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Why would liberals have to allow this? Locke, for example, absolutely thought the government could punish sexual immorality. I'm not familiar enough with his work to know whether there's any inconsistencies there, but it seems like, as a matter of fact, most liberal societies thought banning that sort of thing was fine.
They wouldn't have to. In another comment I wrote:
It's perfectly consistent of Locke to think "what some other person believes about the ontological character of the communion wafer does not affect you personally, so let them do as they please; but the normalisation of sodomy, adultery and promiscuity absolutely do have distributed negative effects on society, and so should be forbidden and socially stigmatised". Whereas a more modern liberal generally takes the attitude of "people are entitled to their own opinions" and "what consenting adults do in the privacy of their own home is none of the government's business, and by extension none of society's business".
I don't have a good answer as to which interpretation of liberalism is better or more conducive to human flourishing. "As long as you aren't infringing on anyone else's rights" permits a lot of degrees of freedom to permit certain things and forbid others.
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