Posted on 07/14/2007 12:24:48 PM PDT by madprof98
Things that are objectively abusive ought to be, and sometimes are, prosecutable.
Here's an analogy: "Depraved heart murder" is an American legal term for an action that demonstrates a "callous disregard for human life"that results in death, even if the original act had the victim's consent. Consent is not considered the sole determinative factor. Some acts are recognized as being intrinsically depraved.
Thus, it's still true in this country (God help us, I hope so) that if I asked you cut one of my kidneys out and then eat it baked in a pie, even if you had my request videotaped, signed, and notarized, you would still be prosecuted for something---aggravated assault and cannibalism even if I lived--- and, if I died, murder--- the fundamental offense being not lack of consent, but committing a violation evincing a depraved mind.
As recently as 1960, every state had an anti-sodomy law. That is, a longstanding and almost universal consensus existed that anal sodomy was depraved. Overturned by the U.S. Almighty Unelected Super-Legislature Supreme Court, 2003.
I'd oppose Lawrence vs Texas and say, let the states decide.
This is not an esthetic judgment. Nor is it directed against gays: sodomy is abusive and depraved no matter who does it. It's not practical to prosecute it if it's done in a private place between adults who don't bring charges, I'll grant you that. But if one of them brings charges, I say prosecute.
It should be, else nanny government is depriving of content my ability to consent.
I am not inclined to catalog this in a casuistic way, but I would say that sexual infamies like sodomy and sadism, acts which result in death or grave bodily injury, and acts which seriously degrade human dignity (e.g. chattel slavery) are acts which no one can legitimately consent to, which are not justified by consent being present, and which ought to be prosecutable.
I agree with you Mrs. Don-o.
Why not? On what basis do you conclude that I don't have complete self-stewardship (ownership being God's) but that the state has partial stewardship of my self?
Murray the R: I suspect (I could be wrong) that you say that consent should be the sole determinative factor because you don’t object to sodomy per se. How about if I request that you cut off my limbs and eat them, leaving me to bleed to death on the floor? And that my request and consent are documented beyond a shadow of a doubt? Are you saying that you should not be prosecuted?
ONLY? Is that all God (the Scriptures, Tradition, common sense) wants? IF what you say is true, then if a country rounds up all the Jews, all the Christians, and assorted other groups of people, and puts them in slave camps, you could have no objection--because all those enslaved people could remain pure, and proclaim the truth in and out of season. In a single swoop, you have done away with the concept of INJUSTICE. As long as Christians' mouths aren't taped shut to stop their proclaiming, no prob.
A lot of what is called "conservatism" nowadays is Libertarianism--a deranged, maniacal, barbaric Libertarianism at that, that makes a god out of consent.
Anytime you have a society, you have a situation in which individuals are living together without complete self-stewardship.
Number 67 was supposed to be addressed to you, with cc to Mrs. Don-O.
I think perhaps you aren't getting the part about the "depraved mind," and thus don't see why the state should be concerned about it.
Let me use another, non-sexual example.
Say a man obtains a chimpanzee somehow, and in the presence of his children, electric shocks it, whips it bloody, mutilates and tortures it with an electric drill over a period of hours (I can't go on, so no more details.) No human being's consent has been violated, and in a physical sense there is no human victim. Nor does the law posit that an animal has rights, nor should it.
What is being violated here is not human consent nor animal rights, but deep-seated human responses of decency. We feel --- and in this case, I would argue the feeling corresponds to a truth ---- that this man has a depraved mind, that he has not the deep aversion to cruelty that a normal person has, and that he is therefore a dangerous man.
We would not permit this man to be in the presence of our children, or of any persons unable to defend themselves; we wouldn't want to be in a tent or a kitchen or a car with him. We don't want him peering over the hedge at our dog, our spouse or ourselves.
We want him taken away and removed, at least for a time, from society, not just to protect chimps, but to protect society from his depredations, and so as to impress upon the mind of the community that this is not tolerable, and in fact will not be tolerated.
I am afraid, though, that we live in a society which is already more-than-half deranged in its acceptance of perversion and cruelty. The disturbing thing is not that these things shock us, but that we are so desensitized that they fail to shock.
While you're at it, check this out as a view of what happens when politically-sponsored desensitization reaches a wonderful new level.
No, I say it because my objections should not override another adult's consent.
How about if I request that you cut off my limbs and eat them, leaving me to bleed to death on the floor? And that my request and consent are documented beyond a shadow of a doubt? Are you saying that you should not be prosecuted?
I agree that it is inherently irrational to seek one's own death, and thus that consent to such is inherently defective; the same does not hold true for any other act I can think of (including the acts under discussion).
Set that to music and I'll bet it's a real toe-tapper.
Incorrect conclusion, because my obligation to proclaim the truth includes proclaiming the truth that those people are being wronged (whether or not I am among them).
A lot of what is called "conservatism" nowadays is Libertarianism--a deranged, maniacal, barbaric Libertarianism at that, that makes a god out of consent.
No libertarian would claim that the rounded-up people had consented.
"Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law', because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual." - Thomas Jefferson (emphasis added)
Policing the sex lives of husbands and wives is neither a conservative nor a libertarian policy.
It’s just getting harder and harder to find a church that disapproves of homosexuality.
‘Opposition to abortion is already considered a bar to high office, at least in the minds of most US Senators. Opposition to “gay rights” is really just a complementary litmus test.’
I don’t think so. Half of the population of the United States might desire to have an abortion, or at least the availability of it (women).
Less than five percent of the population sees the same gender as they are and thinks ‘sex’ or ‘love’.
Only in the minds of the media. If a Republican candidate came out and said that he finds homosexual behavior to be wrong, unnatural, and disordered, but that he understands that many peoeple are afflicted with homosexual desires and he sympathizes with their plight, every pro-homo GOP vote he lost would be made up with two anti-homo blue-collar and minority democrat votes.
Well, we agree that the consent to be killed is inherently defective (buh-bye, Dr. Keborkian and all your crew!) but what about the consent to be someone else’s chattel slave? Hypothetical: Woman says: I will be your chattel slave for life if you will give my impoverished husband $400.” Hm?
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