Posted on 07/08/2003 7:08:39 AM PDT by F_Cohen
Is It A Fundamental Constitutional Right To Have Sex With Children, Too?
By Lowell Phillips Tuesday July 8, 2003
Toogood Reports
"This is a glorious and beautiful time to be queer."
Don't start hammering out the hate mail just yet. Those aren't my words, but those of a bona fide "gay rights" activist. Amid the orgy of celebration (pun intended) following the Supreme Court's 6-3 ruling in Lawrence v. Texas, striking down sodomy laws, Molly McKay, spokeswoman for Marriage Equality California proclaimed,
"This month has been filled with hope... This is a glorious and beautiful time to be queer."
Few on either side of what remains of the ideological debate could argue.
It must also be a glorious and beautiful time to sit on the imperial U.S. Supreme Court. Honestly now, could there be a better gig? Granted, getting there is no simple feat. But once you have accumulated just enough gray hair, paid homage to the miscarriages of those who have preceded you and aced the litmus tests, you are set for life and free to indulge in philosophical flights of fancy.
Sure, the job description mentions something called "The Constitution" and adherence to it, but you know that the notion of it being a "living document" entitles you to make it whatever you want it to be. Comically, some of your colleges, one is a black man who's a traitor to his race, another a spiteful Italian, harp about this thing called "original intent" and prattle on about "the Founding Gentlemen," " the Drafting Fathers" or something like that, thus preventing them from making their own rules, as others have. Whatever they're called, they certainly could not know what they meant as well as you do.
The recent decisions of the high court have again proven that it is not a forum within which the survival of our republic is assured, but rather one where two-dimensional, feel-good social thinking outweighs codified constitutional safeguards. Indeed its actions show that our once sacred document no longer lives. The illusion of life is maintained, however, by regularly applied swats and kicks to its hollow carcass.
The Second Amendment "right of the people to keep and bear arms" to some, though succinctly written, never existed. And if it did, it could not possibly have been expected to apply in an era when modern weaponry would pose such a dire threat to the collective good. But when it was written, corporations and ad hoc associations could easily match the firepower of the federal government (see: The Whisky Rebellion of 1794). Whatever the power of modern weaponry today, such groups could not possibly hold out for long against the U.S. government, or a local police force for that matter. As such, the "threat" to the collective good today is miniscule as compared to the time of drafting of the Constitution.
But those were barbaric times and government has evolved into a benign servant of people and can assure that criminals will never be armed and roaming the streets. Right?
Funds extorted from the American people and then returned as an entitlement opiate, along with the whims of the activist judges, have been instrumental in rendering the Tenth Amendment meaningless. It clearly states,
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people."
But very little remains outside the purview of the federal government, and as such this represents nothing more than a quaint reminder of a time when this country was something called "a republic".
The concept of "diversity" represents a "compelling state interest", assuming erroneously that the term, as it relates to public policy, is definable. But whatever it means, the decision in Grutter vs. Bollinger affirms that it trumps the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. While the University of Michigan and all publicly funded institutions are asked not to be so obvious as to assign a specific point structure, they may certainly continue to favor some over others based on skin color.
The distortions of the meanings behind the Constitution are sweeping, and though never stated outright, the assumption must be that the Drafter's intentions were to deconstruct their entire culture.
Not only were they intellectually enlightened, the Founders were also largely pious men, which despite modern interpretations are not mutually exclusive. In a step to assure the free practice of religion and to prevent the establishment of an American version of the Anglican Church, they spelled out in the First Amendment,
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..."
Yet somehow the courts interpret this to mean that any and every reference to, or expression of, faith is prohibited in the public square. Moreover, the aforementioned abandonment of the Tenth Amendment and near universal distribution of federal dollars insure that no municipality, however tiny, or faith-based organization, however benign, is unaffected by this misrepresentation.
But the truest illustration of the Founders assumed desire to lay waste to all they knew is the dogged recognition of the constitutionally unenumerated "right to privacy". Whether this alleged right is derived from a creative reading of the 1st, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 9th or 14th Amendment, or a combination of them, the result is to place all morality on an unstable foundation.
