Another attempt to legislate morality

Jon Bruning, our politically ambitious Attorney General, has recommended, as a part of his Crime Control package, that the legislature make sending sexually explicit pictures, words, videos, etc, thorough email to ANYONE a crime. The proposal, currently identified as Legislative Bill 142 and introduced by Senator Mike Friend of Omaha, would define the above mentioned behavior as a misdemeanor if all parties involved are adults. It would become a felony if the person doing the sending is over 18 and the person receiving is under 16. I have no problem with the latter part of the bill because the intent is obviously to shield children from sexually explicit images and/or words and that's a good thing. I have lots of problems with the first part of the bill.

What adults email to each other shouldn't be anyone's business but their own even if the email is unwanted. In fact, all of us who use computers receive unwanted, nuisance emails all the time and there is a simple solution when we do. It's called the "delete" key. In politics, we have always made a distinction between "unethical" conduct and "illegal" conduct. The same idea applies here. You just substitute "offensive" for "unethical". Just because we don't like something doesn't mean it should be illegal. You're not required to own a computer and you're certainly not required to open every e-mail you receive. Self-governance is this area seems a far better solution than governmental intervention.

It also makes little sense to pass new law governing the private conduct of consenting adults when law enforcement is having such difficulty enforcing the laws we already have on the books that pose a much greater threat to the health and safety of our citizens. Have we successfully shut down all the meth labs operating in the state? Have we done everything we can do to prevent and eliminate child abuse and spouse abuse? Have all the murders, rapists, burglars, and robbers been caught and locked up? The list could go on and on.

If this bill is passed, it would be yet another behavior defined by the government as a "victimless" crime. A victimless crime simply means behaviors participated in by two or more people with none of the parties defining themselves as a victim.

For example, if you've been robbed, or assaulted, or raped, you would certainly define yourself as a victim. However, if you're playing a slot machine at an establishment in Nebraska hoping for a big payoff, you DON'T define yourself as a victim, even though you may be participating in "illegal" behavior.

These kinds of behaviors have historically been defined as "vices" and, in fact, most larger city police departments have an entire squad of officers assigned to hunt down and arrest these wanton criminals. This squad is called, appropriately enough, the vice squad.

I worked the vice squad in Tulsa for a while and one of the interesting conundrums of my job was that, from time to time, we would spend an entire shift shutting down bars and clubs and arresting owners, managers and customers for betting on pool games or allowing people to bet on pool games. Then at the end of our shift, we would all retire to the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge for an all-night game of high stakes poker. Made no sense then, makes no sense now.

It just seems logical to me that we allow law enforcement to do what we need them to do the most, to do what they're trained to do and have the ability to do the best and that is to enforce the laws on the books where people do things to other people against their will. Where there are real crimes and real victims. Law enforcement shouldn't be the moral arbiters of our society. That should be the responsibility of parents, schools, and churches. That's where we learn our values and our morals. That's where we develop our definitions of what's right and wrong. And that's the proper place.

Every minute law enforcement spends trying to correct our core values and morals is a minute they're not able to spend protecting us from people who want to do things to us that we don't want done to us. As long as no one is harmed against their will, let's allow consenting adults to be consenting adults and unless or until their behavior harms others, let's stay out of their business. Why we continue to want to interfere in the private, consensual behaviors of adults, especially in the area of sexuality, never ceases to amaze me.

This bill would probably never stand an appeals court challenge anyway.