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.
Nonetheless, it is settled law. I do believe that it happens to be good law.
The Bill of Rights has to extend to the states, otherwise it is meaningless. Prohibiting the Federal Government from banning handguns is meaningless if the states are allowed to ban handguns. Prohibiting the Federal Government from shutting down oppostition newspapers is meaningless if the states can shut down opposition newspapers.
Either these are rights retained by the people, or they are not. If they are retained by the people, the state can no more infringe upon them than the feds.
If that is the case then the "reserved to the states" clause of the 10th amendment is effectively repealed. And for that matter the "or to the people" is effectively repealed because the people cannot through their legislatures enact the powers that are reserved to them as provided by the 10th amendment. Therefore under your view, the 14th amendment reworded the 10th amendment as follows:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution,nor prohibited by it to the States,are reserved to theStates respectively, or to the peopleCourts.
The Courts can (or should, rather, since you want to talk about "my view") no more infringe upon rights retained by the people than the State or the Feds.
Now we're onto the Ninth.
I thought you said you read the 10th amendment. Go back and read it again. There is nothing in it about rights. It addresses powers.
Tyranny? Legalized prostitution, homosexual marriage....it sounds like you may need to move to Europe.
The 10th amendment address powers "retained by the states respectively, or the people." An example of a power retained by the people would be to enact a ban through referendum or state constitutional amendment (or through lobbying their state legislature) on homosexual marriage. However, the homo activists are attempting to get the courts to dictate that some heretofore undiscovered right exists within the constitution that would prohibit this power of the people via the 14th amendment. (Apparently your fondness of Marbury would support such a judicial dictate.)
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
That means that a right doesn't have to be listed in the Constitution to be a right. It greatly restricts you nanny staters, from the right or the left, from using the government to enforce your own personal version of morality.
I did. The I said "we're on to the Ninth."
That is the central conflict in our Republic - whether the powers given the people and their representatives in the Tenth overrule the rights acknowledged to the people in the Ninth.
Personally, I come down on the side of the Ninth. But then, I believe in freedom. The Tenth is the final refuge of the nanny state, and only the Ninth keeps us free.
Or one might posit: The Ninth is the final refuge of the anarchist, and only the Tenth keeps us civilized.
One might, but I doubt the Founders would agree with you. They valued freedom more than anything, even civility.
Men keep themselves civilized - our government is not charged with controlling our behaviors.
In a republican form of government guaranteed by the Constitution, the people govern through their representatives. While you deride those who advocate rules to govern behavior as "nanny-staters" the Tenth amendment reserved the powers to the states and the people to govern themselves so long as they do not violate the Constitution. If people are unhappy with the rules of one state, they can (a) lobby to have the laws changed, or (b) move to a state that has laws more to their liking. Unfortunately, in the age of Marbury, liberals and licentious activists who want to force their own ideas on the rest of us have found that when they can't win the battle of ideas at the ballot box they can have a friendly judge overrule the powers of the states or the people by discovering new "rights" in the Constitution. But the decisions are never based on the Ninth amendment, but rather on the 14th. You apparently like this arrangement as you have stated you think it is "good law".
The 14th amendment is very good taken at face value, in which it guarantees that states cannot violate the basic rights of its citizens.
No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.Of course the problem arises when courts decide to expand these "privileges or immunities of citizens" to include the right to never be made uncomfortable, or the right to never be forced to view an expression of a religious thought on public property, or other such ridiculous notions never intended in the Bill of Rights nor in the 14th Amendment as drafted, debated, and ratified.
And I doubt they would agree that the ninth amendment extended to a Constitutional right to sodomize each other.
However, most of them subscribed to the laws of nature and of nature's God. Consequently, they probably would not object to laws restricting sodomy as somehow limiting freedom.
Of course I'm derisive - nanny staters believe that the government regulates personal behavior.
The laws to control personal behavior behind closed doors do violate the Constitution - nowhere does it give the government the power to regulate personal morality.
I believe personal rights trump government powers. I have no patience for so-called "conservatives" who want to increase the reach of the government.
Please explain how you have come to that deduction or is that just a catty snipe?
Among the founders, *sodomy was universally condemned as a crime against nature. It was illegal in each of the thirteen states existing at the time the Constitution was ratified and the Bill of Rights was adopted. In Thomas Jefferson's Virginia, it was a crime punishable by death. When Jefferson wrote an amendment to the criminal code lessening the penalty for sodomy, he nevertheless classed it as a crime with rape, polygamy, and incest.
Whosoever shall be guilty of rape, polygamy, or sodomy* with a man or woman, shall be punished; if a man, by castration, a woman, by boring through the cartilage of her nose a hole of one half inch in diameter at the least.- Thomas Jefferson:
*Ever look up the word Sodomy in Noah Websters dictionary?
"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other".- John Adams 1798 --
Excellent point.
In their wisdom they didn't, and we're stuck with what they actually set into law. Not guessing at their intentions, not inferences, but the actual letter of the law. And the Constitution says that if the government isn't given the specific powers to regulate it, the government has to stay out.
The real beef I think you have is with the 14th Amendment, applying the Bill of Rights to the states. But as I said above, the Bill of Rights *has* to apply to states, or the rights it acknowledges are meaningless.
The government could do an end run around freedom of the press by having a state or municipal government shut down an opposition newspaper if states aren't bound by the Bill of Rights. The government could prohibit gun ownership by enforcing it through states if states aren't bound by the Bill of Rights.
I don't care what consenting adults to on their own property. But as I've said above, I value freedom. That includes the freedom to do things I wouldn't personally do, as I don't expect the government to force all citizens to conform to my personal preferences.
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