There is no reason to believe that there is one law for families and another for nations. – Mohandas Gandhi
The state of cognitive dissonance in which supporters of big government live is truly stupefying; it requires acceptance of the notion that an action which is wrong for one person, and even worse if repeated by many people, somehow becomes not merely acceptable but moral if practiced by governments or their representatives. If one man steals it’s “theft”, if many do it together it’s “looting”, but when the perpetrator is a government it becomes either “asset forfeiture” or “eminent domain”. We could make similar statements about such crimes as assault, trespassing, perjury, extortion, bribery, kidnapping and murder. And though we rightfully revile individuals who go peeking into others’ windows to spy on them, especially if the window is in a bathroom or other private place, governments seem to consider voyeuristic intrusion into the bedrooms of citizens to be not merely a right, but a moral imperative.
Though religions (especially Judeo-Christian ones) have long felt entitled to dictate the sexual behavior of their followers, civil governments have generally pursued the subject with less enthusiasm and vice laws have therefore repeatedly gone in and out of favor since the Fall of Rome. As regular readers know, the last great proliferation of such laws came with the social purity movement of the late 19th century, and though this mountain of busybody legislation has been slowly worn away since the beginning of the 1930s, in the United States the rate of erosion has been intermittent and progress at removing this vast insult to liberty has been impeded at every step of the process by the kind of people who stay up late at night trying to imagine what their neighbors might be doing behind drawn blinds.
But in 2003 the United States Supreme Court struck terror into the hearts of control freaks from sea to shining sea with its Lawrence vs. Texas decision, which declared sodomy laws unconstitutional. John Lawrence and Tyron Gardner were having consensual homosexual relations in Lawrence’s Houston apartment one September night in 1997 when a Houston cop (summoned by a false domestic disturbance call from a jealous neighbor who was in love with Garner) literally peeked in the back window, saw the two having sex and entered like a big hero with gun drawn to arrest the dirty fags and thereby save the unsuspecting citizens of Texas from perverts in their midst. They pled no contest to violating Texas’ sodomy law but their appeals went all the way to the SCOTUS, which overturned their conviction,
the law under which they had been charged, all similar laws in every state and the 1986 Bowers vs. Hardwick decision, which had essentially ruled that sodomy laws were OK because the Founding Fathers hated homos. Justice Torquemada Scalia vehemently opposed the entire decision, but especially the overturning of Bowers because, as he correctly pointed out, “state laws against bigamy, same-sex marriage, adult incest, prostitution, masturbation, adultery, fornication, bestiality, and obscenity are likewise sustainable only in light of Bowers’s validation of laws based on moral choices.” (Actually, there are valid arguments for laws against adultery and bestiality that aren’t based in Christian morality, but we’ll leave that for another time).
Though homosexuals (rightfully) hailed the ruling as a giant step forward for individual sexual freedom, the whore-haters were not to be outmaneuvered so easily; they quietly inserted an “anti-prostitution pledge” into a major humanitarian aid bill and began to ramp up the “human trafficking” hysteria, thus preemptively blocking any attempt to argue that prostitution laws were unconstitutional under Lawrence by intentionally and deceptively conflating a now-technically-legal activity with a serious (but extremely rare) crime specifically prohibited by the 13th amendment to the Constitution. Meanwhile in Louisiana, felony persecution of whores continued unabated thanks to the Louisiana legislature’s foresight in having enacted (back in 1982) a separate “Crime Against Nature by Solicitation” law which allowed the state to continue torturing adults for life if they dared to mix behavior protected under Lawrence with the capitalistic principles on which the entire American system was founded. But the tide released by Lawrence is still dissolving prudery everywhere; the anti-prostitution pledge was struck down by an appeals court on July 6th, and facing the specter of Doe vs. Jindal Louisiana reduced the penalty for “Crime Against Nature by Solicitation” to the same as those for simple prostitution. And now, as Scalia predicted, Utah’s law against polyamory is under attack:
…On Wednesday [July 13th], the Brown family — the husband, four wives, and 16 children who star in the reality TV show [Sister Wives]…file[d] a lawsuit in federal court in Utah. The family members say the state’s anti-bigamy law is unconstitutional and that Supreme Court precedent backs them up…Brown and his four wives knew they were taking a risk when they signed the deal with the network TLC. But Robyn Brown, wife No. 4, told viewers they wanted to make a point. “It’s OK for us to live this way, honestly,” she said. “I’m sorry — but this is a nation of freedom of choice. We should have this choice, and I want my kids to know that.”
