It’s Time for Secular Libertarians to See the Truth About Sodomy
I am still waiting for that secular libertarian who would be able to give me a consistent, logical answer to this question: Why should we tolerate sodomy anymore than we tolerate murder, or child-molesting, or rape? Of any of the popular philosophies among the secular libertarians, there still isn’t one that would explain consistently, on the basis of its own beliefs and presuppositions, why sodomy is OK and why it should be left alone.
Those who are Randians and who want to excuse sodomy, are always uncomfortable about Ayn Rand herself and her views on sodomy. She considered it “immoral” and “disgusting.” She believed there was an objective reality behind being a man and being a woman, and that sodomy was a self-conscious decision of an individual to reject that objective reality and act contrary to it. I find Ayn Rand’s view perfectly consistent with her own philosophy. For a Randian to make the move to approve of sodomy takes nothing less than a deviation from the very principles of Objectivism, as can be seen here.
Those who are Rothbardians, and therefore cling to the “natural law” theory, can never produce for me that law of nature which couples male with male. After all, if “natural law” is our guide, there should be some principle in nature that makes sodomy so “natural” as to be beneficial to keep around and tolerate. I have never heard of one. Yes, yes, they say that the individual pleasure can be considered such “law of nature,” but so is my individual pleasure of having sodomy banned by law. Whose individual pleasure should be considered more valid then? Another version of the “natural law” argument says that sodomites are such “by nature,” genetically. But how did “nature” make such a mistake, to mix the genes in the same body? And has anyone discovered the gene of sodomy to know for sure that it exists?
Well, there is the argument for “self-determination,” of course. Even if we could avoid the obvious issue with the validity of that argument (for example, all the asylum inmates, and prison inmates too, suffer from the society’s unwillingness to accept the validity of their self-determinations), we still have a problem. And it is: If subjective sexual lusts are allowed to be the basis for self-determination equally to nature and objective reality, then what would be the problem of allowing rapists and child-molesters to use the same argument? In fact, even today, following accepting sodomy as a “human right” are attempts by different groups of psychologists to do the same for rapists and child-molesters.
Many secular libertarians are also evolutionists. The evolution argument is that anything is good which contributes to the survival of the species. Tell me again, how does sodomy contribute to the survival of the species? Even if we accept the nonsense that it is genetic, isn’t that gene a mutation that is self-destructive, and therefore bad? What would happen if all males in a species are sodomites? How would that contribute to the survival of the species?
Many of them are surprised when I ask those questions and when they discover that one doesn’t have to be a Christian and uphold the validity of the Biblical law in order to condemn sodomy and demand its suppression in a society. Their own non-Christian systems of beliefs – when developed honestly, consistently, and logically – require the same thing. Not that I argue that any non-Christian system has any validity in itself. But, man, when will non-Christians start being consistent with themselves?
No matter what system of thought or faith we take, sodomy is perverse, anti-natural, wicked, immoral, and disgusting as much as child-molesting, rape, or murder.
And if this is so, libertarians need to stop and consider: What is the main point of attraction for people who have perverse, anti-natural, wicked, immoral, and disgusting inclinations?
The state.
From Hitler and Stalin, through cops who pepper-spray and tase peaceful protesters just for fun, to TSA agents who steal valuables from luggage or drool over scanner pictures of women, the state and its institutions have always attracted the worst of the worst in our society. A perverse, immoral, wicked person is always under threat in a society where his victims are free to act. In order to continue in his perversity without the fear of reprisal, he has one option: the state. Either join it, and thus get the protection the state agents enjoy, or lobby it – or even better, control it – and change its laws so that they protect his perverse, immoral, wicked inclinations.
A libertarian should expect, then, if sodomy is perverse, immoral, disgusting behavior, for sodomites to try to use the state and its laws to protect themselves.
And guess what: That’s exactly what has happened over the last 40 years. The sodomite community in the United States has specialized in bullying legislators, on state and federal level, into passing laws which protect sodomy, and not only that but also forcing sodomite propaganda on the rest of the population. Sodomites are not content to simply do what they do in the confines of their homes. They want to force it – through legislation and government force – on everyone else to accept it as normal and good, and to silence – again, through legislation and government force – everyone who dares say the truth about sodomy. Exactly what we expect from any immoral, perverse person to do: use the state to make him save in his perversity; and then force his perversity on others.
