Posted on 10/24/2005 12:27:04 PM PDT by Hunterb
WASHINGTON – Was the U.S. Supreme Court fooled by a make-believe sodomy case in Lawrence v. Texas – one manufactured by homosexual activists to entrap police and ensnare the judicial system in a conspiracy to change the law of the land?
That is the compelling verdict of a new book, "Sex Appealed: Was the U.S. Supreme Court Fooled?" by Judge Janice Law.
It was in the Houston courthouse where Law presided as judge that she first heard rumors that the key figures in what became the landmark Lawrence v. Texas Supreme Court case actually invited arrest in a pre-arranged setup designed from the start to test the constitutionality of anti-sodomy laws. What the journalist-turned-prosecutor-turned-judge-turned-journalist found, after interviewing most of the key players, including those in the Texas homosexual subculture that produced the case, is that the Supreme Court, possibly for the first time in history, ruled on a case "with virtually no factual underpinnings."
When the Supreme Court decided to hear the challenge to Texas anti-sodomy laws in 2002, the only facts for the high court to review were Deputy Joseph Richard Quinn's 69-word, handwritten, probable cause affidavits – written within hours of the arrests of the three principals in the case Sept. 17, 1998.
There had been no trial. There had been no stipulations to facts by the state or the defendants. The defendants simply pleaded no contest at every phase of the proceedings. It was quite simply the misdemeanor dream case homosexual activists in Texas and nationwide had been dreaming about. Or had they done more than dream about it? Had they schemed about it, too?
Nearly everyone familiar with the case that set off the nation's same-sex marriage craze knows there were two defendants in the case – two men, John Geddes Lawrence, 60, and Tyron Garner, 36. Forgotten, until Law's book, was a third man arrested at Lawrence's apartment that night – Robert Eubanks, who was beaten to death three years before the case was heard by the Supreme Court.
It was Eubanks who took the fall for calling the police the night of the "incident." He said he was the one who placed the call reporting a man firing a gun in an apartment building. When police officers responded to the felony call, Eubanks was outside Lawrence's apartment directing police to the unit – still insisting a man with a gun was threatening neighbors.
When police approached Lawrence's apartment, they found the front door open. When they entered the apartment, they found a man calmly talking on the telephone in the kitchen, also motioning to the officers to a bedroom in the rear.
Despite repeated shouts by officers identifying themselves as of sheriff's deputies from the moment they entered the Houston apartment, no one seemed surprised to see them – especially not Lawrence and Garner.
The veteran police officers who entered the bedroom that night were unprepared for what they were about to see.
"You could tell me that something was happening like 'there's a guy walking down the street with his head in his hand,' and I would believe it," said Quinn, who had 13 years on the force the night he entered Lawrence's apartment. "As a police officer, I've seen things that aren't even imagined."
But what he saw that night shocked him, searing images into his mind that seem as vivid today as the day they happened.
Quinn and his fellow officers, expecting to see an armed man, perhaps holding a hostage or in a prone position ready to fire at them, instead, found was Lawrence having anal sex with Garner.
And they didn't stop – despite repeated warnings from officers.
"Lawrence and Garner did not seem at all surprised to see two uniformed sheriff's deputies with drawn guns walk into their bedroom," Quinn recalls.
Quinn shouted to them to stop. They continued.
"Most people, in situations like that, try to cover up, hide or look embarrassed," explained Quinn. "Lawrence and Garner didn't look at all surprised to see us. They just kept doing it."
Finally, Quinn took action. He told them: "I don't believe this! What are you doing? Did you not hear us announce ourselves? Don't you have the common decency to stop?" But still Lawrence and Garner did not stop until Quinn physically moved them apart.
Lawrence and Garner would be booked that night for a class C misdemeanor punishable by only a fine. Eubanks was charged with filing a false police report because there were no guns found. Lawrence and Garner would become celebrity heroes of the homosexual activist movement. Eubanks would wind up beaten to death – with Garner a possible suspect in a case that remains unsolved.
But who was the mystery man on the phone in the kitchen? He was never identified officially because there was no reason to charge him. Law believes his identity is key to proving the pre-meditated nature of the Lawrence case setup. And she thinks she's solved the case. Readers can be the judge.
The 6-3 U.S. Supreme Court Lawrence ruling favoring the defendants in the landmark case is the trigger event kicking away roadblocks to same-sex marriage, says Law.
