Like all good libertarians, I believe that homosexuality and selling heroin to children should be "legalized."
By "legalized," I mean these pathetic people should not be locked up with some psychopath in the hell-hole called "a federal prison cell" to be beaten for 5-10 years.
Like all good Christians, I believe these practices should be eradicated from the face of the earth.
Some will accuse me of being "homophobic" and engaging in "hate speech" for having such strong opinions about what "consenting adults" might do or should not do.
American law used to prohibit incest and homosexuality. Rhode Island repealed its criminal incest statute in 1989, Ohio only targets parental figures, and New Jersey does not apply any penalties when both parties are 18 years of age or older. The law still generally says that a child cannot "consent" to sex, and the law used to presume that even an adult cannot legally "consent" to acts which violate "the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God."
A Christian libertarian can oppose laws which "punish" such acts, and still oppose the commission of such acts. Acts which violate the laws of the Creator de-humanize us. Those who seek the "freedom" to commit such acts, claiming such acts are "consensual," de-personalize and de-humanize the concepts of "consent" and "freedom."
Consider the recent sordid revelations of MacKenzie Phillips.
Her father was John Phillips. Blogger "dk" reminds us that John Phillips was the “founder of The Mamas And The Papas and writer of such memorable songs as ‘California Dreamin’, ‘Monday, Monday’ and ‘San Francisco (Be Sure To Wear Flowers In Your Hair).’”
Yes, wear flowers, not a suit and tie, and don't work more than one day a week, because you're "free," and not a "corporate slave." "dk" looks behind the flowers:
Phillips created a handful of anthems that came to define their times. As co-organizer and co-producer of the Monterey Pop Festival, he helped birth the concept of the rock festival.
Along the way Phillips made loads of money, paid cash for Jeanette McDonald’s Bel-Air mansion, bought His-&-Hers Jaguar XKEs for himself and wife Michelle, and snorted a small mountain of cocaine. His was a remarkable journey and a fantastically gruesome tale of addiction and excess.
Am I being too critical to think that someone who buys "His-&-Hers Jaguar XKEs" is a slave to corporate status symbols?
But it's more than being a pawn of corporate execs wearing suits and ties. It's opening a door to a false religion and empty promises of pseudo-salvation, southern-California style:
The introduction of harder drugs was also an open door to some scary people who began to take advantage of the naive, welcoming spirit of the times. One such oddball, named Charles Manson, insinuated himself in Beach Boy Dennis Wilson’s mansion, while peddling his own songs around town and building up a cult of impressionable young hippies.
But until daddy takes our T-Bird™ away (or our XKE), we're "free." As "dk" puts it:
At the end of it all we pass through the Holland Tunnel, and the open road unwinds ever hopeful, promising salvation and the cleansing of sins in exchange for a few gallons of gasoline.
Just like the clergy of "organized religion," the wealthy high priests of the religion of California consent and freedom were hypocrites. Even they could not practice what they preached.
The peace & love vibe that surrounded Laurel Canyon was shattered by two developments that began to take root in 1969 – the introduction of cocaine as the drug of choice, and with it, the emergence of nefarious characters with dark intentions who began showing up on the fringe of the community.
This past week has seen the extradition of motion picture director Roman Polanski on charges of drugging and raping a 13-year old girl. John Phillips had been invited to the home of Polanski on the night the Manson Family murdered Polanksi's wife, Sharon Tate, and Phillips
later found himself on the defense’s witness list for the Manson trial. Before the truth emerged, Tate’s husband Roman Polanski believed that Phillips had something to do with the killings and, according to Phillips, held a meat cleaver to his throat while urging him to confess to the crimes.
In the months between the murders and the arrest of Manson, a deep, almost hysterical paranoia settled over Laurel Canyon. “The Manson killings just destroyed us,” said Mamas & Papas producer Lou Adler. “I mean, everyone was looking at everyone else, not quite sure who was in that house and who knew about it. It was a very paranoid time, and the easiest thing to do was to get out of it. Everybody went behind closed doors, and the scene went really quiet.”
