Regulate Acts, not Looks

["Mike Finkbiner" <mike_l_f@hotmail.com>]

Although our legal system and constitution grew from English Common Law and 
other sources, with many references to Christian ideals, it has continued to 
grow and change.  In the early United States, we happily barred women from 
voting, restricted their property rights and imposed other barriers to their 
individuality.  We have grown to feel that is wrong, and our laws have 
changed, although the Christian Bible has not.

The courts have consistently held in recent years that no one religion or 
sect can impose it's ideas on another.  Law does not require a religious 
base to be moral.  The fact that almost all religions have a version of 'Do 
unto others as you would have them do unto you' does not mean that it is 
religiously based.  It is based in the logical concept that if you harm 
someone else, they will want to harm you.

All of us should feel free to preach, demonstrate or build a congregation, 
but even when our particular sect is in the majority, we do not have the 
right to impose our religion on minorities.

Laws based on religious beliefs are such an attempt.  Laws should be passed 
to prevent people from harming one another.  Murderers, thieves & dishonest 
accountants are punished because they harmed other people, not because they 
committed an immoral act by some religious code.

I understand other women's desire to wear long dresses and high-necked 
blouses.  They harm no one by doing so.  If they are offended by a 
neighbor's short dresses, they can say so, they can shun her, they can 
spread ugly gossip about her, but they cannot call the police and have them 
force her to change.

If your neighbor offends you by constantly giving you a view of her rear-end 
as she tinkers with her sports car, you do not have the right to force her 
to stop.  It doesn't harm you.  If she starts dumping her used engine oil in 
the street, you can force her to stop because that does harm you.

Let's pass laws against lewd acts in public by anyone.  It might be harder 
to prove than just measuring clothing, but it is fairer.  Let's pass laws 
against sexually oriented business.  Those sort of things can be shown to be 
harmful, where a top free woman working on her tan, mowing her lawn, or even 
just walking down the street, might be offensive to some, but harms no one.

I am unsubscribing now, and heading for Canada for a couple of weeks, where, 
by the way, it is legal for a woman to bare her chest anywhere a man can.  I 
don't expect to see any examples, because although it may be legal, it isn't 
the social norm.  Same thing in New York.

Clothing styles should be not be controlled by the police. If someone 
dresses offensively, mainstream society doesn't have to deal with them.  Any 
merchant can have a dress code for people to enter their shop or restaurant. 
  Any church can do the same.  You can do the same in your home.  Public 
spaces, paid for by all of us taxpayers, should not be closed to people 
whose appearance we don't like.

We will always have the equivalent of punk hair styles, piercings, shirts 
with ugly sayings, and people with bad clothing sense.  If you don't like 
them, ignore them.  If your children are fascinated, that gives you a good 
chance to talk about your standards, and why you belive in them.

Let's regulate what people do, not what they look like.


Mike Finkbiner - who will be happy to not have a computer on vacation!

mike_l_f@hotmail.com


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