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.
Concept? What concept?
The challenge was 100% self-serving. Of that, there is no question, no argument.
No moron, my example is obvious to everyone but the most committed defenders of the homosexual lifestyle that there is a rational basis for disparate sentencing for homosexual rape and heterosexual rape.
I didn't state it shouldn't be a crime but obviously 98% of 15 year old boys would suffer more trauma, physically and emotionally, from homosexual rape.
That you can't comprehend that is simply amazing.
Yes, for my "unsolicited opinion." That was snide and uncalled for.
Not that I care what you think.
If you don't care what I think, then perhaps you should avoid any and all threads where I show up, so you won't have to read what I think.
And from what I've read about the case, their sexual relationship started prior to the older boy turning 18, which would seem to nullify a statutory rape claim. Either that or it opens up one enormous legal loophole.
How can it be legal for two underage people to have a sexual relationship that is legal one day, but illegal the next simply by the fact of one of them turning 18?
The fact that I don't agree with your doom and gloom scenerio and that you lied about my position seriously hurt your ability to make a meaningful contribution to the debate.
As for Liberaltarians, the consent strawman is their favorite and they defend it vigorously without supporting logic. If Clint used your defense as marking you a member of that group, he can hardly be blamed.
I have never used any goofy defence and I belong to no group as characterized as liberaltarian or any other such childish label.
If you ever want to engage in meaningful adult exchanges with me you need to stop lying and cozying up to imbeciles who have a hate agenda against Libertarians and accuse anyone who doesn't agree with them of being in the hated group.
On every thread on any topic, these goofy people find a way to spew their hatred no matter how long the stretch.
You heard correctly, that is the quoted "time", but if you examine his rationale for killing what he calls "not yet human life", the sky's the limit.
Consider prostitution. Many years ago the rationale for making prostitution a crime was that it was considered that the wife and children of the man engaging the services of the prostitute were victims in that funds used to support them were reduced and family ties were disrupted. This is still true, however, no court would consider family members victims today.
All that is necessary for the court to give approval for such things as sex with minors is to diminish the status of the minor. It is similar to abortion. Once society was taught to consider the fetus as something less than living human being abortion became legal, then accepted, and now preferred in many circles.
But your leading strawman questions aren't snide and uncalled for? LOL, good one. Get a mirror.
I have no intention of avoiding you and I don't have to read what you think, I will continue disregard most of it.
But I still have one question that I asked directly, so I must care on that. Unfortunatley, you won't answer. There must be a reason.
We disagree on the constitutionality and the expected effects.
As to the ten commandments, you haven't answered the question.
Weren't you the one who recently made the indignant claim that you never disparage people or use ad hominems here on FR? Guess you're renouncing that policy, huh?
there is a rational basis for disparate sentencing for homosexual rape and heterosexual rape.
I have no doubt you believe this to be true, but I would hope even you would admit that you're viewpoint is quite colored by your animus toward homosexuals. Not everyone believes there is a rational basis for such disparity. And such a glaring disparity does not make for a very defensible public policy.
That kind of reckless attitutde, frankly, is the kind of wink-and-a-nod attitude that lends a tacit approval to older women raping teenage boys. That's appalling.
And that's why you can go to jail for it. But in the state of Kansas a case like this is less severe than a case where there's a larger age difference or where force is involved.
And since you seem to think there was consensual sex going on, how about if the younger of the two was 10? Or 8? Or 5?
That would have qualified the 18-year-old for a much longer sentence. If you have any problems with any of this you should write the Kansas legislature.
Paraphrasing C.S. Lewis, there is no worse tyrant than someone who will chain a man and tell him it's for his own good.
Now I know you were lying. I never claimed to be free of ad hominems, in fact when you attempted this same crap before I called you an idiot.
What I said was I don't use racial or sexual epithets.
If the ad hominem fits, wear it.
Please stop attributing strange thoughts that come from your noggin as my personal views. It is annoying and it is lying.
If you want to know whether I'm trying to "normalise" any kind of rape, simply ask. The answer by the way is no.
The slippery slope argument would be a strawman if it were not so well evidenced in real life. I'm surprised you don't recognize it.
There is a wider universe of people who recognize the slippery slope argument than church ladies. As far as I know, there is no wider universe of people who use the consensual sex argument than a subset of liberatarians. You may feel free to educate me on others.
Shalom.
I don't know but I do know that Singer considers the ingestion of meat a "holocaust". Strange guy, eating a burger is morally bankrupt and killing babies is righteous.
The Kansas legislature sees a rational basis for disparated sentencing in many different rape cases.
The oligarchy of nine has seen fit tell them they are wrong based on Lawrence.
Calling the Kansas legislature is futile, you must speak to Herr Kennedy.
You're right. I also won't know if he was right handed or left handed. Where's the relevance? What point did you think you were making?
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.