Dear Your Honor,
It comes to my attention that you and I do not define morality in the same way. This troubles me because you, sir, are in a position to steer public policy in the direction of your definition far more expeditiously than I am. I am a lowly diletante-ish social commentator to an audience of a handful of friends. You are a Supreme Court Justice. I don't much like my definition's odds in that match-up. Do you?
Allow me to define moral behavior as I see it. It's really very simple. I think it's wrong to hurt people. That's it. That's the sum total of my dogma. If I were to extrapolate a little, I would concede that sometimes it's necessary to hurt other people, but in such cases as it's necessary, one should apply all due diligence to minimize the hurt inflicted. And one should also take responsibility, in whatever form it takes, for said inflicted hurts. Now, this guiding principle isn't so far off of the Biblical Golden Rule, "do unto others as you would have them do unto you." But my dad has always had what I think is a very wise and elegant spin on the Golden Rule. He's often said, "Do unto others as they would be done unto." And I think the distinction is, indeed, golden. Put another way, not everyone wants to run his or her life in the way that I run mine. Not everyone wants the same things I do. Therefore, it would be inconsiderate, indeed, to inflict my preferences upon a person who would not choose the same things for him or herself. Surely, you see my point.
To provide an example of how I see my idea of morality in action, I would like to describe how I feel about driving a car. As I see it, every time I put gas in my car, I'm inflicting pain on other people. Therefore, it is immoral of me to drive a car. Allow me to explain: in the short term, both American and Iraqi people are being killed so as to provide for my continued ability to purchase gasoline to fuel my car. It is oil money that's funding this war in which we're entrenched and, insomuch as I give my money to the oil industry (and worse, own stock in an oil company), I'm contributing to the deaths of those people. In the longer run, I'm contributing to the depletion of natural resources and the pollution of the Earth's atmosphere. Sooner or later, that's going to inflict pain on pretty much the entire population of this planet, as, collectively, we're working very hard to render it uninhabitable by human beings. And so, for driving a car, I feel considerable moral anguish. I am selfish, though, I would rather not get up at 4:30am in order to have time to take the shuttle from my condo complex to the metro station, take the metro into DC, and then take a bus into Georgetown for work every morning. And so, I keep my car until I can figure out a way to afford living and working nearer a metro station. This is what I consider "living in sin."
Your idea, Justice Scalia, of sin includes butt-fucking. And incest, adultery, polygamy, prostitution, masturbation, obscenity (whatever that means), using sex toys, and of course, everyone's favorite, same-sex marriage. Now I might entertain an argument for considering incest to be harmful to other people-- genetic mixing within a very small pool often leads to entirely avoidable birth defects in the spawn of such pairings, and, well, let's face it: most incestuous relationships include an adult and a child who is probably too young and too under the authoritarian thumb of said adult to have the capacity to consent to such activitities. In some circumstances, yes, adultery can hurt one or more people-- if multiple consents are not acquired prior to engagement in adulterous behavior. But can someone please pause for a cotton-pickin' minute to explain to me who gets hurt by jacking off? Or even by butt-fucking (aside, I mean, from whatever minor abrasions might befall the anal opening, of course)?
As per this article from The New Republic, it seems that your definition of morality continues to hold sway. "Morality" pertains to "public decency," whatever the hell that means. This article cites political theorist, H.L.A. Hart, saying that Hart "famously insisted that law could only ban immoral acts that caused tangible harm to others." Now, while Hart appears to be on the right track here, I would argue that there are no immoral acts that do NOT cause tangible harm to others. The tangible harm is, in fact, what makes an act immoral. Now, this article is basically arguing that the idea that "the promotion of morality [is] one of the government's most important duties" is not so passe as I might be inclined to hope. Its gist is that your response to the Lawrence v. Texas ruling that legalized butt-fucking ("This effectively decrees the end of all morals legislation.") was both preemptive and alarmist. And that might be true, except that butt-fucking isn't harm-causing and therefore isn't immoral and therefore has not a damn thing to do with "morals legislation."
