
Headed to California, Kansas, Minnesota, Indiana, and then Iraq this summer.
No time for the contemplative life right now. :-)
I love you Travis, Jon, Nate, Kaylynne, Mom, Jay, Lily, Grace, Nanny, Papaw, and Tommy-Mac!
No one could make a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little. --Edmund Burke


Same sex relationships are illegal in more than 70 countries. In nine the penalty for engaging in such relationships is death. Here in the
I believe that homosexuality is immoral. However, my private religious beliefs are irrelevant to the larger question that these statistics raise: Should any government have the right to punish its citizens for having consensual sex?
The obvious answer should be no.
Laws prohibiting same sex couples or any consenting adult from engaging in sexual activity should be repealed with one exception — incest — which I will discuss later.
Nothing is more personal than the way people choose to shape their sexual relationships. Government has no business intruding into people’s bedrooms or private intimate relationships.
This doesn’t mean everyone must consider all sexual acts acceptable. It simply means that as long as the participants are consenting adults, then the government has no right to use force to try to prevent such behavior or punish people for engaging in certain acts. There is no justification for executing, or imprisoning, peaceful citizens because of their sexual choices.
For sex to truly be considered “consensual,” two conditions must exist. First, everyone involved must willingly agree to participate in the sexual acts. Second, those who agree must understand what they are agreeing to participate in.
The second requirement — that they understand the nature of the act or acts — is why a legal age of consent is necessary. I would propose 16 as a proper legal age of consent, but that is a debate for another time.
Though incest may be consensual sex between two adults, there is the risk that a third party who did not consent to the act will be negatively affected. I am talking, of course, about the child that may be created as a result of the act. The child is highly likely to be born with significant mental disorders, physical defects, or both. Because the non-consenting child is at such a high risk for experiencing such harmful effects as a result of the adults’ actions, incest is an exception to my thesis that all laws regulating sex between consenting adults should be repealed.
In short, as long as the sexual acts between adults are consensual, and do not place a non-consenting third party at a high risk, then the government has no right to regulate or prohibit the actions.
The most common cases of non-traditional (i.e. not between one man and one woman) sexual relationships are homosexual relationships and polygamous relationships. Both types of relationships are punishable by law in many countries, including the
This is an abuse of government power in any society, and particularly in one such as the
When a government imprisons or in any way punishes peaceful consenting adults for having sex, that government has stepped outside of its proper boundaries and is acting unjustly.
The debate over government’s proper role in its citizens’ sex lives prompts us to consider what the government’s role is in any private relationship, such as marriage or friendship. I would argue that the government has no role in any peaceful, private relationships, regardless of whether those relationships involve sex, friendship, or marriage.
Any government that presumes it has the power to deem which peaceful human relationships are good and which are bad is acting outside of its proper limits. All people deserve equal treatment under the law, and the easiest way to ensure that this occurs is not to grant marriage licenses to homosexuals or polygamists, but to remove government altogether from marriage and private sexual relationships. Consensual sex, marriage, and friendships are private affairs. The government should have no righ
t to regulate such matters.
Some claim that the government should have the right to deem some consensual sex acceptable and some consensual sex unacceptable, and should also have the power to punish anyone who engages in the “unacceptable” kind of consensual sex. If this were the case, it’s difficult to imagine what the government wouldn’t have the power to regulate and, thus, punish.
The government should not have the right to tell its citizens how to have sex. Nor should the government have the right to decide which sexual positions are legal, or when sex can legally occur. Punishment should not be imposed for engaging in consensual sexual acts.
Everyone has a different concept of morality, and the government should not have the right to impose on its citizens its version of morality. The poet T.S. Eliot once wrote:
They constantly try to escape
From the darkness outside and within
By dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good.
However, no government system can make someone good, and legislating morality doesn’t make a society moral. An act can only be truly moral when someone has the freedom to act immorally, but chooses otherwise.
As stated earlier, same sex relationships are illegal in more than 70 countries and are punishable by death in nine of those countries. This is clearly an injustice and an abuse of government power. Any law regulating sex between consensual adults is wrong and should be repealed.
“We climbed, [Virgil] first and I behind, until,
Through a small round
opening ahead of us
I saw the lovely things the heavens hold
And we came
out to see the stars once more.”(Inferno 136-139)
After surviving the depths of Hell, Dante and Virgil ascend out of the Inferno and into Purgatorio, the second realm of the Catholic afterlife. Once Dante has been completely purged of his sins in Purgatorio, he makes his final accession into Paradiso, now guided by Beatrice, the ideal woman first described by Dante in La Vita Nuova, and who, it is revealed, has interceded, with vigilant prayer, to save Dante; setting him on his corrective path through the afterlife.
From beginning to end, the Divine Comedy symbolizes the spiritual quest of human life, a quest rendered necessary by most all human beings. As with all great literature, any reader of Dante will discover more of what it means to be human.
Over 300 years after Dante wrote the Divine Comedy, a Puritan English poet named John Milton wrote a theologically-themed and vastly influential poem titled Paradise Lost. Paradise Lost is the story of the Fall of Man from Eden. The poem tells the drama of Adam and Eve’s decline from dignity and happiness to shame and selfishness. Milton teaches his readers, “the central drama of human life is temptation, and the best kind of heroism is patient resistance to it.” (Kantor 93) Milton also teaches his readers, as did Dante, that there is forgiveness and redemption for those who have gone astray. This is clear in the last lines of “Paradise Lost” when Milton writes:
“By name to come called Charity, the soul
Of all the rest: then will you not
be loath
To leave this Paradise, but shall possess
A Paradise within
you, happier far” (12.584-87)
A:)When determining what qualifies human material as a person, I think a logical place to begin is by considering what makes human material different from all othe
r materials.
From what our human minds can perceive, it appears that humans are the only species that possess the ability to reason, to wonder, and to aspire. Humans are the only species to have such a vast vocabulary, such complex grammar, and the ability to have deep and meaningful conversations about topics, such as their origin and their destiny. Humans are the only creatures to establish religions, have a refined aesthetic sense, and a vivid imagination.
Although it cannot be proven that these qualities are exclusive to the human species, it can be confidently assumed, based on simple observation and scientific studies dating as far back as humans can account. Every influential philosopher has asserted or assumed that the human species' ability to reason does, in some regard, set it above all others. Furthermore, this ability to reason is often the element claimed to give the human species its personhood.
It should be noted that nothing I have written thus far about human values is based on any religious belief; rather, I have assumed no creator. However, when examining what makes human material a person, you will find yourself in quite a pickle if you try to dig too deep into the question without attributing some sort of creator to the human species. Let me explain.
If a human, whether because of old age or mental retardation, loses or does not possess the traits I described earlier as being exclusive to the human species, you must then explain why—or why not—that human is a person. If they cannot reason, cannot communicate in any meaningful way and/or have no ability to imagine or wonder, then are they still considered as being a person? Unless one ascribes a creator to the human species, a creator who places within each human an intrinsic value, then you are going to experience quite some difficulty making a case for why a mentally retarded paraplegic is indeed a person. Of course, it is possible that such an individual is not a person, and such an assumption might make sense. However, if you do believe that a mentally retarded paraplegic, who is in no other way discernable from an animal by way of intellect or physical capabilities, is still a person, then you must believe that humans have an intrinsic value that transcends any detectable trait or quality. It follows that one must believe that humans are endowed by a creator with an inherent value, and this is what qualifies human material as a person.