Last month the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit (based in New Orleans) became the first and only jurisdiction in the country to recognize an individual's right to bear both arms (in a 2001 case) and to purchase adult toys "designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs." The latter case involved a Texas statute that criminalized the promotion and sale of sex toys. As the Cato Institute's Ilya Shapiro explained:
"The Fifth Circuit's analysis correctly rests on the Supreme Court's 2003 decision Lawrence v. Texas, which found that Texas's anti-homosexual sodomy statute violated the Fourteenth Amendment right to engage in private intimate conduct. Put simply, there is no state interest compelling enough to overcome the individual right to freedom in the bedroom.
Because the 11th Circuit last year upheld a similar Alabama "obscene device" statute, Shapiro says that "the Fifth Circuit's decision now squarely opens up a 'circuit split,' which means the issue is ripe for the Court to take up next term." Here's hoping the highest court in the land follows the Fifth Circuit and decides that adults are entitled to possess both handguns in the home (in a case now before the Supreme Court) and sex toys.
And here's another look at how liberty and sexuality stand together. Jamie Kirchick writes in the New Republic of how gay porn actor and director Michael Lucas, who is a Jewish Russian immigrant, has run afoul of the politically correct academic crowd because of his unbridled condemnation of homophobia and anti-Semitism in the Islamic world. This particularly brouhaha erupted after Stanford University's student government asked Lucas to host a lecture on sexual health, which caused other students to protests against the invite. Responded Lucas, "It totally escapes me how gay people can side with burqa-wearing, jihad-screaming, Koran-crazed Muslims."
Kirchick admits that Lucas is often over the top (forgive me), but I like this quote from the story:
"He's from the East Coast," says Mark Kernes, a senior editor at Adult Video News. "Us people on the West Coast are more laid back."
More on gun rights. The Pink Pistols' brief is the lead for the Washington Post story on amicus briefs in the Second Amendment case now before the Court. (IGF contributing author Dale Carpenter helped write the brief.)
More on Jew-bashing + gay-bashing. The most recent in an ongoing series of attacks in France.
Europe capitulates, again. A gay Iranian teenager faces deportation from Britain and execution in his home country after a Dutch court refused to hear his asylum claim.
11 Comments for “Sexuality: The Front Line of Freedom”
posted by Bobby on
Great example of liberal homophobia, when a queer denounces muslim homophobia, straight liberals call you a queer.
posted by Throbert McGee on
The TNR article makes a point of noticing Lucas’s “safe sex advocacy”:
Lucas–a staunch advocate of safe sex who, unlike some porn directors, uses condoms in his movies
Erm, I’ve never seen one of Lucas’s movies, but there’s a big difference between using condoms in XXX movies, and actually promoting safe sex.
From what I can tell, the overwhelmingly prevalent practice in gay pr0n vids is to downplay the fact that the actors are wearing condoms through deft editing and (in some cases) half-length condoms. In other words, the mainstream practice has generally been to create an illusion of barebacking even when the “actors” are actually wearing their raincoats. Again, I don’t know the exact approach that Lucas’s studio takes — if he actually goes against the mainstream by taking the trouble to make the rubbers MORE conspicuous to the audience, not less so, kudos to him.
posted by RIchard on
Yes, but in condeming homophobia among certain Muslims, is he saying that the religion is evil or that its got fanatics? Is he shown much interest in working with LGBT rights organizations that focus on the Middle East and Islam.
posted by Richard on
On the case itself — involving sex toys — I would be surpised if the court took the case and, even more so, if they struck down the law.
posted by Bobby on
“Erm, I’ve never seen one of Lucas’s movies, but there’s a big difference between using condoms in XXX movies, and actually promoting safe sex.”
—It does promote safe-sex, because it shows good examples. People watch a porn and then they want to do they things they see in the porn. Most porn movies do show porn actors putting on condoms, so it’s a good example.
“Yes, but in condeming homophobia among certain Muslims, is he saying that the religion is evil or that its got fanatics?”
—I think he was talking about the culture. It has become politically incorrect to criticize the cultures of other people, unless they happen to be christian, white, male, conservative, hunters or anything the left doesn’t like. But when it comes to muslims, they do get a free pass from the left.
