judge' Moore wrote a separate concurring opinion, repudiating homosexuality on religious grounds, calling it "abhorrent, immoral, detestable, a crime against nature, and a violation of the laws of nature and of nature's God."
Texas Phys.Resource Council, Christian Med. & Dental Association, Catholic Med.Association Sodomy is an efficient method of transmitting STDs. And regardless of the reason, same-sex sodomy is far more effective in spreading STDs than opposite-sex sodomy. Multiple studies have estimated that 40 percent or more of men who practice anal sex acquire STDs. In fact, same-sex sodomy has resulted in the transformation of diseases previously transmitted only through fecally contaminated food and water into sexually caused diseases primarily among those who practice same-sex sodomy.
SODOMY: Brief Of The States Of Alabama, South Carolina, And Utah (S.C.O.T.U.S.& Sodomy)
In keeping with the historical analysis described above, this Court has primarily limited its recognition of non-textual fundamental rights in the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to "personal decisions relating to marriage, procreation, contraception, family relationships, child rearing, and education." 27 In 1997, this Court cataloged the list as follows:
In a long line of cases, we have held that, in addition to the specific freedoms protected by the Bill of Rights, the "liberty" specifically protected by the Due Process Clause includes the rights to marry, LOVING V. VIRGINIA , 388 U.S. 1 (1967); to have children, SKINNER V. OKLAHOMA EX REL. WILLIAMSON , 316 U.S. 535 (1942); to direct the education and upbringing of one's children, MEYER V. NEBRASKA , 262 U.S. 390 (1923); PIERCE V. SOCIETY OF SISTERS , 268 U.S. 510 (1925); to marital privacy, GRISWOLD V. CONNECTICUT , 381 U.S. 479 (1965); to use contraception, IBID. ; EISENSTADT V. BAIRD , 405 U.S. 438 (1972); to bodily integrity, ROCHIN V. CALIFORNIA , 342 U.S. 165 (1952); and to abortion, [ PLANNED PARENTHOOD V. CASEY , 505 U.S. 833 (1992)]. 28
"The entire fabric of the Constitution and the purposes that clearly underlie its specific guarantees demonstrate that the rights to marital privacy and to marry and raise a family are of similar order and magnitude as the fundamental rights specifically protected." 29
The fundamental role of marriage and family in our society has been recognized on many occasions by the Court. In ZABLOCKI V. REDHAIL , 30 the Court invalidated a Wisconsin statute requiring certain persons to obtain a court order before marrying:
[T]he right to marry is of fundamental importance for all individuals. Long ago in MAYNARD V. HILL , 125 U.S. 190 (1888), the Court characterized marriage as "the most important relation in life," ID. , at 205, and as "the foundation of the family and of society, without which there would be neither civilization nor progress," ID. , at 211. In MEYER V. NEBRASKA , 262 U.S. 390 (1923), the Court recognized that the right "to marry, establish a home, and bring up children" is a central part of the liberty protected by the Due Process Clause, ID. , at 399, and in SKINNER V. OKLAHOMA EX REL. WILLIAMSON , 316 U.S. 535 (1942), marriage was described as "fundamental to the very existence and survival of the race," 316 U.S. at 541. 31
The Court went on to conclude that the right to marry is one of the "matters of family life" protected by the right of privacy implicit in the Due Process Clause. 32 In MOORE V. CITY OF EAST CLEVELAND , the Court also dwelt on the historical role of marriage and the family in American society: "Our decisions establish that the Constitution protects the sanctity of the family precisely because the institution of the family is deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition." 33
This Court has never recognized a fundamental right to engage in sexual activity outside of monogamous heterosexual marriage, let alone to engage in homosexual sodomy. Such a right would be antithetical to the "traditional relation of the family" that is "as old and as fundamental as our entire civilization." 34 Even the amorphous "right to privacy" recognized in GRISWOLD and expanded upon in ROE V. WADE was never intended to include a right to have sex with whomever and however one pleased. In ROE V. WADE , this Court stated that the Due Process Clause does not include "an unlimited right to do with one's body as one pleases." 35 Twenty-five years later, in WASHINGTON V. GLUCKSBERG , this Court again rejected the proposition that "all important, intimate, and personal decisions" are protected by the Due Process Clause. 36
In his POE V. ULLMAN 37 dissent, which foreshadowed the recognition of the marital right of privacy in GRISWOLD V. CONNECTICUT , Justice Harlan said that homosexual activity, even when "concealed in the home," was a proper matter of state concern and could be forbidden by the States:
