Fun With Fundies

In the slapping between Andrew Sullivan and the Flying Monkeys over at NRO, summed up here (with a fair bit of anti-Sullivan animus, which you are free to ignore), nobody's gone an dispassionately discussed the main reason why what the Rhea county illuminati are doing is contrary to the principle of liberty and good government. Obviously these guys are exploding in Stop-Them-Before-They-Get-the-Children hysteria with regard to gays, and they probably feel provoked by the sudden performance of gay marriages here and there in spite of applicable laws. One is free to condemn their anti-gay attitudes as being unenlightened, even Pharisaical. But that's but part of the story.


These people seem to think it would be a good idea to have policemen and the courts responsible for enforcing "natural law," and therefore sending people to jail for acts of at least dubious criminality. This means dedicating already finite amounts of officer patrol time, court docket time, and space in the jails, just to make sure that no one is having the wrong kind of sex. I fail to see how this can be defended as an appropriate use of public resources. Public officials are not clerics, the instruction of the soul does not fall into their brief. They are agents of the civil authority, and theirs is a far more specified area of action. They are charged with the maintenance of public order, not the maintenance of public morality, and not the conformance of society with various ideals. They are there to make sure we are not murdered, robbed, or raped, and to make sure that those who engage in such activities are kept away from the rest of us. Anything new rule we give them to enforce either makes this activity more or less difficult. Which does the Rhea County resolution call for?


Incidentally, if you parse this post and wind up thinking that I'm in favor of ending, or radically re-thinking the Drug War, you would be correct.