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 --
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.