Privacy Quotes
This quotation is very important because it illustrates a big difference between English Conservatives and American conservative (Republicans). In America, the Conservatives were committed to having the government regulate and control the private morality of citizens—particularly in matters of sex. English conservatives, like the Prime Minister, saw this as an improper intrusion of big government.
While this was a strong central political principle for Reagan, a substantial part of his political party strongly advocated the against the government interjecting itself into people’s lives.
This quotation is particularly interesting when compared with {633126} that he said in his First Inaugural Address. His idealism was tempered some by his first 4 years in the Presidency.
This is a major issue for the nation. How can the president be responsible if he is not informed? However, some argue that the President must have “plausibility deniability” so he can deceive foreign leaders without lying to them. The laws require that nothing may be withheld from the President but there are some in the agency including past directors who believe that they sometimes should lie to the President or withhold information when it is in the national interest—which of course only they judge without any checks and balances.
Both the United States and Canada had laws regulating the sexual behavior of citizens in the privacy of their own homes. It was not just homosexuality that the state attempted to control. Even the specific positions and methods of heterosexual intercourse were controlled by some states. Oral sex, certain positions of intercourse and other “details” could put a person in jail. Canada, a parliamentary nation, changed this by legislation. In the United States, it was the Supreme Court decisions protecting privacy that invalidated these old sexual role restrictions and prescriptions. For example, just 4 years before this quotation was made, 1963, the state of Connecticut was ordered (Griswald v. Connecticut) to release a pharmacist for the “crime” of filling a doctor’s prescription for condoms for a married couple where the wife would likely die if she became pregnant and carried the baby to term.