The freshest example of this is the new bill that is pushed through the California legislature which would ban parents of minor children from “curing their children of their same-sex attractions.” And it is sponsored by sodomite groups who have been lobbying California legislators for decades now to force sodomy on the rest of the population, by law. They are not content to practice it in the confines of their homes. And they do not recognize the rights of the parents to decide for their own children. No, sodomites require that the children belong to the state so that the state can involve and enforce sodomy, over the decisions of the parents.
Some secular libertarian groups are opposing the bill. Too late. And inconsistent. The problem was partially created by these same secular libertarian groups who supported the “rights” of the sodomites in the first place. They have been active in feeding the monster of sodomite activism while it was still a baby, under the pretext that all creatures have the right to live. Now that the monster is grown up and is devouring its own allies, secular libertarians are surprised, and try to oppose it. They are now trying to be part of the solution after being part of the problem for many years.
Which brings me back to what I have said before: that secular libertarianism is no libertarianism at all. It is a garbled mish-mash of self-contradictory ideas based on no moral standard at all, unable to give any consistent blueprint for social, political, or legislative action that would make sense and actually support the cause of liberty. Just like conservatives, secular libertarians are unable to answer the question, By What Standard?
When there is no clear ethical standard, there can be no defense of liberty. As secular libertarians are beginning to see, in the case of sodomy, the unprincipled defense of perversity is not a defense of liberty, it is encouraging statism and tyranny. Only a defense of liberty as defined by the law of liberty, that is, the Law of God as revealed in the Bible, is a true defense of liberty. Which means that a true defense of liberty must always go together with a war on perversity because moral perversity always breeds tyranny. Until that truth is accepted, secular libertarians will pay lip service to liberty but will in fact work for more tyranny in the land. Only Christian libertarianism is the true libertarianism. Any other libertarianism is an exercise in self-deception.
The real theological question here is in what way the theocratic covenant of Israel is supposed to be applied to non-covenental nations.
A lot of this comes to the differences between Baptist and Presbyterian theology. As a Baptist, though I agree with you on a number of things, I believe that the New Testament Covenant is only for believers, thus, the New Testament application of the death penalty for homosexuality is excommunication from the church, not physical punishment (See 1 Corinthians 5.) Paul very specifically says it isn’t his job to judge those outside the church.
A big part of the question here would be whether “governing auhtorities” are some exceptional group of people that have to play by different rules as everyone else. Deuteronomy 17:14-20 seems to suggest that they don’t And since Paul pretty explicitly says that sexual sin outside the church isn’t his business, I’m not sure why it would be the business of any other Christian either. Yes, I understand that the theocratic country of Israel imposed a death penalty on it, and that was sanctioned by God. But is it sanctioned for God today? I don’t see any real evidence that it is, and I see some evidence that it isn’t.
BTW: WRT the whole “natural law” thing, homosexuality does occur in nature. Mind you, I’m not really a natural law proponent, in part for this reason. I come to many of (though not all of) the same conclusions as Rothbard through scriptural reasoning.
This article would best explain my views on this subject (not written by me): http://reformedlibertarian.com/articles/philosophy/on-the-justification-of-libertarian-conclusions-and-a-comment-on-theonomy/ . In short, I believe that scripture teaches that Christians should live by the non-aggression principle despite the fact that the OT theocracy did not do so.
For what its worth, I agree with theonomists FAR more often than I don’t. But I agree with libertarians on this point. I don’t think “secular” libertarians have any more reason to make any moral claims either for or against the legalization of sodomy than anyone else does.
By “anyone else” I mean “any other secularist.”
Hmm. Now normally Rothbard would resolve negative externalities through privatization. But I guess one cannot prosecute God’s wrath as a property violation, because it deals with a non-negotiable commons?
Privatization could, conceivably, keep sodomy out of the public eye. But, it couldn’t/wouldn’t really be “able” to stop it from occurring in the privacy of one’s own home. The thing is, though, theonomy really couldn’t either. Oh you could make it illegal on paper, but how often are you really going to have two or three witnesses for something like that? I feel like its a practical non-issue.
