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40 U. Colo. L. Rev. 199 (1967-1968)
The Legal Enforcement of Morality

handle is hein.journals/ucollr40 and id is 223 raw text is: THE LEGAL ENFORCEMENT OF MORALITY HUGH M. HEFNER* No human act between two people is more intimate, more private, more personal than sex. One would assume that a democratic society that prided itself on freedom of the individual, whose Declaration of Independence proclaimed the right of every citizen to fife, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and whose Constitution guaranteed the separa- tion of church and state, would be deeply concerned with any attempted infringement of liberty in this most private act. But how successful have we been in protecting these ideals for ourselves and our fellow citizens? Just how personally free is each one of us in modem America? The dream of individual freedom persists, but are we actually allowed to live our own lives, rejoice in our liberty and pursue our personal concepts of happiness-limited only by the extent that we infringe upon the like rights of others? Even the most cursory examination of our sex laws indicates that, at least in the area of sexual behavior, we have long been denied such freedom. We will consider, in this article, some of the specific statutes regulat- ing private sexual behavior and the extent to which these laws are at odds with the sex practices of a sizable portion of the population-making us a nation of criminals. Some consideration will be given, too, to the wide disparity in the sex laws of the various states-making it possible, quite literally, for a couple to indulge in intimacies within the privacy of their home that are perfectly legal, while another couple engaging in the same activity in a house a block away (but in the jurisdiction of an adjoining state) is guilty of a crime that carries a ten-year prison sentence. We will also discuss the wholly arbitrary manner in which these various laws are enforced, or not enforced, and the effect such capricious law enforcement has upon the entire fabric of law and order. In our examination of America's sex laws, it should not be assumed that we necessarily approve of all of the behavior thus brought under legislative control of the state. The point to be made here is not that we find this sex behavior either moral or immoral, but that the moral questions involved-when they relate to private sex between consenting adults-are the business of the individual and his personally chosen religion, and not the business of government. This view of the matter is shared by a number of our most highly respected religious leaders and by the American Law Institute, which excluded consensual sex relations between adults in private from its *Editor and Publisher of Playboy magazine. The article is an adaptation of Mr. Hefner's Playboy Philosophy.

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