A public bathroom is private?
The Surpoeme Court did not, and cannot wreck right and wrong. They just condoned and underwrote a wrong...that does not make it right.
He’s a homo. End of story.
Sex in public is wrong and illegal across the board period.
Law enforcements choices are limited to prevention or prosecution.
I vote for prosecution. Prevention only works until ones back is turned. Prosecution is a far more effective deterrent.
The only hypocrisy is in the politics of jackasses.
Craig violated a local city ordinance. There's no federal law banning solicitation of sex in public restrooms.
I'm as libertarian as they come but sex in public restrooms should be prohibited at the local and state level.
Defendants often plead to an amended charge that doesn’t fit the conduct alleged to avoid risking a conviction of the original charge. Since Disorderly Conduct doesn’t have the sexual connection, the senator was sure it would look better than the original solicitation charge. You bring up a good point on the solicitation charge-I know of no solitation charge that doesn’t have an illegal activity as the target of the solicitation. If they could prove he was soliciting public lewdness, it would be a crime. But how do they prove the intent wasn’t to go and get a room? In busting prostitutes, an act and a price have to be verbally confirmed (the crime is sex for money). It seems that the detectives in the airport would have to get an agreement to perform an act in the airport john before there’s a crime. Just the solicitation is inchoate and the supposed target activity may not be criminal at all. The whole sting operation, if it doesn’t result in an agreement to violate the law, may be bogus. I’m a prosecutor and I don’t know the answer, if we’re getting the whole story.
“So we conservatives have a problem”? I don’t have a problem..........the liberal judges have the problem. Show me where, in our Constitution it talks about gays having any rights that contradict the Judeo/Christian values that this country was founded on.
Great points...
Well said!
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
The only “problem” we have is that our constitution was written in a more civilized time, by more civilized men who didn’t dream that someday their degenerate descendants would walk the land they were taming proclaiming special rights for those who practice sodomy.
As for me, I make no secret of the fact that homosexuality is a vile practice and utterly incompatible both with conservatism and with a party that proclaims it.
If the Republicans wish to become libertarians, they can do so without my vote.
It is highly debatable whether it was the MORAL one.
The first involves the business of the state in prohibiting public sex. There are serious public health issues involved here that in my estimation do fall within the Constitutional purview of the state. Whether this may be extended to solicitiation of sex in public is highly debatable. However, in practice is isn't only solicitation that goes on in these places, it's the act itself, hence the interest of the state in preventing it by discouraging its precursor. I can see both sides of this but am tempted to conclude that were solicitation the only thing involved it shouldn't be illegal. But that brings us to the second point.
It was illegal. Whether this was by virtue of malum in se as the moralists (and the hygienists) would have it, or merely malum prohibitum, the fact is that it was illegal and Mr. Craig was a professional in the business of making law for others. One might or might not support such a law as the one he pleaded guilty to breaking, but the fact of the matter is that as a public servant he is, in my estimation, absolutely obligated to obey it. The rest of us are. If it is a bad law we should review it, but in the meantime it is the law.
One of the most corrosive actions possible with regard to controlling the size of government is to exempt those making the laws from following them. In the Kennedy, Studds, and Frank cases (among many, many others) we already have this sort of de facto exemption in place. That does not mean we should expand it to be "fair", it means we should contract it by applying the law across the board. In practice we have a long way to go to effect this, but that does not mean we should abandon it.
The legal verdict already is in in this case - a guilty plea. The moral verdict will have to wait until Craig stands before his Maker. The professional verdict, however, is strictly between Craig and his employers, the citizens of Idaho, and I am in no doubt whatsoever what that verdict would have been were he to have stood for re-election.
Thanks for a great, thoughtful essay (we should expect no less from you).
Here's the problem with "civil unions". So-called "civil unions", shorn of their stamp of approval on homosexuality, don't add anything new to existing contract law.
Anyone can appoint a power of attorney for healthcare, anyone can will their estate to anyone they wish, anyone can execute a reciprocal personal services contract with another to assume certain obligations.
The purpose of a "civil union", therefore, is to bundle these various, already legal contractual pieces, into an instrument for the state to ostentatiously approve of that which most citizens do not approve of.
Even if we ignore the implications of his actions, the acts themselves would make any man who had the misfortune of being in the next stall extremely uncomfortable. If I see anyones body parts on my side of the divider, I'm going to tell him to remove them.
I was giving the Senator the benefit of the doubt before, but now it's clear to me he was up to no good.
But do we attack homosexuals for their status? Most conservatives I know—myself included—are content to live and let live. But we have been forced by circumstances to oppose homosexuality as a social and political movement.
Years ago, homosexual activists asked only that we respect their privacy: What we do in the privacy of our bedrooms, they said, is our business, and nobody else's. That made sense to me at the time.
But somewhere along the line the argument changed. It is no longer enough to tolerate homosexuals: now we must approve, even "celebrate" their lifestyle, and treat homosexual liaisons as equivalent to marriage. Some have even gone so far as to demand affirmative action for homosexuals, to compensate for alleged past discrimination.
When activists try to tell my children that homosexuality is just another lifestyle, every bit as healthy as normal sexual relations within traditional marriage, they have crossed over the line. I for one have begun to doubt the wisdom of my previous tolerance of homosexuals.
It's your call, Nathan.