"When will we sheep finally be able to be-e-e-e-e-d anyone we want?"
Posted on 04/09/2007 11:52:32 AM PDT by Lorianne
When the Supreme Court struck down Texas's law against sodomy in the summer of 2003, in the landmark gay rights case of Lawrence v. Texas, critics warned that its sweeping support of a powerful doctrine of privacy could lead to challenges of state laws that forbade such things as gay marriage and bigamy. "State laws against bigamy, same-sex marriage, adult incest, prostitution, masturbation, adultery, fornication, bestiality, and obscenity are ... called into question by today's decision," wrote Justice Antonin Scalia, in a withering dissent he read aloud page by page from the bench.
It turns out the critics were right. Plaintiffs have made the decision the centerpiece of attempts to defeat state bans on the sale of sex toys in Alabama, polygamy in Utah and adoptions by gay couples in Florida. So far the challenges have been unsuccessful. But plaintiffs are still trying. Even using Lawrence to challenge laws against incest.
In Ohio, lawyers for a Cincinnati man convicted of incest for sleeping with his 22-year-old stepdaughter tell TIME that they will make the Lawrence's decision the centerpiece of an appeal to the Supreme Court. "Our view of Lawrence is a fairly narrow one, that there is a Constitutional right under the 14th Amendment's due process clause that says private consensual activity between adults cannot be criminal," said J. Dean Carro, the lead lawyer for Paul D. Lowe, the former sheriff's deputy sentenced in 2004 to 120 days in jail after pleading no contest to incest.
But Houston lawyer Mitchell Katine, one of the attorneys who handled the Lawrence case before the Supreme Court, isn't so sure the court will agree. The state, he said, will likely argue that the intimate facts of family life in this case are different enough from the facts in the Lawrence case that Lawrence's privacy protection should not apply. "That's the hurdle they have to get over."
They have already failed to do so once. The Ohio Supreme Court rejected the plantiffs' argument that Lawrence created a new fundamental privacy right that made laws restricting consensual, private sex among adults unconstitutional. Instead, prosecutors successfully argued that Lawrence said only that anti-sodomy laws bore no rational relationship to a legitimate state interest — the lowest of Constitutional barriers. Agreeing, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled that state interests in preventing incest — even among adults or step-relations — were perfectly legitimate.
The issue does not appear to have been challenged in federal court previously, though the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in 2005 that a Wisconsin law forbidding incest among blood relations (but not including step-relations) did not conflict with Lawrence's ruling. But in upholding prison sentences for a brother-sister couple in that case, the court acknowledged that the language in Lawrence is all but certain to prompt more challenges to prosecutions for sex-related crimes on privacy grounds.
Katine said he hopes the muddied waters can be cleared up by the U.S. Supreme Court soon. "I really hope that the Court will take an issue and explain what they really meant."
Justice Anthony Kennedy's ruling in the Lawrence case was greeted enthusiastically by those who thought it would usher in a new era of privacy rights. But lower courts have been very careful about interpreting the decision. The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, for instance, twice rejected efforts to broaden Lawrence. In 2004, it upheld Florida's law prohibiting gay adoptions by saying the importance of providing for children gives the state the right to set rules for their adoption. And later that year, it ruled that a district judge in Alabama had erred in using Lawrence to strike down the state's prohibition on the sale of sex toys . Only in Massachusetts, with its famous gay marriage decision handed down four months after Lawrence, has a top appeals court sided with plaintiffs seeking to use the decision to void state laws regarding sex or marriage.
"When we first read some of the language about dignity and how the state doesn't have a right to impose its moral code on its citizens, we thought this decision would be extremely powerful and widely followed," Katine told TIME. "I am disappointed that the lower courts have not followed some of the language that is contained in Lawrence."
If the Court declines to hear Lowe's case, others less fraught with taboo could take its place in seeking to define the reach of Lawrence. The ACLU has filed suit in several states to challenge the few remaining statutes that prohibit unmarried couples from living together. This is the sort of case that may have a better chance of expanding Lawrence's reach, said Katine.
I guess this was inevitable.
sure, why not, we're close to having absolutely NO morals in this country whatsoever, why stop now, legalize adult incest, why the hell not....in fact, I'm betting GAYSACHUSETTS is the first state to do so.......
Don’t ask; don’t tell?
This is probably why you will never see a study of the life span of gays ever make it to a scientific journal. If they could establish just how dangerous the gay lifestyle is they could establish a legitimate state interest in outlawing it.
LOL...that caught my eye as well. Now, masturbation being a sin I understand. But are there actually laws against it?
Secondly, I have never really considered sex between step-relations to be incest. Sure, it's gross and immoral, but there isn't any blood relationship there. Is it really incest?
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
“Darn you, you pushers of the masturbation agenda!”
Did Scalia REALLY include masturbation in that list?
“Secondly, I have never really considered sex between step-relations to be incest. Sure, it’s gross and immoral, but there isn’t any blood relationship there. Is it really incest?”
I’m with you here — it’s icky and wrong and not something I would EVER think of doing even if I did have a step-daughter, but I can’t see a law against it.
It used to be considered unnatural. Now our enlightened society understands that the govt cannot tell us what is natural or what isn’t. Except homosexuality, that is natural. And global warming, that is not natural.
Now there! They're some of the most selfless folks you could ever meet.
"When will we sheep finally be able to be-e-e-e-e-d anyone we want?"
Within another 10 years I’ll be able to marry my refrigerator and draw social security for both of us! Whoopee! What a country! Better yet, the fridge will be able to apply for citizenship and sue if it doesn’t get it!
this explains the Book of Leviticus
You do realize you can have morals without making those morals laws, don't you?
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