…Kody Brown is legally married to only one wife; the three others are his “spiritual wives.” But [Utah] law says it’s a crime if a married person purports to marry or cohabits with another person. Prosecutors say they’ll decide whether to bring charges against the Browns in the next two or three weeks. In the meantime, the Browns have moved to Nevada and are suing in federal court. Their lawyer, Jonathan Turley, says the state is persecuting model citizens for living out their religious values. “There is no allegation of child abuse, no allegation of child brides, no allegations of so-called collateral crimes,” says Turley, a constitutional law professor at George Washington University Law School. “But prosecutors have stated publicly that they believe the family is committing a felony every night on television.” Turley says prosecutors look the other way when it comes to nonpolygamous relationships. “You can have multiple lovers; you can have adulterous affairs and not be subject to prosecution,” he says. “But the minute you refer to her as your spiritual wife, you become a potential criminal defendant.”
This isn’t about personal rights, says Marci Hamilton. It’s about a state’s ability to regulate marital relationships. Hamilton, an expert on polygamy law and a professor at Cardozo School of Law, says there is a mountain of evidence that polygamy is bad for women and children…”This isn’t a lifestyle choice,” she says. “This is a culture in which men must rule and women are not equal. Three women are equal to one man, nine women are equal to one man — and the children are second-class citizens.” Hamilton says there have been more than 100 challenges to polygamy laws, including in Utah, and all have failed.
But Turley may have powerful ammunition: the Supreme Court’s 2003 decision in Lawrence v. Texas. In that case, the majority ruled that the state could not prosecute people for engaging in private, consensual sexual behavior…Turley’s case is exactly what some have feared — and Justice Antonin Scalia predicted. In his scathing dissent in the Lawrence decision, Scalia said the ruling calls into question any law trying to rein in “immoral and unacceptable” sexual behavior…”Under this principle, it really is anything goes,” says Robert George, who teaches constitutional law at Princeton University. “State laws to protect public morality by prohibiting what have been regarded as immoral sexual conduct just can’t stand constitutional scrutiny,” George says. “So, if they accept the logic of their own principles, then Turley is going to win this in a knockdown”…
I hope they do win. Too long have we allowed busybodies and control freaks to use laws intended to protect the innocent (in the case of bigamy laws, women who unknowingly marry predatory men who are already married to others) as clubs to beat all nonconforming sexual behavior into a bloody pulp. If multiple adult women choose to share one man, or if people of the same sex choose to live together, or if one person wants to be the sexual slave of another, or if a woman agrees to provide sexual favors to a man for a price, it is nobody’s business but theirs and appeals to “protecting women and children” are nothing but sleazy attempts to pimp those women and children to serve the perverted needs of control freaks. As I pointed out in my column of one year ago today, pimping was invented by governments, and it’s pretty obvious that government representatives like Marci Hamilton (who apparently forgets that children are always second-class citizens) are still the most numerous practitioners of the behavior. Scalia’s analysis is correct, but his morality is wrong. In the wake of Lawrence vs. Texas government suppression of individual, consenting adult sexual behavior is doomed, and that is a very good thing.
I hope they win too … and I really like Jonathan Turley – he’s a valuable asset for them.
I disagree that Scalia is Torquemada though – though I did laugh when I saw you put that label on him!
Scalia, in his defense, does get it right every now and then – as he did when he dissented in “Kelo Vs New London” immenent domain case.
BUT …
Like so many well minded people out there who haven’t woken up – Scalia is “married” to the belief that, without government control over society – then society will break down into chaos.
I used to be one of these types. It’s not that I wanted to force anyone to live by my moral values – it’s because, I was simply afraid that some kind of government control was necessary or we’d all turn back into “Wild Kingdom” or something. I wanted to see kids grow up happily and with their father’s present, and instilled with values that they’d, in turn, pass on to their protegy who would then perpetuate a blissful society … ad infinitum.
