America would be a happier place if tolerance were practiced more often. However, a line must be drawn between a desire for tolerance and coercively using government power to enforce tolerance. As Hobbes said, “Freedom is found in ‘the silence of the laws.'”

When laws are silent, they may be viewed as passively tolerant or passively intolerant. The average American does not want homosexual sex to be illegal.

Sex is private business. Legal silence tolerates sexual behavior between consenting adults, and this makes people happy, because the freedom to engage in sexual behavior of their choice is protected. All laws regulating consensual sexual behavior should be struck down.

Gay rights activists interpret the law’s silence as permitting intolerance. They want the majority of Americans who find homosexual sex morally abhorrent to be forced to tolerate.

Their legal claim must fail, because the form of protection they desire rests on the legal status of a behavior, not a state of being.

The moral code of America generally frowns on those who do not tolerate states of being.

Sexual acts of all kinds are completely exposed to criticism. Some homosexuals find heterosexual sex repulsive. If one form of sexual behavior is legally protected from disapproval, then all forms of sexual behavior may also be thus protected.

If sexual lifestyles were to be legally protected, what would we have to accept?

The law must be silent about the homosexual lifestyle, because sexual behavior should not be affirmed by the law.

It should be illegal to discriminate against people for their state of being, but it must be legal to discriminate based upon behavior.

Homosexual lifestyles are not states of being; they inherently involve behavior which may be judged. Legal protection would force obligations on third parties that would violate their rights to freedom of association, speech and religion.

Employers who discriminate against qualified homosexual job applicants must have that right because they have the right to choose what behavioral type of employee they want. Attitudes and sexual behavior may be taken into account. People who discriminate against practicing homosexuals lose qualified applicants and risk public disapproval.

Everyone must have the right to think and say homosexual sex is immoral and destructive. There are religious and secular reasons why homosexual sex may be disapproved. But is disapproval of homosexual sex the same as hatred of homosexuals?

In any case, it does not matter if disapproval is directed at the individual or his acts. As long as the disapproval does not physically affront the individual involved.

It does not matter if homosexuality is determined by nature, nurture or choice.

People choose their sexual lifestyles. Indeed, even the most necessary physical processes, such as eating, may be judged when the manner in which they are carried out is taken into consideration.

Eating may be natural, but when someone eats sloppily, people have the right to disapprove.

Tolerance for sexual behaviors unlike one’s own may be a virtue to some people, as intolerance for certain sexual behaviors is, likewise, a virtue to other people.

Those who participate in disapproved sexual behaviors may strategically wish to have them legitimized by the government.

Gay rights activists have failed to convince most Americans that homosexual sex is deserving of acceptance; therefore, they have turned to the power of the government to enforce their agenda. Their ideas about sexuality should not be the law on the land; they must rely on the power of persuasion.

Americans must have the right to do wrong, as long as they do not infringe on others’ rights. However, no one can demand approval of these wrongs.

If a woman is promiscuous, people may be disgusted and call her a slut. If a man cheats on his wife, people may be disgusted and call him an adulterer. If a man has sex with a man, people may be disgusted and call him a homosexual.

There should be no laws prohibiting consensual sexual behavior, nor should there be laws requiring approval of any form of sexual behavior.

After all, “you can’t legislate morality.”

Timothy Kelly

Waterloo