The Absurdity of Consensual Crimes in a Free Country

400 Pages·2010·1.71 MB·English

CONTENTS
Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do
CONTENTS

Front
AUTHOR'S NOTES
PART I
THE BASIC PREMISE
An Overview
What Are Consensual Crimes?
Separation of Society and State
Personal Morality Versus
Governmental Morality
Relationship
PART II
WHY LAWS AGAINST
CONSENSUAL
ACTIVITIES ARE NOT A
GOOD IDEA
It's Un-American
Laws against Consensual
Activities
Are Unconstitutional
Laws against Consensual
Activities Violate
the Separation of Church and
State,
Threatening the Freedom of
and from Religion
Laws against Consensual
Activities Are Opposed
to the Principles of Private
Property,
Free Enterprise, Capitalism,
and the Open Market
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CONTENTS
Enforcing Laws against
Consensual Activities
is Very Expensive
Enforcing Laws against
Consensual Activities
Destroys People's Lives
Intermission to Part II
Consensual Crimes Encourage
Real Crimes
Consensual Crimes Corrupt
Law Enforcement
The Cops Can't Catch 'Em; the
Courts Can't
Handle 'Em; the Prisons Can't
Hold 'Em
Consensual Crimes Promote
Organized Crime
Consensual Crimes Corrupt
the
Freedom of the Press
Laws against Consensual
Activities
Teach Irresponsibility
Laws against Consensual
Activities Are
Too Randomly Enforced to Be
Either
a Deterrent or Fair
Laws against Consensual
Activities
Discriminate against the Poor,
Minorities, and Women
Problems Sometimes
Associated with
Consensual Activities Cannot
Be Solved
While They Are Crimes
Laws against Consensual
Activities Create
a Society of Fear, Hatred,
Bigotry, Oppression,
and Conformity; a Culture
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CONTENTS
Opposed to
Personal Expression,
Diversity, Freedom,
Choice and Growth
PART III
A CLOSER LOOK AT THE
CONSENSUAL CRIMES
A Closer Look at the
Consensual Crimes
Gambling
Drugs
How and Why
Drugs Became
Illegal
Opiates
Cocaine, Crack,
Amphetamines
Psychedelics
Marijuana
Religious and Psychologically
Therapeutic
Use of Drugs
Regenerative Use of Drugs
and
Other Unorthodox Medical
Practices
Prostitution
Pornography, Obscenity, Etc.
The Problem with
Pornography
The Problem with
Violence
The Problem with
Censorship
The F-WORD
Violations of Marriage;
Adultry, Fornication
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CONTENTS
Cohabitation, Bigamy, and
Polygamy
Homosexuality
Unconventional Religious
Practices
Unpopular Religious Practices
Suicide and Assisted Suicide
The Titanic Laws: Public
Drunkenness, Loitering,
Vagrancy, Seat Belts,
Motorcycle Helmets,
Public Nudity, Transvestism
PART IV
SIX CHAPTERS IN
SEARCH OF A SHORTER
BOOK
The Enlightenment or We Wer
So Much Older Then;
We're Younger Than That
Now
Prohibition: A Lesson in the
Futility (and Danger) of
Prohibiting
`
What Jesus and the Bible
Really Said about Consensual
Crimes
Old Testament
Admonitions
Jesus of Nazareth
and Consensual
Crime
Jesus on Sex and
Marriage
Jesus and the
Separation of
Church and State
His Master's
Voice?
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CONTENTS
Jerry & Pat
Traditional Family Values
Putting the "Problem" in
Perspective
Hypocrites
PART V
WHAT TO DO?
Education, Not Legislation
A Call to My Media Brethren
Protective Technology
Hemp for Victory
A State-By-State Look at
Consensual Crime
We Must All Hang Together
The Politics of Change
About the Author
Acknowledgments
Copyright © 1996 Peter
McWilliams & Prelude Press
Site Credits
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Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do
—Tulsa World
McWilliams makes a strong argument for the elimination of such crimes, providing a history of
consensual crimes and their absurdity. The blend of first-person observation, research, and argument
makes for a fine and revealing title.
