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Elizabeth Nolan Brown, writing at reason.com, sounded the alarm on March 7th, letting us know that a federal court, a federal judge, had ruled that Americans do not have necessarily a constitutional right to engage in consensual BDSM activities because quoting from the decision, sexual activity that involves binding and gagging or the use of physical force such as spanking or choking poses certain inherent risks to personal safety.

Thus, Brown rights officials could constitutionally ban or

regulate such activity in the interest of, quote, the protection of vulnerable persons. The court held.

This freaked a lot of people out. Myself included, I quoted Elizabeth Nolan Brown, who's writing

I like very much, in Savage Love last week and observed that in 2003,

the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Americans have a constitutional right to get their asses fucked,

but one day soon we may be asking the Supreme Court to rule whether Americans have a constitutional

right to get their asses spanked. The judge's reasoning is pretty crazy when you consider all

the other things that Americans do that have built in health risks.

Also for vulnerable persons.

You put a vulnerable person on a snowboard and you send them down a mountain that they're not ready for or skilled enough to ride.

They're going to slam into a tree and die.

Pregnancy comes bundled with serious and significant health risks for the person who

happens to be pregnant. And yet, we believe people have a constitutional right basically to get

pregnant if they wish to get pregnant. And of course, the idea that people are somehow infinitely more

vulnerable if you add a spanking to sex is a little crazy. People can be exploited,

vulnerable people can be taken advantage of and are taken advantage of every day in sexual

circumstances and situations that are perfectly vanilla. It is possible to have exploitative,

abusive sex in the missionary position with adult opposite sex partners who happen to be

...