This is not meant as a debate; it is a question for those of you who are conservative and opposed to the Supreme Court’s ruling on gay sex.
As I understand it, conservatives have always pushed for a smaller government that is less intrusive into people’s lives, a movement in the direction of laissez-faire. Why aren’t you celebrating a victory for getting the government out of people’s bedrooms? Is it specifically in the issue of homosexuality that you think the government has the right to control people’s behavior? Could you explain this apparent contradiction?
Or, to put it another way: Why do you believe “laissez-faire” should apply only to economic issues, and not to questions of morality?
I favor the government being out of people’s bedrooms. I’m pleased with the results of the decision.
I have some concerns with having achieved that result by means of questionable judicial reasoning. I’d be happier if the result had been achieved legislatively, rather than judicially.
I don’t quite undersand your assertion panache45, any Conservative worth his autographed copy of John Birch is in favor of this ruling against the intrusion of government into the private lives of we citizens of these United States.
Jeepers liberal folk, homosexuality is largly biological and so homosexuals can’t help their aberrant sexual desires, so please liberal folk always remember that homosexuals are people too.
Maybe so, but it seems there is a large overlap between people who are generally in favor of conservative political positions on non-sex-related issues and people who are anti-gay, so I’m not surprised at the confusion. Some people have a hard time making the generalization about wanting less government interference in individual decisions apply to issues they personally oppose for nonpolitical reasons.
Being opposed to homosexuality doesn’t imply that one wants the government to take a hand. The two aren’t mutually inclusive. That’s my take on the issue.
And before you go jumping on me and calling me a homophobe…Don’t. I don’t care what people do in their bedrooms, I was just stating a different point of view than the “either/or” of the OP.
You’re mixing political-philosophical conservatives with social-religious conservatives. They’re usually allies, and often the same persons, but not always.
You’d be better off asking the Bible-thumpers than the minimum-government activists about their opinion on this.
As someone pointed out above, you make an erroneous assumption. Most social conservatives are far from laissez-faire. In fact, libertarian conservatives and social conservatives generally agree on very little. Social conservatives want government to basically push for policies which are, by their definition, pro-family. The have no aversion to the government using its monopoly on force to coerce people into doing “pro-family” things. They are anti-drug, anti-porn, anti-prostitution, anti-divorce, etc. They do generally think taxes should be lower, and think government should be smaller because big government undermines the family.
Libertarian conservatives, however, want smaller government, period. They don’t really care about whether or not a government policy or law hurts or preserves the family. They care about the rights of the individual, not the “sanctity” of the family.
Where these two groups come together, lower taxes and smaller government, is a pretty large area and they generally get along well together. It should be noted, though, that they support these policies for two different reasons. When other issues are discussed (such as sodomy laws), these two groups fight quite fiercely.
Why do liberals believe “laissez-faire” should apply only to questions of morality, and not to economic issues?
The truth is that there are a lot of different kinds of “conservatives”, all with significant but varying degrees of influence in the Republican Party. Just look at foreign policy: Paul Wolfowitz, Henry Kissinger, James Baker, and Pat Buchanan are all generally labelled “conservative”, but each of them has a completely different take on foreign policy (and these are all “conservative” foreign policies). The connection between laissez-faire types and social control types is more an expedient political alliance than anything else, AFAICT.
Conservatives who are not libertarians generally believe that government has a few legitimate uses for the power the people give it. The purpose of government is to protect the society from foreign enemies via the army and from criminal behavior via the police. What guides most conservatives as to what is criminal behavior and what is permissable is the values (mostly religous) that have shaped our society for the past 200 plus years. There will always be a trade off between the damage to individual liberty by outlawing a behavior and the damage to society by allowing a behavior. In a democracy these tradeoffs are decided by the people except for certain areas which the constitution put off limits. The supreme court substituting its wisdom for the american people’s is not a victory for conservatives.
Aaaaagh! rjung, you know very well that “these folks” is the New York Times. Yes, the New York Times who will at the drop of a press hat round up all the tired and worn usual suspects and then present their predictable babble as truly representative of mainline conservative thought.
This is one of the oldest trickster rabbit tricks in the book and today it fools nobody but the foolish wing of Democrats who love to hate.
What did they expect the Rev. Jerry Falwell to say…that he’s in favor of sodomy?
The New York Times, indeed.
:dubious:
Say** Mockingbird**, “Creepy”? Are we both speaking the same language? Or has the meaning of “abberrant” been changed by the godfathers of the politically correct?
Conservative checking in. I read parts of the majority opinion of the Justices in the Boston Globe and though it was…well, just. What else is there to say. I did hear (or read) complaints voiced in other fora about the judicial activism aspect of it, but never familiarized myself with how it applies to this case. O’Connor was succinct about it: The law does not apply equally to all individuals. Just those who prefer the same sex as they are themselves…and I suspect that they aren’t overly concerned about enforcing it within Texas prisons, for example, so there’s a definite individual “target” for this law. So O’Connor seems to have a sound basis for ruling against. Ianal, yomv, and so forth.
Milum, the word aberrant can mean either wrong or unusual. If you don’t mean to say that homosexuality is wrong, don’t use a word that has that meaning. It’s not a sufficient defence to point out that the word also means unusual, and that’s the sense in which you used it. The reader can’t tell that you didn’t intend the other meaning.
Maybe because we’ve heard the argument about “disadvantageous to the continuity of the kind” a hundred times before? (And it’s not a valid argument, anyway)
If the tone of the post (or at least that section of it) wasn’t meant to be patronizing and condescending, you missed your target.
If we today must first find euphemistic words for the most innocent of ideas so that they don’t offend the self appointed politically correct censors among us, then debate becomes a no-goal contest and the search for truth through the exchange of ideas becomes a sham.