Buuuuut … that doesn’t work. Government can’t do those kinds of things without extraordinary controls on liberty and freedom. Scalia doesn’t realize this yet … as the vast majority of Americans, both on the “Left” and “Right” don’t realize it.
The problem with “our views” Maggie (and I do subscribe to your view of this) – is that we haven’t articulated how society CAN function without these extraordinary government controls. Until we can do that – I don’t think most Americans, nor “Torquemada” (LOL – that is still funny!) … will wake up!
Very simple: You restrict government from taking action on any interaction between two or more people unless one of them (or his legal guardian in the case of a legal incompetent such as a child or corpse) complains. That’s all. Neat, simple and the way practically every government ran things up until a century ago.
Yes, it’s pretty simple – but it’s not all that neat.
Let me take the “Devil’s Advocate” viewpoint that we’re fighting here …
When these women decide they don’t like this guy anymore – and decide they want a piece of his skin – they’ll go to the government in order to get it. At that point, my (and your) tax dollars get involved to run a court system necessary to adjudicate this.
Personally – I’m all for getting government out of marriage completely – to include tax breaks (I think if we weren’t sheltered from those taxes – we’d be a lot more upset about anyone having to pay them.) … but, this view also means these women GET NOTHING when they split from this guy other than those assets they personally own. Of course – this would apply to EVERY marriage out there and … how do you ensure an equitable split of the marital assets after a divorce in this case (remembering that the union wasn’t sanctioned by the government in the first place)?
I’d go with some kind of “prenuptial” agreement – which states up front what each party expects to receive if the marriage is dissolved. In this case – you’d only go to the court if you didn’t get that. In that case – the marriage relationship simply becomes another legal contract … like the millions already out there between individuals and businesses.
But … you see the problem here right? Most Americans don’t know what our “brave new world” will look like – and they’re afraid of the “unknown” consequences of it. They may not be happily ecstatic about the current status quo – but, in fact – the current system is comfortable and predictable to them – though it is becoming more and more less so by the day.
I have long advocated that government get out of the marriage business. Marriage should be treated as a contract like any other, with rights and responsibilities enumerated; the two parties can mutually break it, or if one breaks it the penalties are described in the contract. That’s all. No more “family court”, no more “best interest of the child”, no more compulsory “no fault”, no more “matrices” to determine who gets what. And no more government interference in people’s personal sex lives.
When this system was established, all existing marriages would automatically default to a standard vanilla contract unless the parties had a pre-nup or renegotiated it themselves.
Yeah that’s my idea too.
I mean seriously – I think it’s more romantic just to think of my marriage with my wife as a “mutually agreed to” affair that we’ve had for 24 years rather than something sanctioned by the church and state.
In fact – I’m getting a bit excited by the prospect of her being my “mistress”!
Could be on to something here!
You’re a guy, aren’t you? For some reason, “marriedness” is extremely important to a lot of women. Damned if I know why.
So, here we go; A realtime modern example of “instinctive” polygyny. I’ll make you a wager for 2 internet bits: Since the social and sexual and bonding needs of these folks are met, within a high-order polygyny partnership, husband’s content, wives are content, the kids have the nuture and support of pretty much every adult involved in the social unit… the odds of complete familial collapse here are probably a damn sight lower than most monogamous relationships where needs are going unmet.
Be interesting to know how it has gone since the article. Any idea,Maggie?
Extremely well written and well argued. I cannot understand why individuals, states,,or religions – or combinations of all three, should have any reason or right to legislate on the activities of consenting adults – providing that all parties are able to make an informed choice.
There are many activiies that people practice and lifestyles that they follow that make my jaw drop open and have less than no appeal to me. But because I don’t like them, or have no desire to be involved in them, I,have no right to define them as ‘wrong’.or seek to outlaw them
There are far more important things on the planet to address and to attempt to resolve. The obsession with sex only highlights the narrowness and oppressiveness of religion, government and self appointed ‘moralists’. It is depressing that they have the time, energy, and resource to apply to what is neither relevant nor a problem.