"Good," the response often is. Following the Supreme Courts ruling in Lawrence vs. Texas, Democrat Rep. James P. Moran of Virginia commented,
"The government has no business regulating or legislating morality, and it certainly has no business interfering with this very private action between consenting adults..."
There is nothing remotely unusual about the statement. Such sentiments pass for acumen, but are nothing of the sort. On the contrary, this is screaming stupidity. To suggest that law, any law, can be enacted apart from morality is ludicrous. It is no more possible than attempting to breath without inhaling. They are one and the same.
No matter if it is found in the text of the Constitution or born of the legislature, when broken down to its basic components law ends up being a "because it's right" or "because it's wrong" issue. And conclusions of right and wrong are moral judgments. Period. Few would argue that rape should be permitted, but when put to a series of "whys", it comes down to "because it's wrong". The same holds for any crime.
Writing for the majority in Lawrence vs. Texas, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy proclaimed,
"Freedom extends beyond spatial bounds. Liberty presumes an autonomy of self that includes freedom of thought, belief, expression and certain intimate conduct... Adults may choose to enter upon this relationship in the confines of their homes and their own private lives and still retain their dignity as free persons... The State cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime..."
Noted by many "intolerant" right-wingers is that, while directed at decriminalizing homosexual sodomy, this leaves the door wide open for endless actions that can be said to fall under the manufactured right to privacy.
Although ridiculed, vilified and generally ignored by the politically correct intelligentsia, Justice Antonin Scalia responded with the undeniable,
"States continue to prosecute all sorts of crimes by adults in matters pertaining to sex: prostitution, adult incest, adultery, obscenity, and child pornography...This effectively decrees the end of all morals legislation. If, as the Court asserts, the promotion of majoritarian sexual morality is not even a legitimate state interest, none of the above-mentioned laws can survive rational-basis review..."
The notion of a right to privacy, entangled with an increasing creative application of the "Equal Protection Clause" and the vacuous term "consenting adults" sweeps the moral, and thereby legal, underpinnings out from beneath American culture, human civilization, and to a great extent natural law. If the thinking behind rulings like Lawrence vs. Texas and Roe vs. Wade is in keeping with the Constitution, exactly where is the rationale for forbidding homosexual marriage, homosexual adoption, polygamy, bestiality, drug use, adult incest, prostitution and child pornography?
It does not exist.
The term "consenting adults" is itself a clear statement of moral judgment. An age at which consent can legally be given is set according to what is considered morally appropriate, and has no definitive connection to emotional, intellectual or physical maturity.
The idea that what is now considered "statutory rape" or even "pedophilia" could ever be legitimized is far from the minds of average Americans. But so too were thoughts that homosexuality would be deemed "normal", that "gender" would be a subjective concept, and that homosexual "marriage" would be seriously contemplated to Americans not long ago.
The malleability of modern moral standards is already setting the philosophical groundwork. Throughout the media children are increasingly objectified sexually. Contraception and pregnancy termination have established sex in our emerging reality as nothing more than a recreational activity. Instruction is given in all variations with public dollars in schools, along with contraceptives and abortion on demand, free from restrictions of parental oversight. And parenting itself on the subject of sex is more and more often summed up in the phrase, "well, they're going to do it anyway".
Children are increasingly asserting their independence through the courts, challenging dress codes, drug testing, locker searches and winning on alleged constitutional grounds. Considering the intellectual acrobatics necessary to find a "right to abortion" in the Constitution, a conclusion that ages of consent are arbitrary and that denying children the right to give consent constitutes a violation of the Equal Protection Clause should be easy; perhaps not today, or next year but a decade or two from now.
Noted champions of the "gay rights" movement have for years romanticized "man-boy" love in literature, like Paul Russell in his book "The Coming Storm," David Leavitt in "Martin Bauman; or, A Sure Thing," Agustin Gomez-Arcos in "The Carnivorous Lamb," and others. Such works are published by major companies and available at your local bookstore.
