You have been reading the wrong dots.
Posted on 11/24/2011 11:07:08 PM PST by stevelackner
Interesting business model.
Since any secular belief is merely a hypotheses you are welcome to believe in one but you are not free to bind others to the rules or beliefs of secularism. See, that mantra works both ways.
About 20 years ago, when the last serious effort to legalize prostitution ws gearing up, we used to heard endlessly that prostitution was a “victimless” crime...well..that’s shown not to be the case..
You have been reading the wrong dots.
And your post expanded that to "laws about morality". Those were the dots I was commenting on and I still can't connect them.
The First Amendment was not intended to protect pornography. It was intended to protect political speech. Simply put, the perversion of it came from the ACLU. They hacked at it until the Supreme Court gave them that ruling.
How about the prostitutes themselves who are put outside the law and left to the vicious mercies of pimps?
How about the police force which is corrupted and made cynical by unenforceable laws about morality?
How about a judicial system and a political system where our judges and politicians find themselves hypocrites for outlawing the prostitutes that they frequent?
How about the innocent folks with nothing to do with prostitutes but who find themselves the victims of street crime because the neighborhood deteriorates?
How about the innocent folks who find that their justice system grows more and more corrupt and hypocritical?
How about the taxpayer whose taxes are squandered uselessly on jails to incarcerate and courts to convict?
List of victims goes on and on.
In contrast one reads in the Bible, "This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord, I will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them;" (Hebrews 10:16)
And in another place we read about the fruit the Holy Spirit produces in our lives, "(For the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truth;) Proving what is acceptable unto the Lord. And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them. For it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret." (Ephesians 5:9-12)
Today it seems too many of "those things" are done, not in secret, but openly, in public. And those who do are celebrated for it.
Our era could never write the Constitution. Only a moral and religious people could have written it. And a moral and religious people don't need many laws or finely worded statutes carefully parsed by hoards of lawyers.
To the making of many laws there is no end. And in making those many laws there is an end to liberty. It was Christ Himself who told us, " . . . If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. They answered him, We be Abraham's seed, and were never in bondage to any man: how sayest thou, Ye shall be made free? Jesus answered them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin. And the servant abideth not in the house for ever: but the Son abideth ever. If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed." (John 8:31-36)
In connecting those dots, you have five or six thousand years of history to overcome and in every year your way has failed.
You are asking us to endorse a failed system. You are asking us to endorse a hypocritical system. You are asking us to endorse an expensive and self-defeating system.
You are asking us to deprive people of their liberty for engaging in sex in commerce when if they did it for free it would be perfectly legal. Society has passed your position by.
This is your law, you defend it. You explain the broken lives and the crowded jails. You explain the venereal disease. You explain the white slavery. You explain the brutal pimps. You explain the traffic in underage girls.
You must explain all of these things because your system has brought them about. Kindly spare me your inability to connect the dots, you are consigning people to misery and worse.
The German system is clearly better because it produces less misery and more freedom. I thought that was what the pursuit of happiness was all about. It is certainly not about our personal biblical views which we impose on others through the vehicle of the criminal law. If you want to impose the criminal law on someone you have the burden of justifying it. And doing so you shall not be heard to say that we would sweep away all laws against all crimes.
We are talking about laws which are not malum in se but laws which impose criminal sanctions not because victims need to be protected but because hypocrites need to be vindicated.
You make no point.
I am merely paraphrasing the Word of the God of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob.
It's not religion, it is faith, the belief in that which is unseen.
Religion is futile.
But it does surprise me to hear such well expressed thoughts coming from someone who uses the image and name of a slave dealer and Klan leader.
No insult intended - I am interested in how you would reconcile Forrest and human freedom.
People behaving badly, as it was in the beginning, is now, and shall always be.
Thank you for your kind comments.
And since imposing criminal sanctions based on religious values in this (and other) regard has been constitutional since the beginning, that's all the reason I need. If a majority of the people support a criminal law based purely on ethical reasons with a religious foundation then that is their right in a democratic republic, baby. Who are you to say your cost/benifit empirical analysis is somehow a more authoritative or moral basis for criminal law than a motivation based on divine revelation from God? If you can bring enough people to your way of thinking so they vote in different laws, go for it. But so far your position has consistently been rejected over a thousand years over a broad spectrum of cultures. And I will continue to support laws consistent with my theistic presuppositions.
Here’s a secular belief; water is wet. That is not an hypothesis, it’s a testable reality, unlike any religion. See, it’s not a mantra.
Why is it legal to promote a film of two men having sex but against the law to criticize them for doing it.
I believe you used this (somewhat) phonetically, but it's Puff, derived from the eponymous boardgame (often played in brothels back in the day), an early form of Backgammon.
(Just in case you ever need to ask for directions...kidding!)
Bare back, huh? And I'll bet the good judges sold tickets to the flogging, too. If someone had a camcorder back in the day, there would have been videos for sale all over the place.
Really?
Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.