Then again, admittedly, trying to factor for God’s wrath in a political system is probably not compatible with anarcho-capitalism, since the market probably won’t adjust based on God’s Wrath. I don’t really see anything in the Bible that would suggest New Testament Christians should try to forcibly (via government) control the sin of unbelievers for the purpose of avoiding God’s Wrath. Instead, I specifically see Paul (1 Corinthians 5) saying that the sin of unbelievers isn’t his concern.
Does that mean “anything goes”? No, but I think it does mean that any sanctions that are used against unbelievers should be for the direct purpose of protecting other people, and not solely to avoid God’s Wrath. hence the NAP.
I understand this passage to refer to the judicial boundaries of the institutional church, in order to harmonize with his statement in Romans 13 referring to the judicial boundaries of the institutional state. It’s a very harsh statement to confer legitimacy, considering the corruption of the Roman state, but that’s the verse you have to get around.
As I understand it, the Church does not have the authority to avenge blood in response to an initiation of aggression, nor do families or individuals. So either way, Biblical justice would require victims to appeal to a special agent to enforce nonaggression.
But then the second difficulty is with the NAP’s humanistic definition of aggression. Lew Rockwell argues that the NAP is an application of the Golden Rule, but ‘love your neighbor as yourself’ includes not doing things in private that will negatively affect your neighbor. Rothbard teaches that ‘aggression’ is what disrupts human thriving, but Scripture teaches human thriving is disrupted by sin. Rothbard didn’t know what humans are for. If he knew, he would have taken into account man’s alienation from God. He would have proposed the Non-Sin Principle as the true standard of justice and the best policy for maximizing economic output.
I’ve been reading a lot of Gary North lately, and he seems to be saying that sacred covenants (including the State) are by their very nature involuntary, because they are acts of God; man can only respond.
If the sin of unbelievers is not the Christian’s concern, logically, wouldn’t that necessarily mean anything goes?
@Jeers1215- Good points. I don’t agree with all of them, but I get where you’re coming from.
As a Christian who tries to take his Bible seriously (though I still have a lot to learn), Romans 13 is honestly one of the most frustrating passages in the Bible for me. This is mostly because people will use it in a debate to defend pretty much any policy of government they want to support. Oppose public schools because you shouldn’t be robbed to pay for the education of your neighbor? “Obey the government, Romans 13” the statist Christian says. Don’t want to fight foreign wars. “Romans 13:4 gives the government the right to overthrow Saddam” the statist Christian says.
I am still not entirely sure how to work with the passage. I don’t see how you could interpret Romans 13 in such a way as to say that the Roman government to be legitimate. The Roman government, demonstratively, did not exclusively punish evil and reward good. So, it seems to me that they were NOT rulers according to this passage, even if the Roman soldier who was scanning the letter without paying attention would likely assume that they were. It seems to me, logically consistently (though I am not trying to argue that Paul was personally thinking along these lines, nor do I think he needs to have been for this point to stand) that this passage would also prohibit governing leaders from prohibiting competition with them on ANY services, since competition with the government isn’t evil (nowhere in the Bible does it say that it is.)
I understand how one could take Romans 13:6 to justify taxation. But I do not think one passage that isn’t particularly clear (Keep in mind that all it says is this is the REASON you pay taxes, it is not an explicit command to do so, and it is certainly not an explicit command that the government must COLLECT taxes by force) can override the much clearer passages in which tax collectors are condemned as sinners, and Old Testament passages like 1 Samuel 8 and Naboth’s vineyard that clearly portray the King taking other people’s stuff by force as a bad thing. While I do not deny that Romans 13:6 and “render unto Caesar” present a challenge for the anti-tax position, I don’t think they’re anywhere near the irrefutable proof texts that statists say that they are (note that I’m not really referring to you when I say “statist but your average Christian Republican or Democrat. Theonomists, though I don’t agree with them all the time, typically present what are in my opinion far more intelligent arguments than most other Christians who disagree with a strictly libertarian society.) Its also worth noting that there are theonomists who don’t believe in compulsory taxation either. I happen to know that Joel McDurmon agrees with me that there is no such thing as a “just tax” and I doubt he’s the only one.
