Private Behavior

This transcript has been adapted from the attached audio. It may not be in its final form and may be updated.

LAND: I spoke at an informal luncheon at the John F. Kennedy School of Government and then that evening at a gathering and, of course, the one issue that dominated the discussion was everyone wanted to talk about same-sex marriage. They wanted to talk about how on earth could I possibly be against same-sex marriage, why would I want to interfere with the private relationship of two individuals? And my response to them caught them completely off guard and it was obvious that no one had ever said this to them. I said, “What ever gave you the idea that marriage was a private relationship?”

SHAPIRO: That is exactly right.

LAND: It is a social institution, and every society in the history of man has severely regulated who can get married and under what circumstances because it is a social institution with social consequences and social responsibilities, and, you know, it wasn’t so much they disagreed with me, it was just that they have never heard it.

SHAPIRO: Yes, these people really do believe that this right to privacy now engages everything in the public sector. Everything has become private. But, again, that goes back to the Supreme Court, and their establishment of this blanket right to privacy. I mean, since when is abortion about privacy? Not only are you effecting a human life in the womb, you are also having to go out of your house, go to a doctor, and get a procedure performed. How does that have to do with privacy? I mean, you see things like Lawrence v. Texas which says there is a right to sodomy in the Constitution. Well, how is there a right to sodomy that trumps the communal ability to ban such things? And you are right, when you talk about marriage as a social institution. People really have lost control of this idea that marriage is a social institution; we don’t even believe that any more. Instead, we believe the personal standards of morality, that marriage as a personal institution, is what you govern. And I think Senator Rick Santorum is exactly right when he points out also that our vision of the purpose of marriage has also changed. Marriage always used to be about the children, and now it is more about two individuals fulfilling their love. Well, you know, it has to be about both. But I think the problem here is that we have pushed one to the exclusion of the other. We decided that marriage is solely about personal fulfillment as opposed to the goal of raising children in a healthy family environment and when that happens, when you cut the kids out of the picture, then yes, why can’t any two individuals just get together and do whatever they want?

LAND: Well, and you talk about the right to privacy. It is so ludicrous on so many levels when it comes to abortion, but how about this one? The reason we have a Social Security crisis in the country is because of abortion.

SHAPIRO: That’s right. The Social Security crisis is solely due to the demographic revolution that has happened in this country and declining birth rates, which are largely attributable to abortion. But again, what has happened here is that the power has been taken out of the hands of the people. So, I think that there is this idea out there that most people in the country are even okay with same-sex marriage, which is purely wrong. The only people who are okay with same-sex marriage live in Massachusetts and California; that’s about it. I mean, everyone else is pretty anti-same-sex marriage because we believe in societal standards to a certain extent, and the truth is, as Governor Rick Perry of Texas put it, “No matter what you do in the public sphere, someone’s values are always being imposed.” If you have this very libertarian idea that everyone’s feelings can enter the public sphere, except the religious, that there shouldn’t be any societal morality, that is a societal morality in and of itself because what it does is, it caters to the lowest common denominator. And that is what has happened with things like same-sex marriage. The argument for same-sex marriage springs directly from this right to privacy, this idea that you have a right to do what you want to do in your own home without any sort of governmental intrusion. The fear of politicians to even address this issue, to say, no really you don’t, I mean look, if you are taking drugs in your own house, do you have a right to do that? Is there a right to drugs implicit in the Constitution? Is there a right to beat your wife implicit in the Constitution? You are doing it in the privacy of your own home. Is there a right to bigamy? Is there a right to incest? At this point, because we’ve been so afraid to draw a hard and fast line, I think, not only on the part of the politicians, but I think in the populace at large, instead we’ve got this kind of moving line and as the line continues to waver, we are defining deviancy down. Deviant behavior is becoming more and more acceptable to the vast majority of the American public.

LAND: Well, and, of course, you know, the whole issue of adult-child sex is where the homosexual issue was twenty-five years ago. They are working very hard, night and day, to define down the age of consent and to say that children at younger and younger ages have the right to express themselves sexually with adults. You know, this myth, I graduated from Princeton in 1969, so I am part of that 60s generation, and this myth, and it is a horrific myth, that was, I have the right to do whatever I want to do and it is nobody else’s business because it doesn’t affect anybody but me, and, of course, that is absolutely false on numerous levels, not the least of which is what I do has an impact on the people I do it with, and it has an impact on others as well. Just ask the 55 percent of our children who are growing up in single-parent homes.

SHAPIRO: That’s right exactly. I mean, that is the best example of how this “private behavior” affects everyone. It is shocking to watch as parents completely disregard the needs of their kids in favor of personal fulfillment. I mean, personal fulfillment was the buzz word of the 1960s. And I think it is the buzz word for people of my generation as well. Personal morality can be fulfilling, personal behavior is what is fulfilling. We do have to have societal standards; I think what is lacking is this idea that we live in a community together. Everyone wants to see themselves as an individual distinct from society at large. But the bottom line is that when you are in the public square, no matter what you do, it affects what is going on in public. So does that mean that everything should be subject to regulation? No, clearly not. I mean, there are certain behaviors that either have no moral sense to them so they shouldn’t be subject to regulation or it would be ineffectual to make them subject to regulation. But the bottom line is, that a lot of what we are talking about here, things like pornography and obscenity and homosexuality, all of this clearly can be subject to regulation and, in my opinion, should be subject to regulation because someone’s standards have to govern. Why shouldn’t it be the moral in our society? Why should it be the immoral who get to push the debate in whatever direction they like?