Thank you, Romantic! I don’t think they actually do have the time, energy and resources to spare; they’re wasting on sex what could be productively applied elsewhere.
I love your reference to Scalia as Torquemada.
People’s attitudes about gays have shifted a million miles since the ’60s. I agree that usually multiple women married to one man are in an inferior position, if only because they can be so easily disposed of. But if it’s their choice, so be it. I declare that one woman having multiple husbands puts her in a superior position, but if it’s what the adults want, we can only allow them to live their lives.
PImping invented by government? Que? The ancient temple whores of Greece and Egypt and Babylon and India were led by a high priestess whose primary duty was to keep everything organized.
As for human trafficking in children for sex slavery, I’m doing research. My preliminary findings indicate this occurs along the seacosts of countries whether or not prostitution is legal or illegal. But they’re not shipped anywhere, it’s pedophilic Europeans and Americans who go to those countries to have sex with children. More to follow.
Gawaine
Read the article on pimps. Modern pimping goes back to post-revolutionary France, but even ancient Athens engaged in a form of state pimping.
I hear and read this: pedophiles from America and Europe go to countries, usually poor countries, to live out their perverted lusts.
Are there no Asian or African or Australian pedophiles?
IME, African and Asian men are more likely to go after “mature” (read: post-pubescent- women), barring the spare immature virgin or “trophy/business arrangement” wife (Japan, for example, has lolicon. Central Africans from oil-producing countries are known to take a junior wife, and the infamous “Africans believe that having sex with virgins cures AIDS!” meme, while having faded from African cultural relevancy prior to its introduction to American minds was valid prior to the issuance of government-sponsored retrovirals.)
Yeah, a lot of people on both sides of the Pacific are freaking out over lolicon. Maybe it’s best if they never find out about shota… or guro.
Maggie, don’t google guro. I did. I wish I hadn’t.
I suspect that, if there was any truth at all to the “virgins cure AIDS” thing, it was a small number of Africans who believed it. Sort of like most Americans don’t believe that the Earth is flat, but some do.
So maybe Africans and Asians don’t go on sex tourism jaunts because a) that’s expensive and b) they can satisfy their loli desires at home.
Ha! Maggie, I put down whores in history for just a moment, and find that your one year ago today article is the second time I am reading about wise Solon and the creation of pimping today!… lol…
Anyway… this quote bugs me…Its doublespeak… they say this about polygamy, but then act themselves as if women are not equal if we choose to have sex for a price…
”This is a culture in which men must rule and women are not equal”
What?
And this is due to polygamy? Not. Whores in History has a completely different explanation. And another explanation of the sexual oppression forced upon women, yet not equally upon men. I am going back to my book, but if any of you have not read it, Please pick it up, I know Maggie quotes it all of the time, but I really didn’t get it until I started reading it myself…
I am thrilled that I can classify myself as one of the stubborn rebellious women that would not be domesticated. I’ll own that.
So… where do you think I should get “Protected by Ishtar” tattooed on my body Mag? lol
Left outer hip, on that spot exposed by a thong but not by granny panties. Dig? 😉
Yeah, I never wear granny panties, and most anybody I know would see it frequently there… perfect. 🙂
I hope you do get back to the topic of why you think there are arguments in favour of making adultery illegal, as I’d love to hear your reasoning. (My view on the matter is that it’s wrong unless both parties in the marriage have freely agreed to it, but that it’s a matter better dealt with by the parties concerned than dragged into the realm of the law.)
Oh, I think it’s best left between the parties as well. However, one could argue that it’s a breach of contract, and since under current law marriage is a three-party contract (man, woman and state) that means the state is entitled to take action against the party who committed the breach. As I said, I don’t think that’s a good idea, but it’s one which could be argued from legal precedent without dragging Christian morality into it.
Every time same-sex marriage comes up, somebody jumps up to shout, “This could lead to dancing!” Um, wait…
Sorry. What they actually shout is, “This could lead to polygamy being legal!” To which I reply, “So? If three men and two women want to enter into a group marriage, well it isn’t my cup of tea but why ban it?”
I hope the Browns win – Kody has been a friend of mine for some years now. I just don’t understand why anyone cares what he or his wives have been doing.