The justices who voted to overturn the Texas statute and invalidate anti-sodomy laws in the rest of the U.S. were Justices Stephen Breyer, Sandra Day O'Connor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Anthony Kennedy, David Souter and John Paul Stevens. Justice Kennedy wrote the majority decision.
Those voting to uphold the Texas law were Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.
If the Lawrence case were known to be a setup during the five years following the arrests, then the defendants would not have a right-to-privacy claim, and the U.S. Supreme Court probably would never hear the case.
After that historic ruling, Law decided to investigate a case that had never before been subject to any investigation. By then she was a visiting judge, sitting for judges who are on vacation or ill.
"I researched and wrote 'Sex Appealed' because I know many of the Lawrence participants, I had the time, contacts, and the journalistic background to investigate, and, as a lawyer and judge, I felt an obligation to history to find out what really happened behind the scenes in one of the most culture-altering cases in America's legal history," Law said. "I am the judge who, after the internationally publicized case was concluded at the highest level, embarked on her own investigation of rumors about the case assigned to her Texas court."
Along the way, Law is not only persuasive that Lawrence was planned from the start – that police, in effect, were entrapped into witnessing a crime because the homosexual activists needed a test case – but also gets support for her theory from other judges involved in the saga.
What would it mean, two years after Lawrence v. Texas, if Supreme Court justices learned they had been fooled, manipulated, played like a radio?
Did the justices know that a key witness in the case had been murdered and that one of the defendants appeared to be a key suspect?
Were they aware one of the lawyers that handled the sodomy case for Lawrence and Garner also represented Garner in the unsolved murder death of Eubanks?
How could there be an issue of privacy in a case in which police were invited, encouraged, begged to enter an apartment and directed to the bedroom where the unlawful sexual activity was taking place?
Law also finds that homosexual activists nationwide and, specifically, in Houston were actively searching for that "perfect" test case when Lawrence happened to come along.
As the U.S. Supreme Court is being reshaped through the retirement of Sandra Day O'Connor and the death of William Rehnquist, some are wondering if it's possible the court could "second-guess" itself in the Lawrence ruling – one that turned out to be among the most controversial decisions in years.
Ahh, proof again that the exception proves the rule. Yes, you found a loophole. Just like I could invent a scenario in which you could be arrested for driving the speed limit.
Anyone remember that kind of thing happening just after they opened up the baseball stadium in Toronto that has the hotel attached?
Not surprising. Sarah Weddington, another Texas lawyer, did a similar thing in Roe-v-Wade. She had 'Jane Roe' claim that she had been raped and wanted an abortion. Norma McCorvey, the real 'Jane Roe' had not been raped, and never wanted an abortion. Weddington, in conjunction with other lawyers, and even a couple of the Supremes, used McCorvey to take the case all the way to the Supreme Court so they could force a change in the law of the land to suit their own personal legal preferences.
Randolph Churchill had syphilis. He died from it. I'm not certain as to when he was infected ( but he DID have during most, if not all of his marriage to Jenny!); however, none of his children were born with it, nor with any defects.
Either your doctor friends are lying through their teeth to you, or you are lying through your teeth! The blood tests done before one is allowed to obtain a marriage license, is NOT done to detect anything other than syphilis and gonorrhea and in some states, one or the other disease is no longer tested for at all.
I'm married, my husband and I took the blood test almost 39 years ago. My daughter is married, she and her husband took the test almost 6 years ago. Everyone, but you, knows what these test comprise.
Some people, who have familial inherited diseases running rampant in their backgrounds, sometimes have battery of tests done, before they try to have a family, but NOT ever in order to obtain a marriage license.
Just answer the question. Does the geovernment have the authority to prohibit prostitution between two consenting adults? And how do you define prostitution? Is it sex for cash? Sex for dinner and a movie?
They were secure in their persons, houses, effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures. In this case, someone made a bogus distress call, stood outside an OPEN apartment, waved the officers in, where another individual pointed the officers to the room. The officers identified themselves, and entered only after repeated warnings. The sodomizers then continued to openly and brazenly engage in an illegal act after the officers repeatedly told them to stop. If you only want to rely on the underscored part and refuse to acknowledge probable cause, then no criminal act would ever be criminal or prosecutable if it is conducted completely within the privacy of one's home where one has absolute security in one's person, house, papers, and effects.
