Jonathan Rauch explains why Rick Santorum’s beliefs on privacy are deeply troubling, to say the least. He writes:
Defending sodomy laws, Santorum didn’t make the usual half-hearted point that the laws were rarely enforced. He came out swinging. Homosexuality is among behaviors that are “outside of traditional heterosexual relationships” and therefore “undermine the basic tenets of our society and the family.” People have no right to engage in such behaviors, even in their own homes.
Rauch then asks,
If the state can’t be trusted to regulate our markets, can it really be trusted to regulate our morals? By way of an answer, return, for a minute, to Houston in 1998. According to “Flagrant Conduct,” a fascinating and important new book by University of Minnesota law professor Dale Carpenter, what really happened in Lawrence’s apartment that night, though shocking, won’t surprise many gay Americans. Lawrence and Garner were not having sex when the cops arrived. …
Two officers freely admitted to Carpenter that their disgust at homosexuality was a factor in the arrest. Nothing new there. Sodomy laws in practice had nothing to do with the enforcement of virtue, and everything to do with the arbitrary use of state power against gays. Before Lawrence, many police departments treated baiting and entrapping homosexuals as a kind of sport.
Back to Santorum, Rauch observes:
He can’t revoke privacy, which the country prizes, and he probably can’t be president. But his ascendance could—and, by rights, should — break the already strained alliance of libertarians and social conservatives on which the post-Reagan conservative movement is built.
For more about Carpenter’s book on Lawrence v. Texas, here’s a link to the San Francisco Chronicle’s review.
27 Comments for “Santorum’s War on Privacy”
posted by Santorum’s War on Privacy | QClick Radar on
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posted by Jorge on
The last book I bought after learning about it from this site was very good. I’ll keep it in mind.
posted by Houndentenor on
I’m confused. Isn’t the right-wing position that the Supreme Court invented the “right to privacy” and that it doesn’t actually exist in the Constitution?
posted by Jorge on
The right’s opposition to the right to privacy as found in some of the other amendments (such as the one regulating warrents) is probably less stringent than the right as found in the Ninth.
I don’t understand the point of your question.
posted by Houndentenor on
Of course you don’t.
I’ve been listening to conservatives claim there’s no right to privacy in the Constitution my whole life. It’s interesting that you bring up the 9th Amendment. I never hear anyone, left, right or center, argue based on the 9th. I suspect it scares everyone who isn’t a hardcore libertarian?
posted by Jorge on
Isn’t that Roe v. Wade was based on?
posted by TomJeffersonIII on
Houndentenor;
Oh you big silly-billy. ‘Privacy’ exists when the right-wing does not want the government to do something, but the ‘right to privacy’ becomes a magical invention when it involves something that they want the government to do ;0)
posted by Houndentenor on
*smacks head*
posted by Clayton on
On a more serious note, I think that it’s disingenuous to claim that there is no right to privacy in the constitution when the fourth amendment clearly protects us against search and seizure. It doesn’t prevent the government from invading our homes/businesses/property, but it says that the government needs a damn good reason before doing so. If that isn’t a right to privacy, I don’t know what is. And–maybe it’s just me–but I don’t think “Two consenting adults might be having sex I don’t approve of” constitutes a damn good reason.
posted by Houndentenor on
You should add “especially if they are liberals” since it’s become obvious that it’s okay with Republicans to commit adultery so long as you are a right-wing Republican (Gingrich, Giuliani, etc.).
posted by DA on
Rick Santorum deserves praise for his support of sodomy laws. He is absolutely right that sodomy undermines the basic tenets of our society and the family, and that people have no right to engage in such behaviors, even in their own homes. I hope Santorum becomes America’s next President.
posted by clayton on
So would you prefer a large and permanent police squad to peek through windows every night? Or would you prefer video cameras in every bedroom in America to make sure all sexual activity was both heterosexual and procreative? And how do you reconcile this invasive police activity with both the fourth amendment and the conservative ideal of small government? Inquiringly minds want to know!
posted by DA on
No, I wouldn’t prefer that a police squad peep through people’s windows. I also think it’s unreasonable for you to ask me that question – would you ask someone who supported laws against drug use whether they preferred that a police squad peeped through windows to see whether people are using drugs?
posted by Houndentenor on
What clause in the Constitution gives the government the right to restrict private, consensual behavior between adults?
posted by DA on
What clause says it can’t?
posted by Clayton on
DA, I’m actually a bad person to ask about drug laws, because I have many problems with them, not the least of which is inequity in enforcement. Blacks and whites, for example, use illegal drugs at roughly equal rates, but blacks are far more likely to be arrested and convicted on drug-related offenses. The liberal in me thinks this could be addressed through legal reforms, but the Libertarian (and pragmatist) in me thinks the best solution is simply to declare surrender in the war on drugs, which, by nearly any metric, has been a collosal and expensive failure. If a driver has a wreck under the influence of marijuana or cocaine, then charge the driver with a DUI, just as we do with people driving under the influence of alcohol.