I talked to a mutual friend just after their series began, and the protest was “But it’s ILLEGAL!” When I asked, “But why is it illegal, and why is it anyone’s business,” no one could give me an answer.
If they’re not hurting anyone, and they’re able to pay their own bills (and they are), then who freaking cares what they do?
Lailah, please send them my best wishes as well. 🙂
“Polygamy being legal” …
Maggie, I’ve posted about this before, and you replied, bless your heart.
The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, by Robert A. Heinlein, was set in a society that had a serious scarcity of women – a Moon which had been used as a penal colony by Earth. The people of the Moon coped by sharing; the men of this novel considered women as quite precious, and they were cherished.
The protagonist and narrator was a member of a “line marriage” which had been going on for more than a century. He had several wives, the oldest of whom was more of a “materfamilias” than anything, and a corresponding number of co-husbands. The most important goal of the family was to take care of the children, by giving them a stable home … one that wouldn’t be disrupted completely by the death of a co-spouse, or by divorce … one which included both learned responsibility, and parental love. Gobs and gobs of parental love, from all the parents – or so I would imagine!
Aw, hell, Maggie, you’ve read the book again and again, as I have. I’m explaining this for the others in your readership who may have not read it.
If we go back to the idea that it really shouldn’t be the Government’s concern what goes on behind closed doors, then … what if a line marriage, or a clan marriage, or an open marriage, was indeed better for the children than a torn-apart marriage in which “the Missus” kicked out “the Daddy,” got him put in jail for “domestic violence,” used that charge to gain extortionate “child support” and deny him any more than an afternoon every two weeks of “supervised contact” with his kids and a supercilious officer of the Court?
Yes, this goes outside the purview of an honest Courtesan.
But I was raised by three women, and no man. I wonder if I’d have turned out better-adjusted if there’d been a couple of “co-husbands” in the mix, or even one Kody Brown!
I think almost any kind of stable family is better than a broken one, but I also think the best possible arrangement includes at least one adult of each sex. The PC idea that two adults of the same sex can do just as good a job raising a child as one of each (all other factors being equal) is pure hogwash deriving from that old mumbo-jumbo, “social construction of gender”. Kids raised without a role model of their own sex won’t be any less masculine or feminine, but they don’t learn how to be proper men or women as easily. And kids raised without a role model of the opposite sex tend to be clumsy, insecure or needy in their future dealings with the opposite sex. Widows with young kids used to rely on their fathers, brothers, etc to provide the male model, but now we’re seeing situations in which men are entirely absent from the process…with very nasty social results like gangs, poor school performance, dysfunctional promiscuity in girls, etc.
My father was killed in Vietnam. My mother did remarry, but it wasn’t successful. I was raised with sisters but no brothers. I saw aunts more often than uncles, and interacted with grandmothers more than grandfathers.
I’m a guy, and I’m not considered effeminate… usually. I have noticed things like: my voice tends to kick up in pitch when I answer the phone. I didn’t notice until I started reading that this was a feminine trait. Well obviously I learned it unconsciously from the only people I ever heard answering phones. There are probably a few other things.
No, Laura, my choice of karaoke songs doesn’t count. 😉 And hey, I always remember to put the toilet seat down, so you could do a lot worse. {kiss kiss}
The state of cognitive dissonance in which supporters of big government live is truly stupefying; it requires acceptance of the notion that an action which is wrong for one person, and even worse if repeated by many people, somehow becomes not merely acceptable but moral if practiced by governments or their representatives. If one man steals it’s “theft”, if many do it together it’s “looting”, but when the perpetrator is a government it becomes either “asset forfeiture” or “eminent domain”.
In one of Alistair MacLean’s novels there was the following dialogue.
“What, barefaced theft like that?”
“When individuals engage in larceny, then it’s theft. When governments do it, it’s economics.”
The character was speaking ironically, of course.
“Criminals” (Prostitutes under lots of US jurisdiction) + “Eminent Domain” next?
*shivver*
[…] inspiration came a year after her arrest, in the form of the US Supreme Court decision Lawrence vs. Texas: Justice Antonin Scalia pointed out in his dissenting opinion that “state laws […]