Apologies to the Beastie Boys but this brilliant predictive passage from a future Supreme Court case is exactly what I expect to happen if criminalizing prostitution reaches the Supreme Court. The Constitution left to the States and communities the regulation of sexual behavior. Except for marriage, everywhere recognized as a right to marry a person of the opposite sex, there were no "sexual rights." They were not part of the Constitution or the history of the States or Anglo-American law. They have not been added by amendment. The Civil War was fought over one sexual right, the concubinage of chattel slavery. The side that was for it lost and it was outlawed by Constitutional Amendment. The polygamists lost in the late 1800's. In neither of our formative wars, Revolutionary or Civil did anyone take a bullet for the right to sodomy or abortion. I can see the fellows at Bunker Hill now "By God, King George is threatening are right to bugger one another! Have at 'em men!" Who could forget Chamberlain at Gettysburg "Men, these Southerners are going to impede the right to abort our progeny-I expect every man to do his duty for generations yet unborn-or something." But here we are.
The case of Lawrence v. Texas is parodied in the link in the title above, but the passages quoted in it are accurate.
The author makes one mistake. The sexual nonsense inflicted on Constitutional Law since 1964 has been part and parcel of the Left's assault on traditional America. Each sea change was tested and advocated by a monolithic and intellectually corrupt academia. The parties, institutions, principles and traditions traduced by these rulings are all hated by the Left. But with prostitution there are two countervailing considerations, where the Leftist academic must pause before plunging in to warp the Constitution yet again.
First, certain puritan feminists see prostitution as exploitation and demeaning to women (imagine that!). I need not elaborate on that aspect of the issue. More, interestingly is the "cash nexus." The problem for the Left is that it loves economic regulation. The rights to property and to contract, actually mentioned in the Constitution, have been attenuated by case law because of the Left's mania for directing people what to do with their property and rage for confiscation. Here, worlds collide. Legalized prostitution injures the family, monogamy and a vision of marriage and female chastity detested by the Left. All to the good as far as the Douglas' of the world are concerned. On the other hand, it is economically viable. The Ginsburg's and Souters might pause in finding a Constitutional right to prostitution if it meant a constitutional right to prostituting one's self for less than minimum wage. Ronald Reagan once spotted this tendency and said when the Left finds a profitable business it approaches it in three stages. If it moves tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. If it stops moving, subsidize it.
And that is where we will end up if Spitzer wins his case on Constitutionally protected prostitution: Tax payer subsidized call girls.
And that is where I, for one, draw the line.
2 comments:
This is wonderful satire - a veritable bonfire of burning strawmen set alight by the feverish images of right-wing self parody. Bravo!
JCC
And as an additional aside, I note for the record that the poor buggers fought on Breed's Hill, not Bunker Hill. But as they said of Blutarsky "don't stop him now, he's on a roll."
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