But let’s get back to the original issue. I’m against anti-sodomy laws. You are for them. That is fine. However, in addition to being against them in principle, I’m against passing ANY law that is likely to be unenforced or unequally enforced. I am also against passing laws that nobody expects to enforce, but which are passed in order to make a moral statement. So since you are in favor of anti-sodomy laws (and I am defining sodomy, the same way Rick Santorum does, i.e, ANY non-procreative sexual activity), please tell me how these laws would be policed and enforced? What mechanisms would there be for determining who might or might not be committing sodomy? At what point would police monitoring take place? At what point would a search warrant or an arrest warrant be issued? And, finally, how would this square with the fourth amendment, which reads: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
I would think that private, consensual sexual activity would certainly fall in the realm of people being “secure in their persons [and] houses.”
In the past, by the way, anti-sodomy laws, though rarely enforced, were nearly always used against gay people only. Sometimes this was just the way things worked out (just as blacks are more likely to be arrested on drug charges) and sometimes this was the explicit letter of the law. In my home state, for example, prior to Lawrence v. Texas, oral sex was legal when performed by a heterosexual couple, but illegal when performed by a homosexual couple.
posted by DA on
Most people don’t have a problem with drug use being illegal. They shouldn’t have a problem with sodomy being illegal as well. How best to enforce laws against sodomy or anything else is for the police, lawmakers, and judges to decide.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
Santorum is not alone in his opposition to the Griswold “right to be let alone” line of decisions, including Lawrence.
All of the Republican candidates for President have pledged to appoint “original intent” justices to SCOTUS, and “original intent” is code for eliminating the right of privacy.
Republicans in Congress introduce, session after session, legislation like Ron Paul’s “We the People Act”, which seek to restrict the jurisdiction of federal courts over “culture war” cases, again code for eliminating the right of privacy.
Gingrich has gone even further than Santorum, suggesting that “activist” judges — read judges that rule in accordance with the Griswold line — should be arrested.
The problem of “privacy” — the unwanted intervention of government into the private lives of Americans — isn’t restricted to Santorum, even though he is the most vocal in his disgust for you and me.
posted by Houndentenor on
That’s fascinating since it seems rather obvious that Newt and his “devout Catholic” mistress must have used birth control during their six year affair.
posted by Clayton on
Callista is only in her early forties. They’ve been married at least a decade SINCE their six year affair. That makes a sixteen year term of sexual activity, presumably without a single pregnancy. Unless she is infertile, somebody is using something.
posted by Doug on
Since sex, according to Santorum, is only for procreation there are going to be a lot of women saying no sex to there husbands which is going to mean there are a lot of horny men out there.
posted by TomJeffersonIII on
It is one of the strangest things, those among the political right that actually favor outlawing birth control of non-procreational sex, get kinda fuzzy on how such laws would actually get enforced.
Not to mention the obvious fact that conservatives have sex, I dated one or two. ;0)
Rush Limbaugh probably had sex while he was in college and (chances are) it was not always procreational, yet he probably get miffed if we called him a ‘slut’ or demanded that cameras be put in his bedroom to ensure that his ‘business’ was entirely procreational.
Heck, does anyone really believe that the major GOP Presidential candidates who are married ONLY have sex with their wives when it is procreational? Does anyone believe that is the case with any politician (Republican, Democrat or whatever)?
posted by Houndentenor on
Oh, DA, your ignorance of the Constitution is showing. We have a Constitution to restrict the government and protect the rights of the people. The principle argument against the Bill of Rights was that it might imply that individual rights were limited to those enumerated. The 9th Amendment was added to make it clear that any rights not granted to the government were retained by the people. So, there does not need to be a specifically enumerated right to privacy or a right to love whom I choose. It is the responsibility of the government to make a case why it should have the right to invade my privacy, not my responsibility to show why it should not. The Court has made clear the rights of the people, not because it invented them, but because there were situations that the Founders could not have envisioned. For example, there was no such thing as wire-tapping in 1789, but surely someone who thought to require a warrant before searching someone’s home would have included the need for a warrant before listening in on phone conversations.
posted by DA on
Your assumptions about the Constitution are a little too convenient, I think, but I’m not going to argue it with you. My only other comment is that it’s interesting that you would describe being free to commit sodomy as the “right to love whom I choose.”
posted by Houndentenor on
Sodomy? Really? This is the 21st century, not the 11th. Not only does the government have no right to police private consensual sex between adults, it never did a very good job of it when the puritans among us assumed that it did. One can only assume that then as now those who screamed the loudest about morality were doing the nasty when they thought no one was looking.
posted by Jorge on
Heck, does anyone really believe that the major GOP Presidential candidates who are married ONLY have sex with their wives when it is procreational? Does anyone believe that is the case with any politician (Republican, Democrat or whatever)?
I think there have to be a couple of people out there who don’t practice birth control. And I think they show up every now and then among politicians; we have people who think they can spot them. John Edwards comes to my mind.
posted by Houndentenor on
Bazinga!