SINFUL = ILLEGAL?

by Virginia Postrel  •  Apr 24, 2003 at 7:40 pm

http://www.dynamist.com/190/sinful-illegal

In defense of Rick Santorum, Hugh Hewitt writes:

Like Santorum most Americans do not want gays persecuted or punished, and they have many gay men and lesbian women as their close friends or within their family. They are concerned not about the legality of these relationships but about the sinfulness of them, and they worry about God's judgment not on the country but on the individuals, and they pray for mercy and the forgiveness of sin. They do so, hopefully, with an awareness of the "log in their own eye" as well as the splinter in their neighbor's.

The problem with this line of reasoning is that neither Santorum's comments nor the current debate concern sin. They concern criminal law, which is to say the capacity of the state to "persecute and punish" certain actions. If you worry about the sinfulness of an action, you seek to persuade people not to commit it; that persuasion may include shunning such sinners in ways gay rights advocates would not approve of (such as refusing to hire them). A liberal society ought not to use criminal sanctions to punish actions merely because a particular religion, or even many religions, may deem them sinful. Eating live animals and shellfish--hence, eating oysters--is a sin in my religion, it's damned gross, and it can kill you. But I don't want to make eating oysters a crime.

Personally tolerant but theologically and politically conservative Christians like Hugh may profess not to be "concerned about the legality of these relationships," but their defense of the laws criminalizing those relationships belies that claim. They are quite concerned about keeping those relationships punishable by jail time. How many of those "logs" are similarly criminal?