If a government is punishing evil and rewarding good like its supposed to, but it is collecting taxes by force, I would not say that a Christian should refuse to pay such a government. Nor do I even necessarily say Christians should refuse to pay less just governments. I see the question of how Christians should respond when they are forcibly taxed as a different question than whether Christians can ever righteously enforce tax laws against other people. I am more iffy on the first question, but I think the second question is a relatively clear “no.”
As for covenants being imposed by God, though I agree this is ultimately the case (Calvinism, absolute predestination, and so forth) I don’t necessarily agree that this is always temporally the case. While marriage is supposed to be an unbreakable covenant, a man and a woman agree to get married: and while there are Biblical limitations on this (must marry a fellow Christian of the opposite gender) God doesn’t impose particular marriages on people, or at least not normatively (I know God did sort of impose marriage of Gomer on Hosea, and Eve on Adam, so I won’t say that he NEVER does this.)
The family is much less voluntary, but I don’t see this as so much creating a hierarchy among humans or of creating different sets of morality on different people. Everyone is a child during their developmental years, everyone is under the authority of their parents until they grow up and then they can leave and start their own families. By contrast, the State is an institution that claims to have a moral right to do things that other people are never allowed to do, which I think is both Biblically and logically unjust.
I also want to clarify that while I do admire Rothbard and agree with him on many things, I don’t subscribe to all of Rothbard’s views. I don’t agree with his epistemology, his religious views, or his views of the family on pretty much any point I’m aware of. I also do not think aggression is the only problem in American society. I do think wanton aggression that isn’t even really being considered, however, is a huge part of the sin that grips America. Sexual deviancy is a big part of it, but its not all of it.
I think 1 Corinthians 5 is specifically dealing in the context of sexual norms. Paul isn’t worried about worldly people acting in sexually perverse fashion, but he ABSOLUTELY sees it as his business to keep that stuff out of the church. I don’t think Paul is saying anything about punishing theft or murder in that passage.
I am still open to changing my views on this. I am by no means “completely settled” on all of these issues. I should also point out, while my eschatology is still in development, I am not currently postmillennial, thus I am more pessimistic regarding what is actually likely to be accomplished in society. I don’t really envision our society ever becomming Christianized enough that theonomic reconstructionism will work, though I also recognize non-workability isn’t really an argument.
I welcome your responses.
Also, I want to be on record for saying I am opposed to the people that insultingly dismiss theonomy without understanding it. I don’t generally care for secular libertarianism either, though secular libertarians sometimes say useful things.
I’m not trying to justify coercive taxation, social services, offensive wars, or a dedicated, preemptive police-class.
Rockwell argues that Romans 13 could only refer to a state that fits the Romans 13 definition. But the original Roman state was as corrupt as could be, which is what would make it a difficult precedent. I think the issue is legitimacy. He was legitimizing civil authority to enter the sacred covenant, which is a monopoly on violence. But he wasn’t legitimizing any of a particular regime’s actions (such as coercive taxation or monopolizing unbiblical “services”). Christians were not required to be absolutely obedient, just as the 5th Commandment does not require children to be absolutely obedient to their legitimate Family government (who also enter a sacred covenant) in cases of delinquence.
From what I’m reading, the union of marriage as well as the establishment of the state could be voluntary, but the sacred covenants which confer legitimacy are not, because they are acts of God.
If I understand, you’re saying it is unjust for one group of people to place themselves above the moral law by claiming a special authority over others.
The first issue is the moral legitimacy of a monopoly on judicial authority to render binding judgements, but I think that’s part of the way covenants function. Gary North wrote a 70 page book (www.garynorth.com/freebooks/docs/pdf/baptized_patriarchalism.pdf) making the point that family governments can’t serve the sacraments, because the Church has been given a special monopoly on serving the sacraments. And he argues that the State doesn’t have the authority to raise children, because this special authority has been given exclusively to the Family. So the argument is that the sovereignty of each sphere is legitimized by a sacred covenant, and each covenant is enforced by its own set of sanctions. In the case of the Church, the sanctions include excommunication. In the case of the State, the sanctions include violence, expressed through theonomy. In both cases, massive bureaucracies are not required, because actual enforcement of the sanctions can be delegated to laymen and citizens.
