"A woman has a right to control her own body."
"The privacy of the bedroom is sacred." (and, hence, should be kept beyond government or legal control)
"We can't legislate morality."
Kerry:"I can't take my Catholic belief, my article of faith, and legislate it on a Protestant or a Jew or an atheist," he continued. "We have separation of church and state in the United States of America."
What are the key concepts, ideological and ontological presuppositions of such fuzzy claims?
I suppose it is possible they are merely using the imprecise vernacular to communicate otherwise precise concepts, but I doubt it.
One can defend any individual's (even a woman's) right to control her own body based upon a self-interested desire for a society that enable's one's own such freedom. However, if there is anything that such a person would consider properly illegal (such as denying an individual's right to her own body), then presumable that should be illegal whether it is in the bedroom or not.
Also, it seems like it would take an absurdly narrow definition of "morality" that would exclude it from legislation. Isn't "all men are created equal" a moral statement afterall?
Anyway, any possible rational argument with a liberal is irrelevent anyway. What they all really care about is cold hard cash--yours--and they are prefectly willing to drop any pretence to self-ownership in order to get it. The most a thoughtful liberal (particularly environmentalists) will give you is the metaphysical primary, "other humans are all evil".