Here’s a good example, in Harvard muslim women are not comfortable working out in mixed-gender environments, so now the Harvard gym will be closed to men for a few hours.
http://freedomphobia.blogspot.com/2008/03/harvard-u-gym-sets-up-man-ban.html
Is this fair? Isn’t it ironic that male private organizations have sometimes been sued to allow women to join as members? And yet here you have a case of a gym that belongs to everyone, all students, it’s supposed to be open for everyone. Yet Harvard has no problem excluding men for a few hours to accommodate the desires of a politically correct minority.
posted by Richard on
B;
(1) Your think? Might be a good idea to actually ‘know’. It seems rather hip among the gay conservatives to engage in overt racial and ethnic-bashing and justify it as being ‘un-pc’.
(2) The 1st Amendment protects religious freedom and federal law generally requires institutions to reasonably accomodate people’s religious beliefs.
Naturally, their are lots of exceptions and conditions that apply.
(3) Legally, sex discrimination is treated differently then racial discrimination. You can do the former much more, then the later. Sex segregated facilities are not illegal or unconstitutional per se, while racial ones almost always are.
posted by Brian Miller on
Not to interrupt “Richard” ETJB’s trolling, but I think the director in question brings up an excellent point. What’s defensible about burqa-clas, Jihad-screaming fundamentalists that isn’t defensible in polyester-suit-clad, Bible-thumping fundamentalists?
Lefties seem to revel in the mindless defense of Islamic fundamentalists yet have dubbed Christian fundies as evil incarnate. If any criticism of Islamic fundamentalists is “Islamophobic” (the whole thing about “racism” is laughable, since religion isn’t a race), then isn’t criticism of Christian fundamentalists equally “hateful” and “bigoted hate speech?”
No, it’s not, because criticisms of both groups of raving, hate-filled religious loons is based on empirical evidence of their wacky (and often violent) fairy-tale beliefs and their willingness to act out on them. There’s nothing “progressive” about defending any brand of mindless goat-herder superstition demanding punishment and death for those who are different.
posted by Richard on
Not to meddle in the Brian/Bobby trolling, but does anyone here really think that a porn star is going to be the leader in interfaith coexistence relations?
What experience or background does he have to taken seriously when he comments on the Middle East? Certainly, he has his free speech, but we should not have to treat him speech as if it comes from a professional or an expert.
LGBT Conservatives love to engage in ethnic and racial-bashing and then, when anyone complains, they hide behind the mantra of, “oh, it must be ok because its un-pc.”
If this was just an issue against religious fundamentalism, their would be no real controversy from the political left.
This is about people with little knowledge about the Middle East or Islam, deciding to make broad generalizations about a particular ethnic, racial or religious group based on what they get in the sound byte media or wikipedia.
Islam is not a race, but most of its members — in the context of the U.S. — belong to a racial or ethnic minority. Religious, racial and ethnic minorities are often targeted for harassment, violence, discrimination, profiling etc.
BTW, I may not have been posting here long. However, I would note that LGBT conservatives seem to want Muslims to be “less” religious, but want their Christians to be “more” religious.
Some conservatives seem all too eager to silence, sidelide or downplay liberal or moderate Muslims, or the experiences of LGBT Arab, Africans and Mulisms. To craft an image in the minds of the world so as to justify certain domestic and foreign policy objectives.
posted by D.Stephen Heersink on
Eli Roth must be over joyed. Now Torture Porn of men raping, slicing, suffocating, and dicing other men and women will have no community standards to suffer through.
Mr. Merritt’s analyses are often flawed, but I’m trying to understand how Lawrence v Texas took forty years after Griswald gave consenting heterophiles privacy in their use of contraception, thirty years after Roe gave women abortion “rights” to terminate a pregnancy, fifteen years after Bowers affirmed the right of Georgia police to invade gay men’s bedrooms, to decide FINALLY, after reversing Bowers, to permit same-sex privacy by a ONE VOTE margin? Would today’s court vindicate that decision? NO WAY!
So, one can buy and put any object in a VCR, DVD, or up one’s orifices, including the profits of Torture Porn, praised by CATO Institute, because PROFIT justifies anything, and if same-sex can make profits, then it makes CATO Institute happy. Just like all unfettered capitalists. Let the consumer beware, lest it come from China with lead, need 3,000 recalls, or lack sufficient oversight to safeguard the public’s health, AS LONG AS PROFITS flow, that’s good.
If the product makes one sick, corrupts values, sells torture porn, promotes unsafe-sex, or contaminates the food supply, all the better for the “liberty.”