According to North, the authority of the Church is involuntary, because it has been given the keys of the kingdom. It can condemn people to hell, whether they are excommunicated by a Church ruling or if they excommunicate themselves by opting out of membership. Either way, the Church has authority over them. So both the Church and the State exercise power regardless of consent. North explains that the Family is a unique institution in this respect, because new authority is frequently created by marriage and destroyed by death, whereas legitimate Church and State authority persists indefinitely.
The second issue is determining at what point a coercive corporation of individuals calling itself “the state” becomes a covenant State. I’ve been pushing back on Doug Wilson’s blog about this, but I haven’t seen any satisfactory answers. North once said legitimacy resulted from “historical process,” but that sounds a lot like Manifest Destiny. I’m not one of his paying customers, so I doubt I could get much more of an explanation there.
You think it’s tough finding an honest critique of theonomy, I find that a lot of people (smart people) try to dismiss libertarianism without having ever read Rothbard or engaging any of his arguments, which is frustrating, because they attack straw men, and then they don’t develop good arguments.
Good stuff. I guess my question would just be this. In your view, could courts, legal enforcement, and defense services be privatized, and could that be done in a Biblical fashion? Why or why not?
I need to read that book by North sometime. North is a smart guy and I enjoy reading him, even though we don’t agree on everything.
Theonomy and libertarianism both get strawmanned a lot. The main reasons I’m an ancap rather than a theonomist in the standard sense would be that I don’t think its our job as Christians to impose the OT law on unbelievers. We should be telling homosexuals and blasphemers to repent rather than killing them and sending them to hell. Just IMO.
And yes, I realize that this is way oversimplified. I’m not writing a book here or expecting to cover every facet of this (as if I even understood it all yet) but that’s where I’d stand right now.
Courts, law enforcement, and defense could be privately organized and funded as long as they don’t use violence (because they are not violating the sovereignty of the State sphere), and whenever they do use violence (like in cases of self-defense), the actions would be subject to review/appeal in one or more State courts. If God has granted the covenant-bearing State a monopoly on violence, then any other use of violence is theoretically delegated from that responsible entity (individual rights and immunities come directly from God, but it is the State that must answer to its covenant). So it would ultimately be up to the State courts to either rule that someone acting in the name of the State be punished or grant judicial immunity, based on Biblical Law. The authority to enforce these rulings could then be delegated to the general citizenry.
Sometimes I go back and forth between the positions from a practical standpoint. Perhaps anacap could precede theonomy or it could exist beyond the realms controlled by Christians. Bojidar said somewhere that borders exist to limit governments, so I think the right to leave a theocracy should always be voluntary.
In a voluntary society, where would unbelievers get the moral authority to retaliate against an initiation of aggression?
I suppose my own position would be that I am not sure why the State needs to be the “final arbiter” or why there needs to be a “final arbiter” so to speak. The Bible never explicitly, despite Romans 13, commands that there be such, nor does it ever say that a competetive system of courts and law enforcement agencies all of which have the legal right to use violence under certain conditions and only under certain conditions would be unjust or lack authority.
I guess my thing should be, if you have a just system of law (and its content doesn’t really matter yet) I’m not sure why specific enforcement agencies would need to get authority from a particular source, the fact that the law says “If X happens you can do Y” would be enough.
Mind you, this is going from an assumption that ancap generally “works” and then discussing the morality of it. I know that if, like most people, you deny that ancap is practically workable, you run into a different set of issues. Normally the argument I get is that ancap is nice in theory but doesn’t work in practice. Your argument seems to be that ancap works in practice but is still morally wrong, which is a position I admit I don’t necessarily encounter that often.
I’m not sure how theonomy would directly transition into ancap or vice versa, though I could see how minarchism could eventually transfer into, or just be very similar to, either or. I imagine we would both agree on the immediate steps, deny the feds as much power as possible and decentralize everything to the local level, abolish all the regulatory agencies, the Federal Reserve, the foreign bases and the foreign wars, end the drug war, and so forth. If we ever got to a system where all of this stuff was decided at the county level, I imagine the differences between what we believe would be pretty small, if any, and could probably coexist side by side in the same general area.