"There ought to be a law..." A phrase that, while well intentioned, only has the result of restraining freedom.

I'm not happy that your friend had to go through what happened, but passing a law wouldn't change that. All that would happen, realistically, is that your friend might have the chops to confront the "big and tall guy". Of course if your friend had the chops, he wouldn't need a law. He'd have said something to the guy and either a fight would have ensued, or the guy would have backed down (most likely the guy would have backed down in a public establishment, but you never know).

If your friend felt confident that he could have taken the guy on and beat him up (that is the law he wanted, right?), then he would have said something even without the law. If not, the law wouldn't have changed that one bit.

So in the end, you'd have a law that is unenforceable and useless.

But let's say that what your friend really wanted was a law to prohibit "penis peeking", perhaps a misdemeanor with a fine. It would still be unenforceable (because the police simply won't be around in the restroom when someone peeks).

Nonetheless, somehow at some time in the future, some person of note (celebrity, politician, etc.) would get caught "peeking" and then the press would have a field day about that person breaking "the law". Then someone would have the bright idea "there ought to be a law that requires businesses to install "peek-proof" stalls; stalls that are 17 feet high and extend 5 feet behind the urinal. Someone would then pass that law and regulators would go around to each business and fine them if they didn't comply with the Peek-Proof (PP) law. Businesses, especially the smaller ones, would complain that they couldn't afford the renovation, but just like the ADA act (Americans with Disabilities Act), they would still have to comply because unlike the peeking law, the peek-proof (PP) law would be enforceable.

Finally, after 20% of smaller businesses who had public restrooms closed up due to overly expensive renovations based on government regulations, and PP stalls were installed everywhere else, then you'd inevitably run into a problem from the heavy people. See, those new PP stalls wouldn't be large enough for some people; so then someone would say "there ought to be a law ... that the stalls must be at least 5 feet wide". And the issue would go on and on.

Let's face it, there needn't be a law for every little thing that happens. If someone is offended, they need to either learn to accept it, or talk (nicely) with the offender. Requiring a "law" is the surest way to invite government interference in our daily lives. And most of these laws aren't even something that the government can do anything about. At the end of the day, the government can't really stop someone from smoking in public. But they can require that businesses be "smoke-free" and then fine the businesses for "allowing" smoking (even though the business cannot do much more than kick a customer out which impacts their bottom line even more than the fine). The government similarly cannot stop a driver from getting thrown from a car without a seatbelt, but they can collect a large amount of money in fines from those otherwise safe drivers that they catch without one. The government cannot prevent someone from drinking and driving, but they can trace that driver's path and arrest a bartender who served him (even though the driver had a six-pack in the trunk that the bartender didn't know about).

These are all laws, all real, that don't even come close to having the intended effect, but all started with the idea that "there ought to be a law".

-- Jeff

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"Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem." --Ronald Reagan