So sexual perversion (behavior) is equal to racial ethnicity is it? What a Strawman...
Race is who you are, homosexual is what you do.
Consider this. There is a California state congressman(democrat) currently putting through legislation to lower the legal voting age from 18 to 12. You can take it from there.
That's a strawman. There is a clear legal definition for "adult," so your use of quotes is interesting.
Children do not have full legal rights, and as such the government has the right to regulate certain of their behaviors. There are, therefore, not relevant to this conversation.
This conversation is only about the government regulating what adults can do on their own property. Kids are a strawman, and a lame one at that.
This is my rifle
This is my gun
This one's for fightin'
This one's for fun...
"Hypocracy" (sic)? WHAT HYPOCRISY? I stated factual information and NO opinion. Ergo, there is no "hypocrisy", other than your own!
Please use spell check or a dictionary. :-)
Take that up with the courts in D.C., but be careful what you ask for!
And that decision was correct. But what the SCOTUS did was endorse a constitional right to homosexual behavior, through the privacy "penumbras" of the Constitution, instead of leaving an issue like this, which many believe to be moral, to be decided by each state.
Such is what got Justice Scalia so burned up. Not that a state would allow the behavior, but that the high court would consider it a something worthy of its consideration as a constitutional matter.
Nor in some other states as well. :-)
So what? If any legislature votes to lower the age of adulthood, that is the state's business.
If a state ever determines that a 12 year-old can vote, if a state ever determines that a 12 year-old can own property in his own name and sign contracts and have all the other rights and responsibilities of adulthood, then and only then does a 12 year-old have the right to engage in whatever consentual sexual practices they want. That's what being a adult means.
Seems to me that your beef is with anyone who would lower the age of majority. I would agree, since I don't think that most kids are ready for those responsibilities at such an age. But if that's what a state wants, a state should be allowed to do it. It's their business where they want to draw the line between adult and child. It has no real bearing on the conversation except to raise some sort of emotional hackles.
No, because that is expressly protected by the Second Amendment. There's nothing in the Constitution protecting sodomy other than the general requirement for searches based on probable cause applicable to any conduct in the home. And the same rules regarding exigent circumstances, plain view exception, etc.
I have no problem with states not regulating sodomy. I have a big problem with a Supreme Court that rewirtes the Constitution to fit its own notions of what it "should" say.
Is it the government's place to regulate those actions?
Yes. That is rape. Thank you for the easiest question in this thread.
SCOTUS knew it was a sham case, just as they knew Griswald was a sham case. Sometimes, SCOTUS doesn't mind. They want to rule. Sometimes, SCOTUS distorts the facts, to make the rule they want. What SCOTUS wants, SCOTUS gets.
Well if you want to consider it a contrived loophole, let's imagine the following scenario:
The police receive a call about a man wandering around with a gun threatening people. They arrive on the scene and a "witness" points them to an apartment with an open door and screams "He went in there! Hurry, he's gonna kill somebody!" The police cautiously enter the open door and announce themselves "Police! Drop all weapons!" They see a person talking on the phone who calmly points toward a closed door to a room in the apartment. They approach the door and announce themselves again "Police. Open the door and come out with your hands up." The repeat the announcement several times. After repeated warnings they open the door and find two people, ignoring them, engaged in one of the following activities:
1. openly using several illegal drugs.
2. molesting a small child.
3. openly and obviously running an illegal gambling operation.
4. making illegal copies of pirated movies/music.
5. illegally performing a medical procedure without a medical license.
6. making a porno movie featuring a disgusting encounter between a dwarf and several farm animals.
or create your own inventive scenario.
Oh, or 7. engaged in sodomy, which at the moment is a violation of state law.
In any case, to challenge the arrest and subsequent "no contest" plea or conviction on the basis of "invasion of privacy" is ludicrous, especially if there is any indication that the calls to the police and the subsequent directions of the police by "witnesses" along with the criminal activity in question were all staged for the purpose of challenging the validity of the law being violated.
Given these details of the scenario described above, the violators, along with the parties making the call to the police and directing the police to the room where the illegal activity took place are ALL culpable of conspiracy to commit the crime, as well as other possible conspiracy or obstruction of justice charges.
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