—Bookwatch
I don't expect anyone to agree with all of McWilliams' assertions. Even he admits that. But there is
one point you should not overlook. What starts with control of narcotics and sexual activity can
spread wherever a majority (or powerful minority), often powered by religious zeal, decide it knows
what's best for you.
—Philadelphia News Gleaner
How truly revolutionary, libertarian, frightening and funny this book is. Grand in scope and scale.
The book is interesting and meticulously researched.
—Little Rock Free Press
Peter McWilliams has written a book for our times—the quintessential book on the subject of
consensual crimes. With public sympathy geared toward harsher sentences for those who commit
felonies, McWilliams demonstrates the absurdity of prosecuting those guilty of "victimless" crimes.
—Newport News Press
Imposing criminal sanctions on human conduct which is wholly consensual and does not harm
another person or his or her property is a misplaced and counterproductive act . . . we violate the
premise upon which America was founded.
—New Orleans Times—Picayune
Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do was nominated for the H. L. Mencken Award.
There is no need
to read
this entire book.
While this book is relatively heavy to lift, it isn't heavy
reading. It's broken into dozens of short chapters and is
more suited to browsing than to reading cover-to-cover.
—Seattle Times
This book is about a single idea—consenting adults should not be put in jail unless they physically harm the person or
property of a nonconsenting other.
This idea is explored in the chapter "An Overview." After reading "An Overview," please feel free to skip around,
reading what you find interesting, ignoring what you don't. It is my fond hope, of course, that you will eventually find
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Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do
your way to Part V, "What to Do?"
If nothing else, the boxed quotes on each page (the part of the book written by other people) are worth turning the page
for. (By the way, the most controversial quote—but an absolutely accurate one—is found in the box on page 9.)
Thank you for reading.
Peter McWilliams
I never hurt nobody but myself and that's nobody
business but by own.
BILLIE HOLIDAY
This book is dedicated
with deep appreciation to
Steven, Jadwiga, Emily, and Thomas (aka Sushi) Markoff
and
Michael, Maryanne, Danielle, and Rebecca Hesse
Thank you
It rankles me when somebody tries to force somebody to
do something.
JOHN WAYNE
AIN'T NOBODY'S BUSINESS IF YOU DO
The Absurdity of Consensual Crimes in a Free Country
Peter McWilliams
Prelude Press
8159 Santa Monica Boulevard
Los Angeles, California 90046
© 1998 by Prelude Press. All rights reserved. ISBN: 0-931580-58-7
Editor: Jean Sedillos
Research: Chris GeRue
Chart design: Scott Ford, David Goldman
Desktop publishing: Jean Bolt
Perhaps the sentiments
contained in the following pages,
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Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do
are not yet sufficiently fashionable
to procure them general favor;
a long habit of
not thinking a thing wrong,
gives it a superficial appearance
of being right,
and raises at first
a formidable outcry
in defence of custom.
But the tumult soon subsides.
THOMAS PAINE
Common Sense
January 1776

Peter McWilliams Home Page
Table of Contents
Copyright © 1996 Peter McWilliams & Prelude Press
Site Credits
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Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do - Author's Notes
Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do
AUTHOR'S NOTES
Nobody can be
so amusingly arrogant
as a young man
who has just discovered
an old idea
and thinks it is his own.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS
I'VE BEEN WAITING YEARS for someone to write this book. If someone had, I wouldn't
have had to.
I have simply never understood why people should be jailed for actions that do not
physically harm the person or property of others.
I have thus always been distinctly in the minority. People I admired and people I
abhorred all seemed to agree: on this point I was wrong. I filed my conviction away
under "something I'll understand when I'm older." Now I am older. It makes even less
sense than it ever did.
