One question: How much is too much? I'm thinking that when the safety measures aren't enough to stop an . . . unfortunate consequence from sneaking through, but something is nagging me, saying that that would be too late.

Anyway, bravo, Mr. Zmirak, for the clever parody.

As an Irish-Algonquin American, I was taught Safe DWI in Vermont by my friend, Swerving Ervin. He taught me to wear my Oakland Raider helmet while driving drunk.

The girls loved it.

And that, even more than safety, is was what mattered to me most of all.

Clever, although not quite analogous.

Drunk driving has been criminalized and rightly so.

Are you suggesting we criminalize any sex that falls outside of marriage, etc?

Beautiful. I see a whole series here. Kids will of course smoke cigarettes, so let's teach them how to smoke really low-tar and nicotine kinds. Gang violence? Shoot only small caliber bullets. Porn? Playboy is fine...Hustler is not. Abusive relationships? Hit only hard enough so as not to cause a bruise...simple pain and intimidation is enough. Sex? Condom use only...and the Pill. Oh wait, we already do that!

That's all. Just brilliant.

Thanks for making a superb point. The ‘socially acceptable’ attitude is to just assume that teenagers are not capable of self-control, that expecting them to control themselves is unreasonable and naïve, they’re going to do it anyway, so just give them condoms and forget about those outdated abstinence programs that just don’t work anymore.

Heck, if we can’t expect our teenagers to control themselves when it comes to sex, why should we expect them to control themselves when it comes to drinking and driving, drug abuse, cigarette smoking or anything else?

I’d love to see this published in a major newspaper to see just how people respond to it, and how many think it's a great idea. I'm afraid the results would shock me, though.

GK Chesterton made me do it.

Ann-- People infected with HIV/AIDS have already been prosecuted for knowingly engaging in acts that will infect partners who are unaware of the infection.

But I think that might actually point towards where this analogy breaks down. If you follow this analogy, the Church would say that you should never wear seat belts so long as everyone was driving appropriately. Seat belts, antilock brakes, and airbags represent intrinsic evils that show a lack of complete surrender to other drivers and interfere with the moral purpose of a vehicle. Furthermore, the Pope just suggested that seatbelts may in fact increase the risk of reckless driving and therefore encourage drunks to drive. We should remove seatbelts from all cars to encourage safer driving.

The seatbelt analogy is ultimately a non-issue, since it produces an obvious absurdity in the argument.

I assume that the point of the essay is that people who are "drunk" should never drive, under any conditions, ever, because they are always a threat to the other people on the road. That is, people who are no longer in their proper state of health bear the responsibility of taking themselves off the highway.

If you have HIV/AIDS, you commit a grave sin by risking the lives of others by engaging in any sexual activity.

Ann:

One of the benefits -- I believe I'm paraphrasing Chesterton here -- of being a Catholic is that one can get the broad historical perspective required to avoid being a prisoner of the errors and assumptions one's own era.

Observation: The notion that sexual behaviors outside marriage cannot be subject to criminal or civil penalty is an extremely recent experiment in Western civilization. Our forebears in prior civilized human societies -- including the comparatively free ones -- would scoff at the idea that this realm of human behavior was beyond the scope of the law.

Should extramarital sex be penalized? Although you asked the question seriously, it's an unserious question in the continental sense: Because it ain't gonna happen.

But I wanted to address the assumption that seemed to be peeking through: That "private" extramarital sexual conduct axiomatically is, and should obviously be, immune from prosecution.

In the U.S., the overturning of laws prohibiting certain forms of private sexual conduct has been justified by a variety of arguments; including privacy rights emanating from penumbras in the Constitution, the lack of or lack of equal protection in enforcement, or the sheer unpopularity of it. And even very conservative religious public persons such as Alan Keyes have expressed approval for other reasons (in Keyes' case, because the intrusion on individual liberty required for enforcement is a greater harm than the harms prevented).

None of these represent an outright ban on such laws, or could: Marriage contracts are more than contracts but not less than, and enforcement of contracts comes very high up in the duties of government. Moreover, in a purely libertarian/capitalist state, the consequences of extramarital sex would be limited to cultural and moral "environmental impact"...but in a mixed-economy welfare state, such as ours, the economic costs are borne by the state. There is thus a "compelling state interest" in regulation of related activity.

So. As I said before, it ain't gonna happen. And even if it could, in the U.S., laws against that which people clearly don't think there should be laws against, don't last long (e.g. prohibition) or produce desirable outcomes (e.g. prohibition). So it shouldn't happen, and no-one should be fool enough to long for some dictator who could make it happen.

But would we be better off if we were the type of society in which such measures would be supported by majorities at the ballot-box? And if, in response to such majorities, we did pass laws penalizing extramarital sex to some degree?

Probably. At least, I think the weight of human history leans in that direction.

Oh! I get it now. I thought it was an analogy for folks voting for a radically pro-abortion presidential candidate but NOT because he was radically pro-abortion. I thought the seat belt represented the sophisticated conscience that weighs all election issues equally so not to become a single issue voter in the seamless garment of Catholic social teaching. I guess the seat belt as condom analogy works, too! Or maybe the seat belt represents the "clean" needle exchange at the free clinic. I don't know. I'm too simple.

I'm okay with throwing fornicators in jail! They should at least pay a fine...