Now, I would like to argue that your concept of morality does, in fact, hurt people and is therefore not moral at all. It is, in fact, completely immoral. Essentially, the laws that you position directly under that dubious umbrella of "moral legislation" all seek to restrict the private freedoms of American peoples. They seek to curtail our most basic civil liberties. The Declaration of Independence provides for our "inalienable rights:" "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." You remember, I'm sure. You, yourself, Your Honor, claim to prefer a most literal interpretation of legislation. So, what then if a person's idea of pursuing happiness includes butt-fucking? Or whoring? Or marrying someone of the same gender? How is the declaring of this so-called "moral" legislation valid something other than an intentionalist (as opposed to a textualist) interpretation of our government's inceptionary documents? Beyond that, how is denying a person their pursuit of happiness anything other than injuriously immoral?
I've written several motley and muddled blog posts about prostitution and how conflicted I feel about it not being legal. In truth, I recognize more than one facet of the issue-- to the point that I cannot definitively aver that prostitution is completely, totally, utterly 100% victimless. But, in an effort to remain true to my previously described coda, I think the greatest harm is inflicted via punishments to the women who claim this occupation. Please consult debauchette for more elucidation on that point.
Fundamentally, however, my feelings about prostitution are merely incidental to the heart of my argument. I've pussyfooted around this idea through the course of numerous posts. It's not really that I'm so terribly concerned about the fact that anti-prostitution legislation inflicts more terror and misery upon so many women-- many of whom are already disadvantaged. It's that I'm perfectly petrified that your idea of morality is already so codified into our legislature that it imposes itself upon my most basic liberties.
In the deepest, darkest recesses of my soul, maybe I'm not such a good little liberal after all. It seems that, the older and/or more informed I get, bigger and bigger chunks of my consciousness fall in line with the civil libertarians. A few years ago, I remember reading this very well-reasoned article in The Nashville Scene. It makes many, many good points. The article in its entirety is well worth reading, especially for folks of your ilk, Justice Scalia, but at the end of the piece, Roger Abramason, it's author, has this bit of advice for us bleeding hearts:
"If you are of a more liberal persuasion, the chances are that you think I'm only talking to social conservatives and their fellow
Because you can't have it both ways. You can't say that people should be left alone to behave the way they want but then make everyone else pay for the effects of that behavior. If, for instance, someone pisses away his check at the horse track, that's his own problem and not anyone else's. That means no assistance, no benefits, no nothing. Are you prepared to go that far? Because that's what leaving people alone means. If you're not prepared to go that far, then, to put it bluntly, you're not any better than the puritanical right. As the philosopher Erich Fromm once wrote, "if you want a Big Brother, you get all that comes with it." As for me, I'll pass.
I believe in personal responsibility. I really do. That's why I agree with Abramson when he says we need to refuse to allow our government to monitor private acts-- particularly as it pertains to sex. I may not agree with him when he advocates rescinding the benefits given to the underprivileged, but I do agree that much of that "morality legislation" discourages us from experiencing the natural consequences of our poor behavior. And I also believe that some of the things that you'd toss into that "poor (or stupid or disgusting or wrong or whatever) behavior" category seem perfectly acceptable to me. So, when you make laws that infringe upon my ability to take responsibility for my own actions, you're also infringing upon my basic freedoms. I resent the fuck out of you for that.
I'm not a child. You can trust me do to everything in my power to refrain from willfully inflicting harm upon my fellow humans. And if I can't refrain, I'll try really hard to mitigate the harm I can't help but inflict. I promise. That's not a burden I take lightly. All I ask is that you consider, even if it's just for a moment, that your respective concepts of right and wrong are, from an ethical standpoint, wholly arbitrary and based in an old-world religiosity to which many, if not most, Americans do not subscribe. And who are you to inflict your purely subjective and debatable ideas of morality on the rest of us? Who are you to contribute to law-making that restricts ALL of our behavior based on your very limited ideas of propriety? You are just one person, same as me.
Please. Just think about it.
Brownly and tanly yours,
M
(In my fantasy about Scalia reading this letter, he gets visibly uncomfortable, shifting his considerable heft in his over-sized leather desk chair, every time he reads the word "butt-fucking.")
