FREEDOM OF SEX

My darling wife is fond of saying that the biggest decision she ever made was to marry me. She has spent a lifetime assiduously trying to justify the wisdom of that decision by making me look good. Nothing escapes her watchful eye. What I wear, what I eat, what I say; everything must pass inspection.

Well, almost everything. There are times when I help myself to another piece of fudge. And there are times – not many – when I put up a blog she doesn’t buy.

Like the one just before this one, called COMING OUT.

She fears that I am getting overly worked up about the Kim Davis matter, the Obergefell case and the whole business of the LBGT political movement.

Mostly, she fears that my preaching, even though it is mostly to the choir, will mark me as a homophobe – whatever that is – and somehow marginalize everything else I have to say about life, love and politics.

I hope she isn’t right about that. Maybe I am just too idealistic, but I can’t give up on the notion that the public policy of of our nation can be discussed by people of goodwill with courtesy and without resorting to ad hominem personal attacks.

Oh sure, the temptation to shrug the shoulders and say “What is, is” has a strong pull for all of us. Especially when our convictions put us at odds with friends, relatives and relatives of friends. Seems like, despite the miniscule statistics, everybody knows somebody who is gay.

But pubic policy in a republic should reflect what the majority of the people believe, and the only time the majority does not rule is when the majority has surrendered its absolute political power by means of  a written constitution adopted by a super majority that is more nearly the voice of ALL the people.

Wise public policy is not merely the product of public opinion, although the gut feelings of the majority is a factor. Good laws should follow good science and solid logic as well as statistical approval.

If we take biology out of the marriage equation, there ought, at least, be some logical reason for doing so. The Supreme Court seems to be telling us that the Fourteenth Amendment has, imbedded within it, a fundamental human right as sacrosanct as freedom of speech and freedom of religion: freedom of sex.

Enshrined by judicial inference in the supreme law of the land, this new constitutional right is undefined. Does it encompass everything that the proponents of the LGBT community advocate?

By what line of reasoning are laws prohibiting under age marriages to be judged? What logic supports the constitutionality of laws forbidding bestiality? How can government prohibit marriage between cousins, siblings, parents and children?

And since the ‘B’ in LGBT stands for bisexual, is there now a constitutional right to tripartite marriage contracts?

How can polygamy, prostitution and pediphilia be outlawed without infringing on the constitutional freedom of sex?

The history of the adoption and subsequent amendment of our federal constitution is a chronicle of proposal, debate, and compromise involving what George Washington called the explicit and authentic acts of the whole people.

The approval of the narrow majority of a single vote on a panel of nine unelected officials hardly meets those criteria. If there is to be a constitutional right defining freedom of sex in America it should, at the very minimum be openly and vigorously discussed and debated in the blogesphere.

So, dear wife, I apologize for overriding your wise and loving counsel. I just felt it had to be said.