When Target puts transgender dolls on the shelf for children, I think someone is crapping in the well.
I would suggest that
feelings of offendedness, though, are something distinctly different from
harm.
Of course, there's a strong case that can be made for, say, separation of "sensitive" items from age-inappropriate spaces. Such as introduction to sex and sexualized items in places where children under a certain age are all but certain to come across them. (All the recent grousing about "banning books" when all it really is is placing age-inappropriate materials in age-appropriate libraries for older, teen (and perhaps pre-teen) young adults.
I think the analogy rings true. The "live and let live" thing does not always hold true. You can't crap in your own well because that is your "right".... because your well is attached to your neighbor's well.
If it's indeed nearby, even "attached", then there's a case to be made. Not, if not. The same ought to be true of anything else one can think of, when attempting to gauge whether there's legitimate demonstrable harm.
Degeneration is not a successful long term strategy. One person's self harm will eventually be visited on the whole.
Who's to say what's "degeneracy"? Sticky subject, as though a single standard can be agreed upon.
The normalization of drugs (and I do NOT consider the modern farmed THC to be a "soft drug" anymore) will eventually have broad reaching effects.
There certainly ought to be a way to hold people to account for
impairment instead of the arbitrary wholesale declarations now done. It's not as though alcohol or cannabis has immediate impacts as gross as PCP, cocaine, heroin or a dozen other such items. Makes much more sense to attempt an impairment level of distinction in the law (as is done with alcohol; DWI and it's on you, for example).
When I was growing up there might have been 2 bars on the entire east side of Tulsa. And you had to be member to belong to those. Christians did not tolerate a bar every 600 yards. Now? I am surprised they don't sell beer next to every school.
Of course, one has to ask:
by what authority, outright prohibition?
Then again, the empowering little device gov't has is the business permission slip. Don't get licensed?, then you don't get approved for operation. Whether constructing a "porno" or "hooka" shop next to the elementary school, or running an ice cream parlor on Main St.
I wish it were simpler. Freedom can be a bit messy. But the U.S. was crafted a bit differently. On the instant ALL rights and responsibilities and power got wrested from old King George III's tight fist, the people of America held them all
unto themselves. And they, then, crafted constitutions flatly protecting those rights, even noting the major point of such creation (of self-governance structures) was that protection. And, to my knowledge, the recorded history does not proclaim the people agreed to hand them over (nor their control) wholesale to the hired help.
Still,
within the legitimate constraints, communities and states have every right to decide as a people what shall not be tolerated. So long as the reasoning for it is justifiable and can be shown to be
so.
