From Reproductive Rights to Testosteronic Rights

Almost everything is legal between consenting adults these days. Isn’t it odd that dueling pistols is not?

Perhaps by borrowing the logic of the pro-choice movement, we can put this matter in proper perspective. Consider the harm done by the limitation of testosteronic rights to a gentleman’s freedom of choice — his right to duel. Every day we see the evil effects of these restrictions in the killing of innocent bystanders. If dueling were legal, it could be regulated, and the tragedy wreaked by back-alley or drive-by killings could be eliminated.

Of course, the “respect human life” crowd would have its objections. But is a cad or a bounder really human? And does government have the right to impose its morality in this matter? (Of course due to my religious background I believe that a cad/bounder is human, but what right do I have to impose my private beliefs on others?) I would not for the life of me force a duel on anyone, but I defend to the death someone’s right to choose.

There are those who say that sometimes the cads and bounders live, and the upright duelist is killed. This is an emotional argument, foisted on the public by small-minded people who have never been able to see the jolly side of Aaron Burr.

Most violent crimes are committed by males from about their late teens to their early 30s. They would be the obvious duelists. The reduction in this segment of the population would solve the problem of crowded prisons.

The whole question of separation of church and state raises its ugly head. It was the medieval Church that first limited a gentleman’s (i.e., a clerical gentleman’s) right to duel. (It is noteworthy that no such restriction was put on nuns.) Little by little this anti-libertarian prohibition spread. Dueling remained legal in this century only in countries where there was a strong anti-Catholic or anti-clerical party. The dreaded taint of Catholicism on the prohibition of dueling clearly raises grave constitutional issues.

Let us hope that there will be an uninhibited debate on dueling, and that it will maintain the same high level as the current debate on abortion.