The Rites of Rights

...Supporters of the Equal Rights Amendment have been granted another 39 months to achieve ratification Abortion is being opposed on the grounds of the fetus' "right to life" and defended as part of a woman's "right" to do whatever she wants to with her body Mental patients, it has been argued successfully in the courts, have a "right" either to treatment in state institutions or to freedom, and people who are convicted of crimes and put into prison are, it appears, thereby invested with special "rights " Growing numbers of groups claim a "right" to favored treatment m education and employment Children are said to have "rights" that must not be violated by their parents Nonsmokers claim the "right" not to be annoyed by the exhalations of smokers, who claim the "right" to puff away if they so desire The nation is awash in alleged rights A heartening development in many ways...

...Suppose they argue that a prisoner is entitled to rehabilitation, or at least to energetic efforts in that direction, just as the mentally ill are now legally entitled to treatment while in a state hospital...

...The question deserves more attention than friends of abortion, most of them friends of civil liberties as well, have seemed willing to give it Homosexuals In what sense is homosexuality a "right...

...It is a sign of grace that our notions of cruel and inhuman punishment have been greatly broadened over the centuries, and it can be generally agreed that prisoners are entitled to three square meals a day, enough space to breathe, adequate protection against other prisoners and prison guards, medical attention, and even a certain amount of recreation Suppose, though—and the supposition is not far-fetched—that civil libertarians should apply to prisoners the kind of standard they have in recent years applied to the mentally ill, also wards of the state...

...The nature of homosexuality is complicated, but the way society treats homosexuals need not be Their private lives are nobody else's business Whatever the roots of the condition, however, on the job the homosexual ought to behave appropriately Even m the sensitive setting of the classroom, this would ordinarily present few problems But if the celebrants of homosexuality mean what their words seem to say and feel bound to express and perhaps proselytize for their distinctive "life style" at every opportunity, that carries them beyond any legal rights In such a case, an employer may help his employee to adjust to the stringencies of the job or to find more compatible surroundings, or may simply fire him And so it will be until the Department of Health, Education and Welfare effects yet another affirmative action program Inmates If the ongoing campaign for prisoners' rights merely means that the state must treat its wards in a humane manner, who will take exception...

...Well, the hospitals are less crowded, which of course is to the good But there are many former patients whose liberation means mainly the right to wander the streets in a drugged condition The legal profession's penchant for finding some sort of legal "right" to sustain its cases and then laying on official requirements may make more sense in a courtroom than elsewhere The difficulty of caring for the mentally ill as well as for prisoners is compounded of limitations of knowledge and resources We can unearth all the rights we wish without coming a step closer to knowing what to do about crime or mental illness Today's legal emphasis on "rights" is a useful tool for drawing attention to abuses and stirring public compassion But it also invites the evasion of hard problems and the complications caused by solutions No state can guarantee all the privileges that are now being elevated to the status of rights And whenever we ask so much of the state, we run the risk of jeopardizing the right not to be interfered with by the state, which particularly concerned the nation's founders...

...Western political history' may be read as the struggle of assorted groups to wrest certain rights from their governments In America today), government has come to be seen as the guarantor of group rights—surely a beneficent role Yet if one recalls that the Founding Fathers packaged their conception of inalienable rights into a small phrase—life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness—a certain sorting out now seems in order Abortions One reason to mistrust the spirit of the Right to Life crowd is that title (How many of them are against capital punishment...

...Homosexuals complain with justice that they have for many years been compelled to keep their sexual predilections to themselves lest they jeopardize career opportunities, not to mention their general reputations Now many are out of that closet and fear they will therefore be discriminated against, particularly in employment They make a good case—but the nature of it rests on the nature of homosexuality The evidence appears to be that once into puberty the homosexual has as little choice in his erotic set as the heterosexual He is what he is because of something about his genes or his early childhood, and what he is, is not readily susceptible to change As long as such a person is capable of doing a given job, to bar him or her because of homosexuality is no less cruel or more reasonable than barring a competent black, equally at the mercy of family history Suppose, though, that one accepts the position preferred by the more fervent publicists for homosexualdom —that they are not in the grip of nature but are merely expressing a "preference" in seeking out members of their own sex These encounters, they maintain, are part of an overall style of life and love, to which one voluntarily commits oneself as to any fashion Now, if this style is appropriate to a given job or if it can be held in check for the working day, then there is no problem But if the style is as special and integral to the personality as the slogans would have one believe, if it cannot help make itself felt on the job, then surely an employer would be foolish not to take it into account in hiring someone If the employer is prevented from seeing to his own interests in that way, then whose rights are being violated...

...Only the benighted would fault the motives of a civil liberties attorney who advanced such a demand The trouble is that efforts to rehabilitate convicts have been even less successful than efforts to cure the mentally ill Has removal of thousands of patients from large state hospitals (where, granted, they were receiving negligible care under often atrocious conditions) worked to their benefit...

...But even so, the dispute would be more illuminating if both sides would say what they really mean This argument is not over abstract rights, it reflects a clash of Mews on the direction ot our society, m particular as regards sexual freedom and the position ot the family The commotion about rights is diversionary When the partisans ot abortion extend their argument about "lights" to their desire tor Medicaid funds, their position is shaky Perhaps the government should pay for the abortions ot the indigent, but that question must be decided on medical, social and fiscal grounds The Constitution is not likely to prove helpful Yes, many women will be unable to exercise their "right" Game to abortion for want of money, so it is with innumerable other rights The United States government guarantees me the right to publish a newspaper, but it is under no obligation to subsidize my efforts One further observation In New York State, the court-sanctioned right to undergo an abortion has been blown up by some proponents into a teenager's right to have the abortion without the approval of her parents Do parents have no rights in this situation...

...Science offers little help regarding what our attitude ought to be toward the sanctity of the fetus If one's religious beliefs bring one to the conclusion that an abortion is murder, then one must of course oppose it But it is axiomatic to the confirmed secularist first that no group's religious beliefs should determine national policy and, second, that those who resort to scripture or to church authority to make any argument at all are inherently suspect Once it is granted that the condition of the fetus is, so to speak, insoluble, then the women who claim that abortion is their right do have a point What can be more fundamental than the right to use or abuse one's body...

...If the state should enter the home in this way and come between a girl and her parents, is that to be viewed as an extension of individual rights, or as an encroachment by the state...