Protect the right to discriminate Protect the right to discriminate Timothy Kelly Letter to the Editor America would be a happier place if tolerance were practiced more often. However, a line must be drawn between a desire for tolerance and coercively using government power to enforce tolerance. When laws are silent, they may be viewed as passively tolerant or passively intolerant. The average American does not want homosexual sex to be illegal.
Sex is private business.
Legal silence tolerates sexual behavior between consenting adults, and this makes people happy, because the freedom to engage in sexual behavior of their choice is protected. All laws regulating consensual sexual behavior should be struck down. Gay rights activists interpret the law's silence as permitting intolerance. They want the majority of Americans who find homosexual sex morally abhorrent to be forced to tolerate. Their legal claim must fail, because the form of protection they desire rests on the legal status of a behavior, not a state of being.