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A FOOLISH CONSISTENCY: Philip Klein of the American Spectator criticizes my post on the New York City aluminum bat ban thusly:
If liberals say that government can regulate "risky behavior" that imposes medical costs on taxpayers, using the same logic, proponents of sodomy laws could argue in favor of banning homosexual sex because it puts sexual partners at increased risk for getting AIDS. To be clear, I am adamantly opposed to sodomy laws, but my opposition is rooted in the same principle that prompts me to oppose banning smoking, trans-fats, and metal baseball bats. That principle is: libertyWhile Klein doesn't subscribe to the homophobic policy position, his comparison suggests an awfully backwards view of homosexuality. Since sexual orientation is part of one's intrinsic identity, banning sodomy is more analogous to banning a religious ritual than smoking in bars or swinging metal baseball bats. But apparently to the conservative way of thinking they are equally deserving of protection, at best. Klein makes his criticism sound like a serious statement of consistent principle, but one would hope he's smart enough to realize the silliness of this comparison and is really just being facetious. First of all, a sodomy ban, unlike bans on smoking in bars and metal bats in high school baseball, is totally unenforceable because of the infinite number of locations where the act can take place. Secondarily, to enforce it would require invasions of people's personal homes, which none of the New York laws in question do, so the infraction on liberty is clearly an order of magnitude greater. I would not support a ban on smoking or consuming transfats in one's home for this reason. It would be nice if conservatives like Klein debated a policy on its actual merits, instead of invoking this kind of fatuous slippery slope argumentation.--Ben Adler