From the mid-sixties to the early eighties, although the subject of consensual crimes
(mostly referred to as "victimless crimes") was occasionally discussed and a number of
scholarly tomes were published (some of them quite good), a comprehensive view of
the subject for "just folks" like me never appeared.
Once the "War on Drugs" was declared, however, all discussion stopped. One might as
well have tried saying something good about Emperor Hirohito in 1942. ("Nice uniform!")
The image that outraged me into putting my childish notion on the front burner was the
cover of a news magazine from the mid-1980s. Workers in a cocaine field were piled
like firewood, their white peasant clothing red with blood. They had been gunned down
in cold blood by American troops. The workers didn't own the field—they were brought
in for the harvest, paid subsistence wages.
But was this cover an expos on the dangers of prohibition? A warning about what
happens when rhetoric and prejudice become more important in setting national policy
than logic and reason? A bold illustration of why "military solution" is the most
destructive oxymoron of all?
I haven't voted since 1964,
when I voted for Lyndon Johnson,
the peace candidate.
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Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do - Author's Notes
GORE VIDAL
No. The headline blared: WINNING THE WAR ON DRUGS. Inside, the war on drugs was
touted as though the magazine were covering the landing at Normandy. Page after
page, article after article, arrest photo after arrest photo, diagrams, maps, bar graphs,
pie charts—today they probably would have included a CD-ROM.
Like the one-sided reports about Vietnam two decades before, in this editorial orgy of
support, not one word was written to defend the rights of those who wanted to take
drugs. Not one voice was quoted crying in the wilderness, "So they want to take drugs.
So what?"
I began researching the topic of this book, hoping desperately it had already been
written. (Spending several weeks reading Supreme Court decisions is not my idea of a
good time. And then there are those brilliantly written government reports—books,
actually—with names such as Federal Recidivism Rates 1989–1990 or my bedtime
favorite, Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1994.) Alas, I couldn't find a book
such as the one you hold in your hands, so I had to write it.
I explored every argument I could find opposing the legalization of consensual crimes.
Not one of them held up to logical analysis; not one was supported by history; every
solution was worse than the "problem" it was trying to solve.
Then came the dark part of the research—the terrible fact that laws against consensual
activities were destroying lives, our society, our freedom, our safety, and our country.
The more I discovered, the more I was reminded of Remy de Gourmont's comment, "The
terrible thing about the quest for truth is that you find it."
Ye shall know the truth,
and the truth
shall make you mad.
ALDOUS HUXLEY
I hope this new edition of the book causes the sort of controversy caused by asking in
1773, "Why don't we break from England and start our own country?" or, in 1833, "Aren't
slaves human beings and therefore entitled to their freedom?" or in 1963, "Shouldn't
Vietnam have the right to determine its own form of government?" It's all a variation of
"Why isn't the emperor wearing any clothes?"
As Bertrand Russell observed, "Change is scientific, progress is ethical; change is
indubitable, whereas progress is a matter of controversy." Throughout the controversy
caused by the hardcover edition, I was buoyed by this from Herb Lock: "You say what
you think needs to be said; if it needs to be said, there are going to be a lot of people
who will disagree with it or it wouldn't need to be said."
One of the fears about discussing consensual activities is that if you defend a certain
practice, you're often accused of being or doing that. Well, if you're wondering about
me, why not assume that I do it all? Yes, you can safely presume that I am a drug-
selling homosexual prostitute gambler who drunkenly loiters all day with my six wives
and fourteen husbands, making and watching pornography while being treated by
strange medical practices.
You can also assume my motives to be the darkest, most selfish, and pernicious you can
imagine: I'm doing it for the money; I have a pathological need for attention; my
mother didn't love me enough when I was three. No matter how many times I say that
I'm not advocating any of the consensual crimes, someone will, of course, accuse me of
"recruiting" for them all.
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