LAND: And, I believe that we should, when we are making these decisions. We should have a hierarchy of whose protections come first, and it should be society’s obligation to protect children.

SHAPIRO: Yes, I think the problem here is, again, I think that we become a society about adults. I think it is very interesting to watch as the phrase, “adult entertainment” has taken over for pornography. Since when is fulfilling base personal desires about being an adult? The definition of being an adult in this country has changed. Being an adult used to be about responsibility, now it is about having the ability to do whatever you want. I think that is a good symptom of the shift in thought, some responsibility to rights. There is this idea that liberty is all about rights, and about no responsibility at all. It should be the opposite. Liberty is always about both responsibility and rights. In fact, they are the same side of the same coin. There is no such thing as a right that does not come with some sort of responsibility. Getting back to an issue you mentioned earlier about pedophilia, it is very clear that the social left’s goal here is to define the age of consent down as you mentioned, because all of the social left’s morality is based on this idea of consent; that if two people consent to do something, then it is fine, and society should have no business stepping in and saying no. Well, the problem with that is, of course, that our public schools are hard at work teaching kids who are 9, 10, 11, and 12yearsold about sex, about the ramifications of sex physically and telling them essentially if you want to go out and do this, here’s a condom, go have fun. That is defining consent down. So if you are saying that a 9, 10, 11 or 12-year-old is capable of making those sorts of decisions, all you have to do is give them enough information, that idea, of course, being the basis for comprehensive sex education. Why shouldn’t a 9, 10, 11, or 12-year-old have the ability to go out and have sex with a 30-year-old? Why should we restrict this? It’s consent is the root of all good, and non-consent is the root of all evil, then why should we restrict consent to those who are more informed? Why should we restrict consent to those who are 18, 19, 20 years old? Maybe we should just keep defining it down, just allow little kids to make these sorts of decisions. This is what has happened. We have begun treating adults like children and children like adults. Everything has become mixed-up. Adults are treated like children because they are taught that they can do whatever they want without any sort of responsibility, and kids are taught that they have the responsibility of making decisions that they should never have to make.

LAND: That is absolutely right. Well, Ben, the book you have just written, The Porn Generation, tell us how the fact that you have three younger sisters impacted your decision to write this book.

SHAPIRO: Well, obviously, they are growing up in the same culture that I have grown up in, which means that they are surrounded day in and day out by a culture that pushes sex and pushes promiscuity without any consequences. One incident that really pushed me to write the book was just driving down Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles and looking up and seeing a Joe’s Jean ad. Now Joe’s Jeans is this company that sells jeans, obviously, but all the ad is is a picture of a woman’s naked rear end. This is in plain public view on Sunset Boulevard. Then you drive a block further and you see Jenna Jamison’s (a porn star) ad for her latest lesbian sex video. When you are driving around with an 18, 15, and 11-year-old sisters, you begin to think—well, maybe this stuff should not be in the public square, especially when you are having to try to explain to an 11-year-old exactly why there is a naked butt up on a billboard. This stuff is so prevalent and it is so pervasive, and the problem is, that no matter how you cloister kids, the kids are always going to interact with kids who have not been brought up well. Kids are always going to have to interact with a culture that has been absolutely poisoned, so, obviously, I do believe that parents should be shielding their kids from as much of this as possible and my parents have tried to do that with my younger sisters, and I try to do that with my younger sisters as well, and I try and shield myself from this stuff as much as possible too. But beyond that, we do live in a society that is communal and that means that if we really want to protect kids, we are not only going to have to clean the insides of our house, we have to clean the community at large. I mean, littering is a public problem; it is not just a private problem. You want to clean up the mess in your own house, but you also want to make sure that you don’t have people driving through your area and tossing trash out the window. That’s exactly what has happened with our culture. People driving through and tossing trash out the window and saying they have a right to do that. So, having three younger sisters and attempting to protect them from this culture and realizing just how difficult it is to protect kids from a pervasive culture, that is a major influence here. People need to understand just how much kids immerse themselves in pop culture, no matter how much you try and prevent them from it. The average kid age 18 in this country watches four hours of television a day. The average kid in this country age 18 spends two additional hours either listening to rock or rap music or browsing the internet and not doing homework. The traditional mode of morality has been lost in a pop culture that pushes sex. I mean, even if your kid is doing homework on the computer, there is a very good chance that you are going to be solicited for a pornography site just by browsing the internet. So, obviously, I really do believe that communal control has to be taken back here, and I think, again, a lot of this springs from the fact that I do have three younger sisters and I realize, as you said before, I mean, it gets to be clichéd after a certain point but it is true, this really is about the kids. Because, pornography doesn’t only effect adults, it effects kids directly and indirectly. If their parents are watching pornography and that is the cause of higher rates of divorce, or if people are watching pornography and that is causing higher rates of child sex solicitation, or kids themselves are browsing the internet and come across images that are going to pervert their image of feminine and masculine or pervert their images of what male-female relationships should be about, then it is going to affect everyone.