I think it is really, really worth focusing on that āalready illegalā part, because this is the foot in the door for a million and a half fascist proposed laws, not just sodomy.
āWe need a law that makes it illegal to go into a bathroom that doesnāt align with your birth sex! Otherwise, people might go into the wrong bathroom to sexually assault someone!ā Huh, interesting, but isnāt it already illegal to sexually assault someone, including in a bathroom??? Because if so, then you can just completely discard that explanation for the entire law. It is already illegal to go into the wrong bathroom and sexually assault a person; ergo, the law is not about sexual assault at all, itās just about bathrooms.
āWe need to arrest undocumented immigrants in order to crack down on gang activity!ā Huh, interesting, but isnāt that gang activity already illegal??? So, if you wanted to crack down on gang activity, you could simply arrest people who are associated with gangs, and in fact, we do already do that. Ergo, this rhetoric isnāt actually about gang activity at all; itās just about undocumented immigrants.
āWe need to diminish free speech and freedom of movement rights for suspected terrorists, because otherwise they could commit mass murder!ā Well, interestingly, mass murder is already illegal, and if you have probable cause that indicates that someone is planning to commit mass murder, you can simply arrest them for that. Since the law is already fully equipped to go after people who are genuinely suspected of gearing up to commit a violent terroristic act, this clearly isnāt really about terrorism at all; itās just about diminishing free speech and freedom of movement rights.
āWe need tort reform that caps the monetary damages that large corporations can be forced to pay, in order to keep people from bringing frivolous and fraudulent lawsuits!ā Hmm, but see the thing with that is fraud is already a crime, and frivolous lawsuits can already be thrown out. If a law caps the amount of damages corporations need to pay in lawsuits which were not found to be frivolous or fraudulent, then almost by definition, it has nothing to do with frivolous lawsuits or fraud ā itās just about limiting corporate liability.
Always ask yourself what the actual function of a proposed law is ā not just the stated goal, but what it actually does that is not already covered by an equally restrictive law.
And remember, a good general rule is:
If something is already illegal, then the people who are trying to pass a new law to ban it are probably trying to ban something else.
