A fine column, if somewhat discouraging:
A few years ago, Kenneth Minogue of the London School of Economics wrote that ours is the age of “the new Epicureans” in which the “freedom to choose” trumps all. A childless couple can choose to conceive. A female couple can choose to conceive. A male couple—Barrie and Tony from Chelmsford, England—can choose to conceive and both be registered as the biological fathers of their children not so much on the technical grounds that they had “co-mingled” their sperm before shipping it out to their Fallopian time-share in California but out of a more basic sympathy that this is how Barrie and Tony “self-identify” and it would be cruel to deny them. A woman in Bend, Ore., can choose to become a man, and then a “pregnant man.” A man can choose to become a woman. A man can choose to get halfway to becoming a woman, and then decide it’s more fun to “live in the grey area.” Biologically, Barrie or Tony, but not both, is the sole father of their child; the “pregnant man” is pregnant but not a man; the he/she living in “the grey area” is in reality black or white—at least according to what we used to call “the facts of life.” But issuers of passports, drivers’ licences, even birth certificates and no doubt one day U.S. Department of Homeland Security visas now defer to the principle of “self-identification.”
In terms of sexual identity, we’re freer than almost any society in human history, at least in terms of official validation of our choice to “redefine” ourselves in defiance of biological and physiological reality. And yet, if you accept that infertile couples and gay couples should be free to “have” babies by means of technology, why should you not be free to sell them the semen that enables them to do it? If you suggest that, say, “partial-birth abortion” (which is actually partial-birth infanticide) ought to be illegal, feminists will be out in the street chanting, “Keep your laws off my body!” and “Keep your rosaries off my ovaries!” But, when the government tells you you can’t sell your own bodily fluid, which is, after all, about as basic a personal property as anything, there are no outraged progressives to chant “Keep your legislation off my ejaculation!”
At some point we will come to see that the developed world’s massive expansion of personal sexual liberty has provided a useful cover for the shrivelling of almost every other kind. Free speech, property rights, economic liberty and the right to self-defence are under continuous assault by Big Government. But who cares when Big Government lets you shag anything that moves and every city in North America hosts a grand parade to celebrate your right to do so? It’s an oddly reductive notion of individual liberty. The noisier grow the novelties of our ever more banal individualism, the more the overall societal aesthetic seems drearily homogenized—like closing time in a karaoke bar with the last sad drunks bellowing off the prompter “I did it My Way!”
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Interesting read, but it’s missing something. The column argues that increasing sexual liberty correlation a decline in other liberties, but exactly how does this happen? There is no proposed causal link – at most, perhaps sexual liberation might serve as a distraction. So there is really no point to it at all. It’s obviously intended to be critical of the new flexability recognised in sexual matters, but the criticism lacks substance. Without substance, it’s really nothing more than ‘I don’t like these people, but I’ll take two pages to say so.’
It’s also rather lacking in historical perspective. Never had more sexual liberty? Agreed. But less liberty of other kinds? Completly wrong. While it might make sense to argue that there is now less individual freedom than there was, a decade or two ago, there’s still a great deal more than there was a century or two ago.
Suricou, you obviously have never put yourself in the shoes of a conservative. Mark Steyn wrote the above in Macleans, a Canadian Publication. The Canadian Human Rights Commission has gone after people, frequently conservatives, investigating them for hate crimes after making certain statements, including statements on topics like same-sex marriage or abortion. The statements need not be threatening, they need only be sufficiently offensive to the right person.
In the broader application of their policies, Mark Steyn himself was investigated by the CHRC for writing about his observations and concerns of the European spread of Islam in Macleans magazine. He did not promote violence against Muslims, but some Muslims felt that this cast them in a negative light and so they went to the CHRC.
That is government approved censorship, and it contravenes the right of free speech. Either Mark Steyn is completely wrong that fundamental rights have been sacrificed at the altar of political correctness, or you’re sadly ill-informed.