Yet the very inclusion of the category of morality among state concerns indicates that society is not limited in its objects only to the physical well-being of the community, but has traditionally concerned itself with the moral soundness of its people as well. Indeed to attempt a line between public behavior and that which is purely consensual or solitary would be to withdraw from community concern a range of subjects with which every society in civilized time has found it necessary to deal. The laws regarding marriage which provide both when the sexual powers may be used and the legal and societal context in which children are born and brought up, as well as laws forbidding adultery, fornication, and homosexual practices which express the negative of the proposition, confining sexuality to lawful marriage, form a pattern so deeply pressed into the substance of our social life that any Constitutional doctrine must be built upon that basis. 38
SODOMY : CENTER FOR THE ORIGINAL INTENT OF THE CONSTITUTION (LAWRENCE v. TEXAS SODOMY BRIEF) THE HISTORIC AUTHORITY OF THE STATES TO CRIMINALIZE SODOMY IS WELL-SETTLED
The historical evidence clearly shows that state legislatures have always possessed a broad authority to outlaw private, consensual sex, and that they also prohibited same-sex sodomy specifically since the earliest days of American history. Enactment of the Bill of Rights in 1791 and the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868 did not alter that state legislative authority.
This Court has frequently looked to the Constitution's "text, history and precedent" to determine its meaning. ELDRED V. ASHCROFT , ___ U.S. ___, 123 S.Ct. 769, 777 (2003). As this Court recently reiterated in ELDRED V. ASHCROFT , "a page of history is worth a volume of logic." ID ., quoting NEW YORK TRUST COMPANY V. EISNER , 256 U.S. 345, 349 (1921); SEE ALSO U.S. TERM LIMITS, INC. V. THORNTON , 514 U.S. 779, 790 (1995) ("Against this historical background, we viewed the Convention debates as manifesting the Framers' intent that the qualifications in the Constitution be fixed and exclusive.").
It is a settled constitutional principle within our federal republic that states possess general police powers. Inherent within these powers lies the duty to regulate the "health, safety, and morals" of their members. BARNES V. GLEN THEATER , 501 U.S. 560, 569 (1991) (referencing public indecency statutes which were designed to protect morals and public order). States have used this police power to promote marriage and direct the sexual activities of their citizens into marriage by criminalizing a wide variety of nonmarital sex acts, such as polygamy, rape, fornication, adultery, prostitution and incest. While crimes such as rape and incest are not consensual, adultery, prostitution, polygamy and fornication are private acts between consenting adults that have been regulated throughout our nation's history. As we shall demonstrate, states have possessed and properly exercised the authority to regulate deviate sexual conduct including sodomy at all relevant times in our nation's history.
SODOMY : Legislators,State of Texas, Lawrence v. Texas, No. 02-102
In evaluating whether § 21.06 is rational, the Court should consider that the provision is one part of a larger network of laws designed to further the legitimate State interest of promoting traditional marriage of one man and one woman.
The laws regarding marriage which provide both when the sexual powers may be used and the legal and societal context in which children are born and brought up, as well as laws forbidding adultery, fornication and homosexual practices which express the negative of the proposition, confining sexuality to lawful marriage, form a pattern so deeply pressed into the substance of our social life that any Constitutional doctrine in this area must build upon that basis.
Poe , 367 U.S. at 546 (Harlan, J., dissenting). The connection between § 21.06 and marriage is undeniable. The same legislature which changed the Texas sodomy law in 1973 to its current form, at the same time changed Texas' marriage law to explicitly specify, for the first time, that marriage in Texas may only be between "a man and a woman." T EX . F AM . C ODE § 2.001 (Acts 1973, 63rd Leg., p. 1596, ch. 577, § 1). Even in teaching sexual education, Texas law emphasizes that sex should be within marriage and other conduct, such as homosexual sex, is discouraged. Sex education materials must "emphasize sexual abstinence before marriage and fidelity in marriage as the expected standard" and must discourage "homosexual conduct" and note that it violates § 21.06. T EX . H EALTH & S AFETY C ODE § 85.007.