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 want sodomy outlawed by the government, but you want G*d to watch for the crime and report it to the authorities?
The Second Amendment gives you the right to defend yourself?
You have reading comprehension problems, don't you?
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
Our right to bear arms shall not be infringed so that we can defend the nation, not ourselves. Unless you have a different version of the Second. It seems that you have a different Constitution than the one generally used by the rest of us.
What need does Our Heavenly Father have for an enforcer on Earth? Where does Our Heavenly Father ask for the government's help?
"I would be saying nothing if it was not stuck in my face demanding special status simply base on the manner of whom and how sex is done."
You and the spouse have never enjoyed a bit of sodomy?
Don't lie, Our Heavenly Father is watching and knows what you do in the privacy of your bedroom.
Sodomy is both anal AND oral sex.
You are giving homosexuals the special status, with your biases, your illogical fear of what others do in private, and your demands that secular laws be anacted which target a specific segment of the populattion.
You don't want homosexuality classified as a special stauts? Then quit giving it to them.
Grow up.
Every state had sodomy laws and enforced them before the so-called sexual revolution of the 1960s brought with it tens of millions of AIDS victims, tens of millions of aborted children, the scourge of other aggressive STDs including anal gonorrhea and hepatitis B, the meltdown of the traditional family, and armies of fatherless young men forming criminal gangs in every major American city.
The dismantling of the sodomy laws--which had been in place since the founding the Republic--has been a powerful abrasive in the larger erosion of the quality of life in America. This erosion has resulted, and will continue to result in massive socialism to pay for the self-indulgent, irresponsible excess.
And yet the bogeyman of "bedroom police" cannot be found anywhere in this puzzle other than in the frenzied, fevered minds of swooners such as yourself. In Texas (as in the case now before SCOTUS), the sodomites were so hard-pressed to find "bedroom police" they had to resort to lying to the police to get them into the bedroom for the premeditiated purpose of having the police arrest them so they would even have a test case.
At any time before this case became debated in public--at any time in the more than 150-plus years of Texas history--did you or any other Texan ever fear "bedroom police" coming into your bedroom? Absolutely not. This bogeyman is a recent creation, tailor-made to advance the gay activist agenda--which will culminate in pro-gay federal hate crime legislation (and entitlements) and gay marriage. You are helping to midwife these abominations into existence.
Lies and bamboozlery, Luis. Like Clinton, that is all that you sodomy lovers and enablers have in your armory. The lies are fairly effective though. You've conned otherwise level-headed FReepers such as Iron Jack and sinkspur into supporting the aim-for-the-anus crowd; you've got them cowering in fear of your bogeyman bedroom police.
What you preach isn't the gospel of conservatism. It is a decaying, disease-ridden corpse that you fob off as conservatism.
Are you assuming that this happens strictly for the sake of sex?
I have traveled on business where sharing a room with another man was required.
Would you have that outlawed, and force companies to bunk up male and female employees?
The rest of the things mentioned happen on public, I don't have a problem with laws that regulate public behavior. I have a problem with laws that regulate private, consensual behavior.
Hey Kevin, there were laws against fornication (pre-marital sex) and adultery as well.
Why do you not consider re-enacting those as well?
What do you think?
A big "A" in scarlet on the clothing of the offending parties?
Kevin...you've never enjoyed oral sex withn the wife or girlfriend?
Have you ever indulged in fornication?
If you answer is no, I know you are a liar.
Strawman, Luis. Grow up, and address reality.
What a shock.
The perverts applaud your efforts at tolerating their evil. There are drug users and pushers, prostitutes, johns, and pimps, bestialphiles, pedophiles, and necrophiles applauding your unconservative stance, too.
The problem with you, is that you want to interpret the constitution when you need to support your arguments, then turn around and demand literal interpretation of others when you want your fallacies debunked.
You want specific constitutional verbiage detailing a right to privacy, but want to freely interpret the second to support your viewpoint.
Loser.
You have never enjoyed sodomy with your spouse or girlfriend?
Nope.
I have no problem saying what I mean. You often have a problem taking it at face value.
I believe that God Almighty abhors homosexuality and I tend to try to agree with him at all times. It is a sin against God, not a crime to be punished by government.
(Hey, you really ought to try moving to the Mid East. They have a type of theocracy here that I think you'd really like.)
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