That fab pre-MTV melodious troope "Banned in Boston"
played live before the stoned Continental Congress
-Intaglio etching courtesy of the Ideologue Historical Revisionism Society
Posted on 12/03/2002 10:01:41 PM PST by weegee
AUSTIN -- The Texas law that bans homosexual sex is "appropriate," Gov. Rick Perry said Tuesday, a day after the U.S. Supreme Court said it would decide a Texas case that asks if it is unconstitutional for states to punish same-sex couples for having sex.
"I think our law is appropriate that we have on the books," Perry said.
The court will review the prosecution of two Houston men under a 28-year-old Texas law that makes it a crime to engage in same-sex intercourse.
The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in 1986 that consenting adults have no constitutional right to private homosexual sex, upholding laws that ban sodomy.
Sodomy laws, which ban oral or anal sex, once existed in every U.S. state but have been thrown out in most. Nine states ban consensual sodomy for everyone: Alabama, Florida, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Utah and Virginia.
In addition, Texas, Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma punish only homosexual sodomy.
The Texas case involves John Geddes Lawrence and Tyron Garner, who were arrested in 1998 in Lawrence's apartment, jailed overnight and later fined under Texas' Homosexual Conduct Law, which classifies anal or oral sex between two men or two women as deviate sexual intercourse.
The Supreme Court was told the convictions would prevent the men from getting certain jobs, and would in some states require them to register as sex offenders.
They were arrested after police responded to a false report of an armed intruder in Lawrence's apartment, called in by an acquaintance of the men. Police entered the unlocked apartment and found the men having sex.
I thought that they decided it was up to the states to decide how to regulate sexual practices. The crux of this current case is not whether states can ban specific sex acts among all people (including men and women together) but whether the laws can specify the partners of the pairing (equal coverage).
No surprise there. Texas previously said slavery was appropriate and segregation was appropriate. Always on the cutting edge, ehy?
...but...that's just my opinion.....
As far as this 'Texas Law' is concerned....
What any adult choses to do, with any other consenting adult in the privacy of one's house, is absolutely none of the Government's business - State..Federal...or otherwise !!
Cases are so rare that this one had to be fabricated by 3 gay men (one neighbor and the two defendants). The neighbor called in a false emergency of an armed assault in progress. The police arrived to find the apartment door unlocked and the 2 men were still having oral or anal sex (it has never been identified in any news report that I've seen in 4 years) in the bedroom. I have also not read any account to identify if the officers made any statements to the inhabitants before entering the bedroom ("Law enforcement, is everyone okay?").
This is the nature by which police caught them in the "privacy" of their own home. The gay neighbor was convicted of filing a false report. Kind of odd that it wold take a homosexual to enforce the private residence provision of this law (as opposed to public washroom sex).
I doN'T want a single Sodomite to draw a breath....period !! !! !!
My main point was of More Governmental Control being forced upon the General American Public.
IF this is done - even to the sodomites - do you honestly believe that legislation like that will stop at only that ??
Holster that waggling tongue and read things for what they actually are...instead of reading something into a post that just isn't there....I may just be on Your side - and you'd never know it.
LOL! As if the good people in Texas were watching Howard Stern one day last year and decided to enact a new law against homosexual sodomy! Surprise it must be to you, but homosexual sodomy was against the law in all 50 states, and has been for as long as there were state legislatures, until the moral-liberals started passing all this garbage legislation about when you were in diapers.
Moral-cowards will try to claim: "We must tolerate this evil, because otherwise someone else will outlaw puppies, or daisies, or saying the rosary!"
But I'm still going on the level of Governmental Intrusion on something(s) that simply isn't any of the Government's Business.
If enough people would Cowboy Up and confront these Sodomites, for what they actually are, there would be a great deal less of this 'visible crap' that is becoming the rule instead of the exception.
But - thanks again to our Nanny State (that must 'protect' everyone) doing anything approaching that and almost everyone would then be arrested on a "Hate Crime" Charge.
Oh, let's not forget that these Sodomites have the 'right' to say and do anything that strikes them at any given moment - and there isn't anything that can be done - as they have been given Special....errr.... Equal Rights under the Law.
...makes ya proud to be an American...doesn't it ?? ?? ??
Hey, this Texan thinks the sodomy law is rediculous. We also have one of the best records for respecting gun rights and have no state income tax. Cut us some slack, ok?
Sorry...but I am old enough (more that enough so) to remember Laws on the books for just such an occasion.
Still should be...no matter what the "...good people in Texas were watching..."
...more's the pity....
An action which unambigously and directly violates the rights of another person...
go nude in public, or engage in activity that they don't and won't keep in the bedroom.
I don't think any person on this site is arguing against public indecency laws. We have an objection to criminalizing the behavior of consenting adults, which does not violate anyone's rights, in the privacy of their own homes.
Homosexual advocates are looking at an eradication of this law as a way to greenlight homosexual adoption, marriage, health benifits, etc.
I got back too late from from a residence where I read Tuesday's Houstom Comical and USAToday to be able to find those papers' articles online (the next day's headlines were online by 11PM).
Aside from your ignorant and bigoted view of Texas, a state that tolerated privileges of slave owners but actualy fought for state rights and not for the same privileges, you are the type of hypocrit who would have owned slaves and wanted to maintain these privileges, fighting for them, unlike Texans back then. Indeed who wants to keep the privileges to have sodomy, takling the law out and the right to regular marital sex out too? You are having the wrong argument. Sodomy law is exactly the type of law that would end slavery. Those fighting for privileges above that of rights will ultimately cry for help.
I guess you are exactly what is wrong with Libertarians and atheists: bigoted idiots who can't stand seeing any view in the bible, included the secular views enounciated that they should pay attention to. But not, like most liberals, it is too hard to have an open view on those things.
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