Month: July 2003

Risk, Faux News, and yet more Sodomy

Spiked covers risk and why we’re so risk-averse lately.

Fox News sues a parodist thereby making him famous and keeping him in business. “Faux News” is a great idea– but I prefer “We distort, you deride” to their slogan. Note: ask politely, then ignore unless it’s a real threat. Stupid lawyers.

Michael Kinsley has taken up my idea about deregulating marriage.

BusyBusyBusy has been doing the “very very short summaries” theme recently. For example, the George Will article Lap Dancing on the Constitution is summarized as: “By my logic, private consensual sex is indistinguishable from public sex acts, commercial sex transactions or marriage contracts, so if one is constitutionally protected then all must be outside the purview of the state.”

I should note, in response to Will’s article that commercial sex transactions may be regulated as they are commerce, that public sex acts may be regulated as they affect the view, and that private sex acts cannot be regulated as they are nobody’s business.

On the other hand, that would be feeding the trolls, which of course I do all too much already. And as they say, arguing on the internet is like being in the Special Olympics: even if you win, you’re still retarded.)

NYT

I sent a letter today and got a quick response, but it leaves me with more questions.

Dear Ethicist:
     I am confused by the recent supreme court ruling on sodomy. I understand that laws like the one in Texas have been ruled unconstitutional– so any ban on gay sex is out. But are generalized sodomy laws still constitutional, provided that they don’t discriminate based on gender? In other words, is oral sex still illegal in Pennsylvania? Where does this ruling leave mixed-gender sodomites?

Yours,
Verbal
Secretly Ironic Industries

Verbal:
    I think you need to contact “The Legalist;” I’m just “The Ethicist.” But as I, a non-lawyer understand it, you’ve read the decision too narrowly. Justice O’Connor made the equal protection case, arguing that what’s illegal sauce for the goose must be illegal sauce for the gander. But the court ruled more broadly, based on the right to privacy, arguing that the government has no business prying into people’s consensual sex lives. So this decision seems to me to disallow all of the sort of laws you describe with putative humor.
Yours,
RC

My questions are, where can I find a legalist? And does it seem to me that putative is an insult in this context?

Me Me Me

So I have a half dozen author’s comp copies of Linux in a Nutshell, 4th ed. by Siever, Figgins, and Weber. What do I do with them? I’ve given one to everyone I know who wants one, and I guess my family will get one or two as well.

Maybe I’ll hawk them outside the Sox games: Get yah hawt salty Linux in a Nutshell! Hawt n salty, right heah!”