The Last Taboo

Check out my latest at the Partial Observer. Excerpt:

It is legal for a woman to sleep with a married man. It is also legal for the woman to sell her story to the media and embarrass the man. But it is criminal for her to sell her silence to the married man. If she even suggests it, he's a "victim."

At the same time, it is perfectly legal for the man to buy her silence - so long as it is his idea, not hers.

John Edwards Proves Jonathan Edwards Right

A day or two ago, I put up the quote from Jonathan Edwards (the singer, not the 18th century Puritan "sinners in the hands of an angry God" preacher) under the blog name: "He can't even run his own life, I'll be damned if he'll run mine!" Today, deliciously, John Edwards, the man who wanted to be President, proves the point. A woman apparently seduced him and hustled his campaign for some serious dough.

Reports say this all happened in 2006, at the beginning of the Edwards campaign. I don't know if it's karma or subconscious guilt that made his campaign ineffective, but his status as a "major" candidate evaporated in the early primaries. And it raises the question: How could he not have known that this affair would be made public, especially if he won the Democratic nomination?

During the Lewinsky Scandal, much was made of separating Bill Clinton's private life from his public life. This is a rule I would support for politicians - if they, too, understood the difference between the private and the public, such as the difference between a vice and a crime.

But instead, politicians claim they know better than you how you should manage your private affairs, and how to run your life and raise your family. For example, they claim they know better than you:

* where your kids can go to school;
* how you should protect them from intruders;
* when your children are mature enough to drink alcohol;
* what movies they can see, and what video games they can play;
* proper health care for them;
* when and if they should get government-subsidized birth control services;
* if they should be screened for mental health disorders.

But then politicians go and commit adultery. This often tears families apart, and children of prominent adulterers are particularly susceptible to embarrassment and ridicule from peers. But according to the politicians' logic, the behavior of other adults who make decisions regarding their own lives and families is subject to fines and imprisonment, but their own behavior, which is often far worse, should remain "private," protected from the "voyeuristic" media.

My rule of thumb is, the more libertarian positions a candidate takes, the more the "public/private" distinction should be respected. The more totalitarian the politician - the more the politician wants to control your decisions regarding health, finances, and pleasure, the more they should be scrutinized and called out for hypocrisy. If their own personal lives are a mess, why should they get to order the rest of us around?

I didn't follow the Edwards campaign closely, but never got the impression that he was a staunch privacy advocate, civil libertarian, or defender of gun owners, home schoolers, or indeed of any cause supporting personal freedom. Because of this, he deserves what he gets in terms of public shame. Don't fine and jail others for specks in their eyes when you have a log in your own.

Child Sex 24/7

Incredible.

First, the Libertarian Party national director smears a Libertarian presidential candidate Mary Ruwart for giving a libertarian answer to the questions of child sex and child porn.

Next thing I hear, the FBI is again pressuring Congress to make ISP's keep record of websites visited for two years - not to go after terrorists, as is the usual justification for invading our privacy, but to go after child porn. The costs of saving that information could wipe out both small and large ISP's alike.

Next piece of news, Roger Clemens allegedly had sex with a 15 year-old girl. One ESPN pundit (I think on Rome is Burning) says this is why Barry Bonds hasn't sued for defamation about steroids as Clemens has: it opens up one's private life to all kinds of allegations, true or false.

And finally, famed photographer Annie Liebowitz turns out to be a child pornographer, and 15 year-old Miley Cyrus the latest "victim" of skin mag Vanity Fair. What's next, censoring old Brooke Shields photoshoots and movies?

Comedian Doug Stanhope and this poster at Third Party Watch both said they've searched the Internet for all kinds of porn and never, ever, came across child porn. They've stumbled upon some pretty weird, gross stuff they couldn't even imagine, but not children having sex. I suspect this stuff is way underground, and child porn sites are probably just sting operations of FBI agents, and the actual risk to children is negligible.

The crusade about child porn and child sex is probably a) led by closet pedophiles who hate themselves for their secret fantasies, and b) is just an excuse to censor the Internet.