Much as the acceptance of homosexuality by the psychiatric profession and its removal from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) in 1973 was a watershed in the mainstreaming of this "lifestyle," so too will it be for those who wish to engage in sex with minors, euphemistically referred to as "intergenerational intimacy."
As far back as the mid-1980's experts like Dr. David Finkelhor had concluded that,
"[A] body of opinion and research has emerged in recent years which is trying hard to vindicate homosexual pedophilia."
In 1998 the American Psychological Association (APA) published the essay "A Meta-Analytic Examination of Assumed Properties of Child Sexual Abuse Using College Samples" which concluded that sexual contact between children and adults was not necessarily harmful, decried the "indiscriminate use" of terms like "child sexual abuse," "victim" and "perpetrator," and that "a willing encounter with positive reactions would be labeled simply adult-child sex." Mainstream commentators like Andrew Sullivan embraced the thinking and Judith Levine mirrored it in her 2002 publication of "Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex," with a foreword by former Clinton Surgeon General Joycelyn M. Elders.
Mental health professionals attending the May 19, 2003 convention of the American Psychiatric Association in San Francisco proposed removing several categories of mental illness from the DSM, including exhibitionism, fetishism, transvestism, voyeurism and sadomasochism, as well as pedophilia. CNS News reported on the event and on Dr. Frederick Berlin, from the Sexual Disorders Clinic at the Johns Hopkins Hospital who argued that adults that feel a sexual attraction to children should not be made to feel shame and was quoted as saying,
"I have no problem accepting the fact that someone, through no fault of his own, is attracted to children..."
Linda Ames Nicolosi of the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) protested and concluded, as any clear thinker should,
"If pedophilia is deemed normal by psychiatrists, then how can it remain illegal?...It will be a tough fight to prove in the courts that it should still be against the law."
With the ever-expanding, extra-constitutional right to privacy, the inventive application of the Equal Protection Clause, in conjunction with our moral devolution spearheaded by the psychiatric profession, adult-child sex may one day be legal. With the discovery by our learned Supreme Court Justices of the "right to abortion" and now the "right to sodomy," the day may not be far away when sex with children is considered "fundamental" and "constitutional." And when that day comes, ask we might, but it's doubtful that G-d will any longer bless America.
BTW, the Libertarian party doesn't represent me or very many of the posters on this forum. It's called a strawman. The poster's stock in trade.
Oh, it's a trait? It's not genetic? Where is the left-hand gene?
Usual Liberaltarian reaction from hypocrites who can’t justify their position. Thanks for not disappointing.
Who said it did?
It does represent the sort of "consent" rationalization employed by elements of the Court to invent a Constitutional "right" to commit sodomy, and the party platform demonstrates that such libertarian doctrines extend to children.
Is there a comment you'd like to make regarding the quote Roscoe gave you?
I don't like to comment on off topic nonsense. In case you missed it, Bosco was talking about a political party which has nothing whatsoever to do with anything on this thread or this subject. That particular political party has only been introduced by those who have that agenda.
You find a topic, he will go to their website and find something to post which he thinks furthers his obsession. It's sad you fall for it.
Better go back and reread. I din't introduce the ten commandments, a different poster did. I asked That poster questions regarding his post.
From the article at the top of the thread:
The term "consenting adults" is itself a clear statement of moral judgment. An age at which consent can legally be given is set according to what is considered morally appropriate, and has no definitive connection to emotional, intellectual or physical maturity.
Uh, may I ask what scientific journals you're reading and are they from this decade?
The large number of ex-gays will show you that
Allow me to let you in on a little secret. Except for the die-hard Kool-Aid drinkers of the ex-gay movement and the fundamentalist tyrants, the whole ex-gay thing is an absolute joke.
your arguments are weak.
Show me how yours are any stronger.
You had to back-peddle away from your linkage to skin color
I didn't and don't back away from what I said whatsoever.
You don’t know any ex-gays do you? You have no basis for that opinion other than what’s published by homosexual activist groups who want everyone to believe their perversion is innate behavior. Your prejudice against ex-gays sad and telling. Are you a homosexual?