A few months later,
The Rolling Stones held their disastrous free concert at Altamont Speedway on December 6, 1969. “As God has been losing his percentage, the Devil has been picking up a lot of that percentage. Things have become very demonic” Phillips told Rolling Stone in 1970.
To spare the reader, we will not include
a more thorough description of:
1) lurid tales of drug use,
2) the demise of the Mamas and Papas,
3) the secret S&M community within Laurel Canyon,
4) the Manson murders and their aftermath, and
5) Manson's connections to the Los Angeles music scene
I'll continue following the blog of "dk," linked above, who provides these details about Phillips' downward spiral:
But his biggest problem ... was his increasing appetite for hard drugs. By the early 70s he was “skin-popping” cocaine through a syringe, scoring heroin on a street corner in Spanish Harlem, snorting lines with his teenage daughter (Laura McKenzie Phillips), and defaulting on every bill in sight. But that was nothing compared to what was yet to come.
As Phillips wrote in his candid 1986 autobiography Papa John: “We couldn’t see it then, but our lives were already out of control. And yet the wake of material destruction we left behind us would later seem calm and glassy compared to the cold, dark, churning river of madness ahead.”
By 1977 Phillips was smuggling heroin and coke through international airports, shooting heroin into infected veins, and trading in fake prescriptions at his local pharmacy to help support his $1,000-a-day habit. “We hired a maid named Versey, an obese, sweet-natured West Indian, to help cook [and] clean. It wasn’t long before she had to scrub jagged streaks of blood from the bathroom walls and ceiling – the gruesome junkie signature scrawled by unclogging used syringes.”
On July 31st, 1980 Phillips was busted by federal agents and later convicted of conspiracy to distribute narcotics. He faced up to 45 years in prison, but received an eight-year suspended sentence and five years of probation. During the trial, Phillips’ defense attorney argued that his “tortured existence during the period of [his] drug addiction … constituted a continuous course of devastating punishment.”
I would go further than the defense attorney and the legal verdict of the justice system, and legalize drugs -- that is, refrain from heaping on further punishment, and be available for genuine rehabilitation and salvation.
During this drug-enslaved decade, Phillips held his daughter captive as a sex slave.
No, that's being "judgmental." That's "hate speech." MacKenzie Phillips says, “Don’t hate my father.” MSNBC.com says "Their long-term sexual relationship eventually became consensual."
"Consensual." Isn't that nice. That means everything is OK. Stop being so intolerant. We're a "diverse" nation.
"Became" consensual seems to imply that at one time it was not.
It began when she was 19, so it's not an age problem. But like Roman Polanksi's victim, she could not consent because she was intoxicated.“On the eve of my wedding, my father showed up, determined to stop it,” writes Phillips, who was 19 and a heavy drug user at the time. “I had tons of pills, and Dad had tons of everything too. Eventually I passed out on Dad’s bed.”
Had this happened before? I didn’t know. All I can say is it was the first time I was aware of it. For a moment I was in my body, in that horrible truth, and then I slid back into a blackout.”
The MSNBC report says:
Phillips’ life began to spiral out of control.
"Began" to spiral out of control?
In 1980, she was fired from “One Day at a Time” because of her constant drug use. That same year, she went to rehab — with her father. She even toured with him in a band called the New Mamas and the Papas. Her sexual relationship with him had become consensual.
MacKenzie describes this "consensual" relationship as "hell":
“I was a fragment of a person, and my secret isolated me,” she writes.
“One night Dad said, ‘We could just run away to a country where no one would look down on us. There are countries where this is an accepted practice. Maybe Fiji.’
“He was completely delusional. No, I thought, we’re going to hell for this.”
But what if she deceived herself into believing she "liked" it? Wouldn't that have been OK?
We are created in the Image of God. But when we spit in God's face, by "consensual" but treasonous acts against "the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God," we deface that Image of God in ourselves. We de-personalize ourselves. We become "a fragment of a person" on the inside, even if in public, among friends and fans, we tell them (and ourselves) that we're filled with "pride." Like someone intoxicated, when we "consent" to sin, we lose the rational and human ability to consent meaningfully and truly. When we seek "freedom" from God, we become enslaved. We create our own hell on earth.
I hate hell. This is why I'm a "judgmental" and "hate"-filled libertarian.
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