Sexually Mature, Emotionally Mature

It is one thing to have sex with children who are not sexually mature. What about those who are sexually mature, but not considered "emotionally" mature enough to give their consent?

Who's to say they're not emotionally mature, the dominant culture and the laws of the State that the dominant culture produces? What if they're part of a subculture in which physical and emotional maturity coalesce at the same time? In which marriage and the responsibilities of marriages are expected in the teenage years? Why is that culture warped, whereas the culture in which teenagers are treated as "too immature" for sex despite their impulses, and thus do become "too immature" for sex, is assumed to be "normal?"

In The Nativity Story Joseph was depicted as an established, respected adult, whereas Mary was 14 or 15. Their betrothal was considered normal for the time, and Protestants, at least, consider Joseph, this "pedophile," to be a righteous man who is the earthly father/mentor of The Lord Jesus Christ.

(As I understand it, Catholics, apparently, believe that Joseph and Mary never did get it on even after Jesus's birth, because they consider Mary a perpetual virgin and that allusions to Jesus's brothers is a translation that could be interpreted as cousins. This page is vague concerning what this meant for Joseph.)

Christians dismiss this marrying of younger teenage girls as "the culture of the time." It was alright for the earthly father/mentor of The Lord to crave underage girls, but that was way back then. Morals are different today, even though Christians are normally the first to claim that morals are timeless and universal.

So if a religious sect tries to recreate the culture and values that prevailed where Jesus Christ was born, what do these same believers in Jesus Christ do? They (or at least American Christians) would have those people arrested, because in today's culture, sex with "underage" teenage girls is about the most evil thing they can imagine. Torturing Iraqi civilians is okay for them, but a sect in which 15 year-old girls get married? That's inexcusable (except, apparently, for Joseph, earthly father/mentor of Jesus).

I don't want teenage girls to marry. I don't like polygamy. The wives at the El Dorado sect that I've seen are more brain-dead and creepier than the Stepford Wives. I wouldn't want to be a part of that culture, or see children raised there.

But there are lots of cultures that I think are damaging to children. That doesn't mean I have the right to intervene. They're not my children. I believe all custodial rights over children belong to their mothers, and the only reasons to strip mothers of their rights is abuse or neglect. Following a "wrong" or "abusive" belief system doesn't rise to that level. If you think polygamous Mormons should have their rights stripped because of their belief system, perhaps I think you should, too, if I think your belief system is also abusive. Whatever argument you make, you are guilty of the same allegations by somebody else. If you say somebody who makes more money than you is greedy, than I can say the same about you if I make less money than you do. Likewise, if you believe these Fundamentalist Mormon views are quirky, extreme, and dangerous, than I, too could make the same charge against your religious beliefs if I believe they will be similarly dangerous to the status quo.

If the mother is one of many wives, or if the mother has many husbands, that is none of the State's business. If physically immature children are used for sex or in sex rituals, I could see State intervention. But the fact that sexually mature young women in a sub-culture are getting married - at the age they expect to get married by their teachings and upbringing - doesn't seem to me to be a "crime." Especially in a southern state where most people are Christian, and the girls of this sect are marrying at the same approximate age that by all accounts was the age that Mary was betrothed to Joseph.

If "Bible-believing" Christians concede that Mary was just a young girl, and was still young when the marriage to Joseph was consummated, who are they to judge others who today believe it is right and natural for sexually mature young women to get married? Indeed, it seems to me that it is more screwed up to design different ages for sexual maturity and emotional maturity. That might be what we have in this day and age, but it doesn't seem natural. God creates sexual impulses at one age, the maturity to handle them at another age - that is screwed up. Sects and cults that try to right this wrong should probably be encouraged, not obliterated. Otherwise, we will only raise the next generation to be even more sexually neurotic than we are already.

In any case, the initial call against this Fundamentalist Mormon compound appears to be a hoax. So let the children return to their mothers. Children shouldn't be ripped from their mothers to accommodate some aberrant Victorian rule about the "appropriate" age to get married.