I didn't fall for anything. I read the post and moved on, filing the information away in case anybody ever wants to discuss the Libertarian Party's position on the AoC.
However, you felt the need to point the post out to me and make disparaging remarks about the poster. If you are right and he is a troll, you simply gave him what he asked for. If a post is off-topic, I recommend you ignore it. If you must respond, rebut.
Shalom.
You should really expound on this because you've got me curious now.
How is it that you can breezily accept that left-handedness is simply a "trait" in the absence of a genetic indicator, yet at the same time, you intransigently refuse to acknowledge that homosexuality could be a natural trait as well, even in the absence of a genetic indicator?
And I suspect even if a genetic indicator was found for homosexuality, you wouldn't waiver from your animus toward homosexuals one iota.
I recognized a long time ago that handedness was not like skin color, as did scientists, but they did find a way to determine whether a person was right or left handed.
Call me crazy, it's just a thought, but I think there are some pretty reliable ways to determine if a person is homosexual or heterosexual.
And you were saying something about me having a weak argument?
I know one who pretended to be ex-gay for a couple of years!
Must you ask this of everyone who disagrees with you? It's pathetic to even dignify that with an answer, but I've answered it before. Sorry to disappoint you.
Yep, every attempt to prove homosex is anything but a mental illness is non-repeatable or othewise disproven. Only gays ever make that claim and they can't back them.
Allow me to let you in on a little secret. Except for the die-hard Kool-Aid drinkers of the ex-gay movement and the fundamentalist tyrants, the whole ex-gay thing is an absolute joke.
Allow me to let you in on a little secret. Except for the idiots at Nasa and the pro-science crowd, the whole lunar landing thing is an absolute joke.
I happen to know many gays and many ex-gays. It is no joke.
Show me how yours are any stronger.
If I had nothing more, the fact that my position has been the norm for centuries makes it stronger. You want to change the norm, you have to have an argument. The "naturally gay" crowd doesn't have one. It is a perversion.
I didn't and don't back away from what I said whatsoever.
OK, then, tell me again how homosexual perversion is like skin color.
Shalom.
You clearly missed the context.
I'll tell you what, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. Let's start all over.
I think homosexuality is a sin.
I am not in favor of people accepting it as normal.
I also know that government is inherently immoral as an institution.
I also do not think that non-rights violating private consenual sexual practices are included in the the list of things over which government has LEGITIMATE power.
I also think that children have rights like everyone else.
These rights are not granted by governments but it is the only legitimate function of government to defend those rights.
Particularly for those who not powerful enough to defend them for themselves. Like children.
Children have a right to go unmolested sexually and otherwise.
Children are incompetant to make decisions about whether to have sex.
Society has long agreed that children need these protections and they cannot give consent. I believe that society was correct on that point.
Therefore even an imperfect arbitrary age of consent set by legislatures is preferable to no age of consent.
Having said that, I also believe that the laws that make reasonable distinctions between child molestation and consensual sex between minors of almost the same age are appropriate. A 30 yr old with a 14 yr old is clearly different than an 18 yr old boy and his 17 yr old girlfriend. It's common sense.
There you have it, disagree if you please, but don't accuse me of starting this fight with these authoritarian thugs who patrol this site with an eye to blaming every evil in the world on libertarians.
Nothing breezy about it. I gave you the reason that I believe it is a trait. I recognize homoerotic fetish as a mental illness not because there is or is not a genetic indicator, but because of my knowledge of gays and ex-gays.
You are right on one point, though. I believe we will one day find that alcoholism is a congenital tendency. That will not cause me to waiver at all in my position that alcoholics should not drink. Similarly, if sexual perversion is a congenital tendency, that will not cause me to waiver in my position that people should not engage in deviant sex.
Shalom.
You aren't blind and deaf - you've heard the rumblings coming from NAMBLA, et al. Even the pscyhologists are joining the band wagon and saying sex between a child and an adult is not always harmful, and might even be beneficial.
The 'age of consent' will be lowered. There are some groups out there wanting it lowered to 12. I pray they fail.
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