Well, gee Andy, who knew that opposing Obamacare required adoptiong the ACLU’s position on family law?
I don’t mind a good debate, but it’s just weird to tie those issues together, or to suggest that I wanted to criminalize the posting of a website. I proposed instead allowing injured spouses or children to collect damages from such a website if the business specifically makes money by advertising for adulterous liasons.
Adultery injures third parties. Those parties should have some legal redress for that injury. Mind you, if such a provision existed I think both adultery and websites for liasons would continue to exist. But they would at least have to a put up a few fig leafs. They would not openly advertize that their purpose is adultery. That hardly seems to call for a Big Government Alert.
In many states, tort redress for adultery does exist (see this North Carolina judgement for a wife against a mistress — although we might want to do something about the size of those awards!)
Bottom line: Stopping adultery from becoming an explicit business model (or giving wives the legal right to recover the profits from memoirs about adulterous liasons, similar to New York’s Son of Sam law) may or may not be a good idea, but it really has nothing to do with trying to prevent a government takeover of 17 percent of the American economy. Please, a little perspective.