I CAN'T COME UP WITH A CLEAR WAY to connect my journal writing today with the photographs I found today. It's an obvious stretch, but perhaps I can claim that the architectural plainness of the building I photographed this afternoon is universal... like my questions about what belongs to the state and what belongs to the individual.I am a participant in a Sunday morning discussion group which has been reading A New Kind of Christianity by Brian D. Mclaren. Today we discussed chapter 17 in which the author challenges “the church” to reconsider traditional attitudes and prohibitions about human sexuality... so I’ve been wondering all day what exactly should be the role of the church in determining which human behaviors are legal and which should be prohibited.

Human sexuality is a subject fraught with such emotional overtones, such culturally fixed notions, that almost any talk about it triggers conflict and confusion in participants. What if we tried to take the same approach to sexual behaviors that, say, we take to a discussion about the intersection of Harbor Drive and Grape Street where cameras have been installed (to catch hapless motorists who get caught making the turn or going straight through when the light is yellow or red) or (to prevent accidents and perhaps save lives of people who otherwise would be victims of selfish, thoughtless drivers who don’t have the patience to wait for the next green light). Do you approve of that kind of attempt by the city of San Diego to avoid accidents, or do you consider that kind of traffic light and camera operation to be entrapment, part of a scheme to get money from citizens who should be left alone to decide for themselves how to go through intersections? In England and in some other countries, cameras have been installed at intervals on motorways and streets to determine and record the speed of individual vehicles between one camera and the next so owners of vehicles which goes too fast may be fined. Citations and amounts of fines come in the mail. I got one myself a couple of years ago. I was speeding in the city of Oxford, and the cameras caught me. I paid a fine.

It is fair to question the rationality behind any attempt to control the behaviors of citizens in a “free” society, from jay-walking to trespassing on private property to assault with a deadly weapon. What should be the guidelines which give power to the state to control behaviors of citizens? Should penalties apply only to citizens when behavior actually harms or may potentially harm other citizens? Who should define harm? Should specific religious organizations or other institutions with presumed moral authority be consulted and given a voice in deciding which behaviors are violations and which behaviors are sanctioned by law? Should civil laws always be consistent with ecclesiastical laws?

In the news this week, we heard all about two sisters who were sentenced to life in prison by a Mississippi judge for armed robbery (net take in the crime was said to be $12) and had served more than twenty years of the sentence. Predictably they were black and the judge was white. A judge (I don't know if it was the same judge who sentenced them) decided to pardon them. One of the sisters suffers from kidney failure and her dialysis is costing Mississippi $200,000-a-year. The judge is said to have agreed to release them if the sister with healthy kidneys agrees to donate one of her kidneys to her sister. It's fair to ask what the state's criteria was for the life sentence in the first place and then for deciding to release them in what looks like a move to pass the cost of medical care from the state to someone else. The question doesn't in any way assume that their offense was not a crime punishable by law but whether or not life in prison is an appropriate sentence for the crime.

In 2003 the Supreme Court struck down sodomy laws in the United States. Sodomy in the statute was defined as sex between two people of the same gender. In 1778 Thomas Jefferson wrote a law in Virginia which contained a punishment of castration for men who engage in sodomy; however, what was intended by Jefferson as a liberalization of the sodomy laws in Virginia at that time was rejected by the Virginia Legislature, which continued to prescribe death as the maximum penalty for the crime of sodomy in that state. Prior to 1962 sodomy was a felony in every state, punished by a lengthy term of imprisonment and/or hard labor.

Adultery is not against the law in the United States but is illegal in some countries. The interaction between laws on adultery with those on rape has and does pose particular problems in societies that are especially sensitive to sexual relations by a married woman and men. The difference between the offenses is that adultery is voluntary, while rape is not. Under Sharia law the penalty for the woman in either case is stoning to death. About two dozen states still have criminal adultery provisions. While prosecutions remain rare, they do occur. Penalties for adultery are commonly exacted during divorce proceedings. Adultery is consensual sex between two adults. If sex which happens between two adults is not consensual, it is rape; and that is another issue altogether. What should be the state’s role in determining which is it’s business and which is not?

So the question is this: What might be a reasonable secular guideline for considering individual behaviors? Because of the massacre in Tucson yesterday, discussion has already been renewed about gun laws. The National Rifle Association has been working overtime this weekend to come up with statements which it will urge (read pay ) politicians to use to justify maintaining a laissez-faire approach to gun control. Should the obvious proven potential for harm to the general population be enough for the state to exercise control over the sale, possession, and registration of guns... even in a “free” society. In three states, Arizona, Alaska, and Vermont, guns may be carried, concealed or openly, without any requirement for registration. Do those states put its citizens at unreasonable risk by limiting what a citizen may or may not do with guns? Every state has its own set of laws controlling gun ownership. What should be the criteria for determining how much and how little the state should control gun ownership?