Sexual Privacy

Sure, it's a few days old, but it is worth making a few comments about Buckley's latest idiotorial. In 1967, the late Prime Minster of Canada, Pierre Trudeau, refusing to advance an reactionary sodomy bill into law, famously observed that "There's no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation." Apparently, Buckley's clipping service is running behind, as he devotes an entire editorial to dissecting that notion:

Nobody should be permitted to say flat-out that "the government should stay out of the bedrooms of America." What if a civil-rights hate act was being conducted in the bedroom? For that matter, what if Daddy was forcing his way with a 10-year-old girl? Or Mom was starving her 10-month-old boy?

The phrase is an idiotic invocation of a taboo whose single purpose, in current usage, is to illegitimize concern about sexual activity.

Well, no. It is now what it has been since day one: An expression that the state should not be criminalizing consensual sexual acts which occur between adults in the privacy of their own homes. It is Buckley (and opponents of sexual privacy for adults) who wish to twist the phrase to give it different meaning. And when Buckley asks, "There is to be no concern over sodomy in the bedroom. But are there limits?" he knows the answer. It isn't with his reductio ab absurdum, that Trudeau's line might be used to somehow excuse civil rights crimes or infanticide within a bedroom. It begins and ends, as always, with the private, consensual sexual lives of adults.

Buckley continues by railing against those who criticize the Catholic church for the suggestion that John Kerry should not receive communion, because he has taken a pro-choice stance. Buckley tells us that the expression of such an opinion is somehow wrong, because it attempts to impose state values on a church. Perhaps Buckley confuses private comment with state action - there is nothing in the Constitution which prevents individuals from criticizing religious institutions, or noting hypocritical stances (such as going after Kerry for being pro-choice, but refusing to take any note of Catholic politicians who oppose other aspects of church doctrine, such as by supporting the death penalty, or who oppose the Pope - who by church teaching is infallible - in his opposition to the war in Iraq). I don't recall that Buckley, either, has run a piece taking on such "hypocritical" politicians in the manner in which he presently attacks Kerry. Go figure.