3 comments:
okay, continuing our email conversation-- are my comments.
funny. I agree with almost everything you said. and with almost everything in the scene article. except some of what you quoted from it. not that I disagree with what the guy is essentially saying. that last part where he says no benefits, no assistance, no nothing to a guy that throws away money gambling. it almost undermines his entire argument. b/c if you argue that, then the next thing you can argue is this: so there’s a 57 year old women drawing a disability check b/c she has glaucoma and severe arthritis in both hips. so say she wastes $10-20 a month on the lottery—before and after becoming disabled and drawing disability. so she doesn’t deserve disability benefits? obviously he is arguing that someone that loses their whole check gambling shouldn’t be able to get gov’t help b/c of it. but when has it ever been an argument of liberals that this should be the case? hasn’t. but, if it’s okay to gamble, it’s okay to gamble. can’t have it both ways—as he said himself.
I think he made solid arguments until then b/c he was making an argument of some specificity and then at then end, to me, sounded like he was putting a big umbrella statement on it. next thing I’m thinking of is, okay, I have a right to clean air. so he’s against the gov’t providing that to me in a restaurant by banning smoking? sure we all have our rights. but I have as much right to smoke free air as a smoker does to smoke. but me not smoking does a lot less to infringe on a smoker than a smoker does to infringe on my clean air. but after his umbrella statement it sounds like he is against banning smoking in restaurants. I think he just really weakened his good argument with that last paragraph or so.
the saddest part of the scene article is that the gov't got away with banning sex toys in alabama. but it makes sense--that must be why football is such a big deal down there! it sounds like fireworks in nashville--you can't buy them in nashville, but you can set them off there. that would be a funny doc--one about people crossing state lines to buy their sex toys and then bringing them back into alabama to use them. i can see it now. first interview with the man leading the charge to keep them illegal--he has the stats to show that communities with no toys have lower divorce rates and even lower crime rates. second interview with that man's wife crossing the border with her secret girlfriend to buy the contraband.
I remember having a discussion with a friend about how the sex-toy ban in Alabama is actually very anti-woman legislature... in that dildos and vibrators and whatnot stand to benefit women, who might not be able to get off otherwise, more than men, who, ostensibly, can get off any ol' way they please (or so goes the argument). My friend with whom I was having the discussion (who is one of those guys who claims to be very pro-feminism but can only see women as victims of grand social injustice everywhere and therefore uses such arguments to perpetuate female victimhood) said something to the effect that the ban is particularly odious from a feminist perspective because it's not like you can ban a man's hand. To which I thought, well, my hand kinda gets the job done, too. When you boil it down, the law amounts to just so much more prudery. And prudery is no basis on which to make laws. Which is the soft nougaty center of this post in the first place!
Now, regarding the smoking thing, I think I've already talked a little bit about how I weigh in on that issue here: http://brownrabbittanning.blogspot.com/2007/05/lovers-of-opposition-lovers-of-spice.html
Essentially, I break that issue down by thinking of greater and lesser goods. I think more harm is inflicted upon non-smokers by making them inhale second-hand smoke than is inflicted upon smokers by making them go outside. Therefore, I think restricting smokers' rights is preferable in this case. And I think the author of the article would probably see the logic of the "greater good" ethical boundary here, too. I'm not sure that you aren't looking to define an extremist end to his argument-- one that I don't think he really makes. Of course, I see the logical extension you're making here, but I'm just not convinces that Abramson actually gets anywhere near there.
I also think that's the case with your lady-in-need-of-disability-benefits argument, too. She, despite her $10 lottery ticket, is a far cry from a gambling addict who digs himself into such a hole that ONLY the government can rescue him. I don't have a problem with my taxes helping her out a little. But I do think it's sort of ridiculous that people who don't engage in such self-defeating behaviors should have to subsidize those who do. That's all.
i agree about the smoking. as far as taking the extreme end of his argument, yes that's what i was doing. but just to point out that his including that last little bit of his article really weakens an otherwise strong argument because all of a sudden he brought everything back to a black and white level.
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