Big Government

Edi­tor’s Note: here I go again.

It takes a spe­cial kind of con­ser­v­a­tive to seem­ing­ly take the stance that the edi­to­r­i­al page of the Rich­mond Times Dis­patch is being too lib­er­al (my words; no quot­ing here). But that is essen­tial­ly what a for­mer col­league of mine did in a recent let­ter to the paper of record’s edi­tors recent­ly. Last month, the Times-Dis­patch had a rel­a­tive­ly short edi­to­r­i­al of the opin­ion that the Com­mon­wealth’s laws out­law­ing co-ed cohab­i­ta­tion were anti­quat­ed, intru­sive, and in need of repeal­ing: (par­tial reprint)

Yet sev­en states — includ­ing Vir­ginia — main­tain statutes for­bid­ding unmar­ried peo­ple of the oppo­site sex to share liv­ing quar­ters. That the laws are rarely enforced only under­scores their anachro­nis­tic nature.

Cohab­i­ta­tion entails not only the right to pri­va­cy, but also the right to prop­er­ty — gov­ern­ments should not dic­tate to a house­hold­er whom she or he may per­mit to share the res­i­dence. By con­trast, a man and woman who cohab­i­tate are not vio­lat­ing any­one else’s rights; nobody has a right to demand they live apart, and it’s nobody’s busi­ness but theirs if they do.

For the record, I’ve tak­en sim­i­lar issues with a cou­ple of Vir­gini­a’s laws (and even more out­ra­geous bills) ban­ning all sorts of inter-per­son­al rela­tion­ships which the state real­ly has­n’t got any damn busi­ness regulating.

So in comes my old col­league, with his let­ter (see “With­out God’s Laws…”). So we should have a Gov­ern­ment that is just big enough that it can peek into our bed­room, but not one inch taller. This is the same man who would explain (at great, painful length) that the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment has only the right to main­tain an army and noth­ing else*; that the mar­ket should decid­ed what envi­ron­men­tal risks we should be tak­ing rather than the gov­ern­ment*, and that the gov­ern­ment has no busi­ness in the hir­ing and fir­ing poli­cies of reli­gious insti­tu­tions*. But when it comes to the per­son­al rela­tion­ships between two indi­vid­u­als, the gov­ern­ment has every right to intrude to what­ev­er extent he sees fit: (reprint­ed here with absolute­ly no per­mis­sion grant­ed, but sav­ing you the click; my com­ments in green):

The the­sis of your edi­to­r­i­al, “Nobody’s Busi­ness,” is false. As we have learned through numer­ous Supreme Court rul­ings, any­thing that could affect the spend­ing of our tax dol­lars is our busi­ness. [Note: he does­n’t both­er to give any specifics, or even expand upon this dubi­ous rational.]

How­ev­er, that is not the par­tic­u­lar inspi­ra­tion of this let­ter. It is the rev­e­la­tion that the under­ly­ing moral­i­ty of the Edi­to­r­i­al staff is com­plete­ly inde­pen­dent of the moral­i­ty taught in the Bible, and thus by God. Two peo­ple engag­ing in sex­u­al rela­tions out­side mar­riage is for­bid­den. That it is hap­pen­ing beyond the sight of any third par­ty is irrel­e­vant. [So, we should pass laws on every­thing the bible states. Whose ver­sion? Should you be fined for not eat­ing Kosher, or should you locked up for being envi­ous of your neigh­bors house? And how does God feel about inter­net sales tax? I can’t find that in the New Revised Stan­dard Ver­sion, does the King James have it? Per­haps the Quaran? No, cer­tain­ly not there.]

Our legal sys­tem will endure only if sup­port­ed by a sound moral­i­ty. As a nation that is sup­posed to rely on the rule of law, Amer­i­ca needs a sound legal sys­tem. To have a sound moral­i­ty, we have to rely on the teach­ings in the Bible, because apart from God there is no moral­i­ty. [This state­ment obscures the nuance between ethics and moral­i­ty, as well as implies by con­verse that some­one oth­er than a reli­gious indi­vid­ual can­not be a moral per­son. The for­mer shows lit­tle lack of under­stand­ing of civ­il law ver­sus reli­gions law, while the lat­ter shows a lack of under­stand­ing of humanity.]

In the final analy­sis, if we try to estab­lish a moral­i­ty for our coun­try with­out con­sult­ing God, we will allow the coun­try to be destroyed.

So there you have it, the Gov­ern­ment can’t make an amoral cor­po­ra­tion do any­thing it does­n’t want to, but it can and should tell you exact­ly who you can and can’t have sex with. Why, well because his God says so, that’s why. And quite frankly, his God is bet­ter than your God any day of the week, except on Sun­days, because that’s a holy day and you can’t beat up peo­ple on holy days… The arro­gance of assum­ing that the most basic of per­son­al rela­tion­ships (short of moth­er-child) should be reg­u­lat­ed based on this per­sons reli­gion is astound­ing. I know lots of peo­ple who don’t agree with cohab­i­ta­tion, but that gives them the right to not do it them­selves, and noth­ing more.

To sug­gest that this is harm­ful for oth­ers (or Amer­i­ca, as an insti­tu­tion) is ridicu­lous. I’m hard­ly one to say no-harm-no-foul to every­thing; I think there’s a damn good rea­son for most drug laws. How­ev­er, no ratio­nal per­son can con­sid­er per­son­al rela­tion­ships to be social­ly harm­ful. If any­one real­ly thinks that unmar­ried cou­ples (and of course, mar­ried gay cou­ples) are destroy­ing our coun­try, what about all the mar­ried cou­ples who screw up? Divorce, abuse, aban­don­ment? Why aren’t those num­bers wor­ry­ing peo­ple about the state of the union? Peo­ple being togeth­er are not destroy­ing the coun­try. Envi­ron­men­tal rav­aging, fun­da­men­tal­ist crack­pots shoot­ing doc­tors, “Amer­i­can Idol,” off-shore mul­ti-nation­al cor­po­ra­tions… sure they might be, but a cou­ple of folks shar­ing the rent? Hardly.

*Yep, those are but three of the many fer­vent posi­tions this per­son took in con­ver­sa­tions to me. Sure, there may well be some valid points in there, but they all go a long way in negat­ing the argu­ment that any gov­ern­ment should be reg­u­lat­ing per­son-to-per­son freedoms.

Update (August 8th, 2005): I was informed by anoth­er for­mer col­league, who had read the let­ter to the edi­tor of the news­pa­per in its entire­ty, that the let­ter had been edit­ed down quite a lot. While I under­stand the Times Dis­patch’s need in doing this, it is a shame that they edit­ed out some of the argu­ment. It is my under­stand­ing that there the let­ter’s author has some log­i­cal steps between argu­ing that the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment has the right to con­trol pri­vate issues and why gov­ern­ing sin­ning (at least in some indi­vid­u­al’s eyes) falls under this. How­ev­er, I can’t imag­ine any sort of “log­ic” that would cause me to void my cri­tique of the let­ter. Sad­ly, since the paper can’t be both­ered to pub­lish com­plete let­ters, even online where space is con­sid­er­ably cheap­er, we’ll nev­er see the whole thing.