But if it invades privacy of homophiles, well, they’re the cause of today’s wars, the failure of marriage, the reason for 9/11, the cult of death,
UNLESS
they buy our products? Sex toys instead of human relations. Torture Porn instead of human intimacy. Prescriptions instead of natural health. A ban on condoms, since they’re inexpensive, but a $1,500/mo. ARV cocktail makes CATO Institute proud. (Condoms can be had a dime a dozen.) As long as someones PROFITS, and according to Alan Greenspan, profits EFFICIENTLY, throw all else to the marketplace, including mercenaries in Iraq and Afghanistan, who EARN ten-times what the average soldier earns, and gives PROFITS to the warriors for Bush, whether the Bechtels, Carlisle Group, Blackwater, etc. Again, the “liberty” whether to join the Military and die in Iraq or inhumane veterans hospitals is “offset” by the mercenaries earning ten-times the desperate for doing one-tenth the danger.
Profit uber alles. Even the Communist Chinese agree with Merritt’s reasoning, just no voice at the ballot box. After all, did not James Buchanan, the nobel laureate, insist the “dollar” was more valuable then the “vote?” Wal-mart thinks so. So does Bechtel, Blackwater, SCG International — the private profiteers, not to mention
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_defense_contractors
bought on public credit card debt through Asian Banks.
Personally, I am a solid defender of the “market model” of economics, but unlike Marx, not everything is reduced to homo economus, not even the “price of freedom, democracy, and torture porn,”
IGF defends the post-Smith capitalist exploiters of CATO Institute. Profit uber alles. Of course, SMITH would not; he never saw a corporation, factory, or monopoly. His Theory of Moral Sentiments, not Wealth of Nations, was his seminal work, to which the latter was meant to be understood. The “profit uber alles” only see profits, and the religious only see “prophets for profit, tax-free.” But, then so is CATO Institute.
posted by Bobby on
“(1) Your think? Might be a good idea to actually ‘know’. It seems rather hip among the gay conservatives to engage in overt racial and ethnic-bashing and justify it as being ‘un-pc’.”
—No, but it is chic among us to express our opinions and not to worry about offending people all the time. There’s a muslim in my GMAT class, I talk to him, he’s a nice guy. But if tomorrow he says “pork is against my religion, I demand that the university stop selling pork products” I will not be tolerant of that. I will say, “Sorry Amir, but if you don’t like pork, don’t eat it.”
“(2) The 1st Amendment protects religious freedom and federal law generally requires institutions to reasonably accomodate people’s religious beliefs.”
—What about separation of church and state? Christian organizations on campus can’t discriminate against homosexuals in most colleges. It’s true, gays have sued for the “right” to be members of christian organizations that don’t want them. Organizations that reject them sometimes get expelled from campus. So why should Harvard segregate the gym by gender?
“(3) Legally, sex discrimination is treated differently then racial discrimination. You can do the former much more, then the later. Sex segregated facilities are not illegal or unconstitutional per se, while racial ones almost always are.”
—Wow, Bill O’reilly was right, “race trumps gender.” However, I disagree, federal law and Harvard law does not say that race trumps gender, it says that nobody can be discriminated on the basis of race, gender, ethnicity, etc.
Bobby
http://freedomphobia.blogspot.com/
posted by Richard on
You said: But if tomorrow he [your token Muslim] says “pork is against my religion, I demand that the university stop selling pork products” I will not be tolerant of that. I will say, “Sorry Amir, but if you don’t like pork, don’t eat it.”
Agreed, but he like an Orthodox Jew could probably get the University to sell products not made from pork products.
You said: What about separation of church and state?
Few conservatives seem to believe in it, and the Supreme Court has never really properlly defined it.
You said: Christian organizations on campus can’t discriminate against homosexuals in most colleges.
If it is a public college, then they probably cannot deny membership to gays for being gay, but the group would still control its own message and pick its own leaders.
You said: So why should Harvard segregate the gym by gender?
Religious accomodation. They are not banning gyms or men from using them, but rather establshing a time, manner or place restriction. Why segregate bathrooms based on gender? When the government makes a distinction based on sex, courts review it with heighten scrutiny, which is a step below strict secruity.
Race does not “trump” gender. It is very difficult for the government to withstand a court challenge to racial or sexual discrimination, but the court feels that the biological differences between men and women matter and can justify some forms of discrimination.
Although, if students sued for the sex discrimination, it would probably be looked at as a 1st Amendment issue. The real question, if one wants to cause trouble, is what if a gay man or a transgender person wants to use the gym during the women’s hours?
—Wow, Bill O’reilly was right, “race trumps gender.” However, I disagree, federal law and Harvard law does not say that race trumps gender, it says that nobody can be discriminated on the basis of race, gender, ethnicity, etc.
Bobby
http://freedomphobia.blogspot.com/