Tiger Woods, adultery, and public outcry. Why liberal elites don't get it.

I was interviewed by Pat Kessler for WCCO for a story on Minnesota's adultery statute and the Tiger Woods situation last week.

The story poked fun at Minnesota's adultery statute because it applies to a married woman who has sexual relations with another man but not a married man who has sex with an unmarried woman. (Tiger could have been tried under our state's fornication statute.)

The story highlights the liberal mindset of elites in Minnesota society. Senator Ellen Anderson, DFL'er from Minneapolis, was also interviewed for the story and was incredulous that we have a law on the books against adultery. She compared it to countries which stone people to death for things like adultery. She, therefore, thinks putting a person in jail for adultery is also ridiculous. We're a much too enlightened society for that.

That's interesting. I suspect she supports child support penalties, which include jail time for parents who fail to make child support payments. Yet adultery can be just as devastating to a marriage and child as a parent's failure to make child support payments. Why is adultery not that big a deal to her?

One has to look at her worldview. There's something unique about sex for Senator Anderson, I believe. Her record at the legislature shows she's more than willing to pass laws governing behavior in most areas of life, to social engineer. Yet sex is off limits for her. (Her thoughts on adultery are consistent with her previous efforts to repeal our state's anti-sodomy several years ago. She tried to do it through ridicule - lumping it in with other laws she considered archaic like a ban on Sunday auto sales and restrictions on traveling carnivals. The only problem was she couldn't get the support of other legislators. She said that "Anything which has to do with sex becomes a political football around the Capitol." )

Why is the area of sexual behaviors off limits for her? I think because she's a child of the sexual revolution and thus has an ideological commitment to the notion that anything goes sexually as long as it's consensual. Yet she and others have a blind spot for the enormous damage and harm to society, families, parents and children resulting from embracing the sexual mores of the sexual revolution. In fact, she and others at the legislature spend a good bit of their time attempting to deal with the fallout from marriage and family breakdown.

The decline of the family and marriage have enormous negative social consequences for every area of society: Poverty. Personal emotional, physical and psychological damage to spouses and children. Economic decline. Expanding size and cost of government. Epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases. Over a million abortions nationally. Yet marriage and family are treated in a cavalier manner by sexual liberationists. Why? Because their worldview centers around a radical individualism. It's all about me - my pleasure, my personal satisfaction, my wants, my desires. The only transcendent law governing society is what satisfies the individual. I should be able to do anything I want, sexual or otherwise, as long as it's consensual.

In addition, they believe the state should make an effort to mitigate the consequences of one's poor choices. Have a kid of wedlock? Receive welfare support. Engage in promiscuous sexual behavior? Receive free contraceptives. Or maybe have your HPV vaccination paid for by the state. Get pregnant because your contraceptive failed and you don't want the child? Receive a abortion paid for by the state.

Yet this begs the question, why the public uproar about Tiger Woods and his apparent multiple adulteries? Isn't his behavior none of our concern? Isn't it a private matter? No. People know there is a moral law out there where some things are right and wrong and Tiger flagrantly violated this law. Tiger wasn't the poster child of the pro-family movement, so people were not upset with his hypocrisy. They know what he did was wrong and are concerned about the public message this public figure and his behavior sends to the rest of society.

Certainly, Tiger deserves our encouragement and prayers as he attempts to get his marriage and family life back in order. But we shouldn't say his adulteries are not a big deal.