[Odessa]

As a Compromise, How About a Federal Sex Tax?
By Stephen L Carter ’79

Here’s a modest proposal: Let’s tax sex and use the proceeds to fund birth control for women whose health plans don’t cover it. Surely this compromise would resolve the controversy over contraceptives and religious organizations. All women would have access to contraception, and religious objectors wouldn’t have to pay a penny.

Before you start laughing, consider the policy arguments. It’s heterosexual sex that creates the medical problem contraception is intended to avert, so we would be aligning the incentives properly. Moreover, by all accounts there is plenty of sex going on in America, so the tax would generate a great deal of money. (If 200 million sexually active citizens have sex twice a month, a $2 fee would amount to about $10 billion a year. Of course, we would have to rely on self-reporting, but that’s a separate issue.)

True, the people actually engaging in sex (as well as many others who wish they were) might object that the sex tax burdens a fundamental right. They would be entirely correct. But so what? The Constitution (which doesn’t mention sex) is after all a living document, which must be reinterpreted to meet the needs of the era. And the basic need of this era, it seems, is contraception for all. Thus the claim of right must yield.

http://www.law.yale.edu/news/15035.htm

[DOMINATER]

may I declare, a cheaters tax.