Sex Worse Than Online Gambling?
As the nation receives the news that actor David Duchovny has entered a rehabilitation facility to help him overcome a problem with sexual addiction, speculation has arisen over whether James Dobson and Chad Hills of Focus on the Family will add sex to their list of activities that contribute to horrifying social ills, a list that already includes gambling in all forms and especially at online casinos.
Clearly, sex has contributed to harm to Duchovny and his family, wife Tea Leoni and children Madelaine and Kyd. By Hills' reasoning, this should be enough to conclude that millions are suffering the same problem, and the proper solution is to legally ban sex, except for perhaps under specific conditions as approved by the religious zealots.
After all, sex has caused murder, emotional pain beyond count, financial devastation, and even wars back to the Trojan War (how appropriate!). So has religion, but of course we're not banning that. And these are social ills of undeniable truth, as opposed to the manufactured statistics of Spencer Bachus and the unfounded statements of certainty by Focus members regarding gambling. Best for all if Dobson and Hills decide when, where, and with whom we have sex, and make it illegal otherwise.
Of course, the Focus on the Family website does indeed feature wonderful plans to control sex, including an abstinence program and advocating sex only within marriage. No one would debate the Focus fanatics' right to follow such life plans; but millions would wish that Dobson and Hills would pay the rest of the country the same respect, and allow us our freedom to choose our own way.
Internet gamblers do not advocate forcing churchgoers to visit online casinos, nor do they even object to Focus and other groups counseling the public against such behavior, It is only when those of different opinions design to impose their behavior upon the rest of us through law that their obsessions become dangerous.
Voters who do not understand the big deal about legality of online casinos, and consider it a fringe issue, may think twice if the Focus group has the same say-so about sex that they are perpetrating upon gambling patrons. Lovers of liberty understand the need to support viewpoints with which they do not necessarily agree. Paraphrasing the famous poem about the Nazi suppressions said, "When they came for the (gamblers), I remained silent. I was not a (gambler). And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak."
