They are perfectly relevant, insofar as they place the burden on you to show that you have a privileged view of what is right in this instance. Instead, you lapse into incoherence. Thus, you assert that:"The social contract with the State permits rational people to allow legal exceptions to being touched under stringent conditions.", then hope to talk your way out of the hole by denying that an exception is an exception, in order not to make the admission that not killing a child is a far more important reason than collecting evidence in a criminal case to make an exception.
Then you go off on a bombastic speech about how bad I am for saying that government is in the morality business. As I stipulated, something which is not broadly consensual, but dogmatically grounded, is surely out of bounds, and a lot of things it would be unwise to attempt to regulate. However, there is nothing unconstitutional about laws concerning prostitution, or even sodomy, whether or not they are wise; nor gambling, nor drug use, nor pornography, although as a society we have taken more indulgent attitudes to some of these things. I am sorry, the Founder's would agree with me.
In any case, my point is that you are making moral judgments whether you are forbidding stealing or forbidding child pornography, and that in many instances, we are adopting policies that reflect the kind of society we would like to promote, rather than merely upholding rights, which, incidentally, are nothing if not moral claims.
If you ever decide to have a rational conversation on the subject, let me know........ |
