Plum Crazy

It's all over blogland now. Michele blogged about it. So did Jay, Arthur Silber, Glenn Reynolds, and Bill Quick, to name a few. So let me add my 2 cents.

I knew there was a reason I couldn't remember the name of the other Senator from Pennsylvania (I have no trouble remembering Arlen Specter). It's because he's a moron.

"If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual (gay) sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything."

Snip

"All of those things are antithetical to a healthy, stable, traditional family," Santorum said. "And that's sort of where we are in today's world, unfortunately. It all comes from, I would argue, this right to privacy that doesn't exist, in my opinion, in the United States Constitution."

Let's start this by saying you do have a right to do any of those things, and the government does not have the right to interfere short of having a compelling state interest to do so. The compelling state interest is clear when it comes to incest. Aside from any issues of potential coercion (although those certainly are not present in all cases when both parties are adults), the product of such a union is likely to have severe medical problems.

I have to confess that the compelling state interest with respect to bigamy and polygamy are less clear. From a religious standpoint, there is no argument, since the religion has the right to recognize or not recognize any form of union it so chooses. So there is no question that a church has the right to refuse to perform or recognize bigamous or polygamous marriages. However, there is the contractual aspect of marriage and the question as to what compelling state interest is there in preventing adults from entering into property contracts with other consenting adults as they see fit. It may be antithetical to the Western view of a traditional family, but it is not antithetical to all views of traditional marriages.

As for adultery, how many states have laws making adultery a criminal offense? And given that the majority of married people commit adultery at some point in their lives, that is hardly an argument against consensual gay sex. What is the compelling state interest in controlling what consenting adults do in the privacy of their own homes?

As for the right to privacy, you certainly have the right to live your life free from government intervention short of a compelling state interest. The 10th Amendment reserves all powers not delegated to the federal government to the states or to the people. The 14th Amendment provides that "[n]o state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States." The only way around the 14th is to show a compelling state interest. So, what is the compelling state interest in the Texas sodomy case?