"Those of you"???? Are you insinuating something personal about someone you don't know? I trust your implication was meant as a general remark or else I will have to taunt you.
Posted on 03/19/2003 12:48:02 AM PST by RJCogburn
The constitutional challenge to the Texas "homosexual conduct" law that the Supreme Court will take up next week has galvanized not only traditional gay rights and civil rights organizations, but also libertarian groups that see the case as a chance to deliver their own message to the justices.
The message is one of freedom from government control over private choices, economic as well as sexual. "Libertarians argue that the government has no business in the bedroom or in the boardroom," Roger Pilon, vice president for legal affairs at the Cato Institute, said today, describing the motivation for the institute, a leading libertarian research organization here, to file a brief on behalf of two gay men who are challenging the Texas law.
Dana Berliner, a lawyer for the Institute for Justice, another prominent libertarian group here that also filed a brief, said, "Most people may see this as a case purely about homosexuality, but we don't look at it that way at all." The Institute for Justice usually litigates against government regulation of small business and in favor of "school choice" tuition voucher programs for nonpublic schools.
"If the government can regulate private sexual behavior, it's hard to imagine what the government couldn't regulate," Ms. Berliner said. "That's almost so basic that it's easy to miss the forest for the trees."
The Texas case is a challenge to a law that makes it a crime for people of the same sex to engage in "deviate sexual intercourse," defined as oral or anal sex. In accepting the case, the justices agreed to consider whether to overturn a 1986 precedent, Bowers v. Hardwick, which upheld a Georgia sodomy law that at least on its face, if not in application, also applied to heterosexuals.
While the Texas case has received enormous attention from gay news media organizations and other groups that view the 1986 decision as particularly notorious, it has been largely overshadowed in a busy Supreme Court term by the challenge to the University of Michigan's affirmative action program. The justices accepted both cases on the same day last December, and briefing has proceeded along identical schedules. The Texas case will be argued March 26 and the Michigan case six days later, on April 1.
Although libertarian-sounding arguments were presented to the court as part of the overall debate over the right to privacy in the Bowers v. Hardwick case, they were not the solitary focus of any of the presentations then. The Institute for Justice had not yet been established, and the Cato Institute, which dates to 1977, had not begun to file legal briefs. Whether the arguments will attract a conservative libertarian-leaning justice like Clarence Thomas, who was not on the court in 1986, remains to be seen.
More traditional conservative groups have entered the case on the state's side, among them the American Center for Law and Justice, a group affiliated with the Rev. Pat Robertson that is a frequent participant in Supreme Court cases.
The split among conservatives demonstrates "a diversity of opinion among our side," Jay Alan Sekulow, the center's chief counsel, said today. He said the decision to come in on the state's side presented a "tough case, one that we approached with reluctance." He said he decided to enter the case after concluding that acceptance of the gay rights arguments by the court might provide a constitutional foundation for same-sex marriage.
The marriage issue also brought other conservative groups into the case on the state's side. "The Texas statute is a reasonable means of promoting and protecting marriage — the union of a man and a woman," the Family Research Council and Focus on the Family told the court in a joint brief.
While the Texas case underscores the split between social and libertarian conservatives, it is evident at the same time that the alliance between the libertarians and the traditional civil rights organizations is unlikely to extend further. The two are on opposite sides in the University of Michigan case, with both the Cato Institute and the Institute for Justice opposing affirmative action while nearly every traditional civil rights organization has filed a brief on Michigan's side. The Bush administration, which filed a brief opposing the Michigan program, did not take a stand in the Texas case.
In 1986, when the court decided Bowers v. Hardwick, half the states had criminal sodomy laws on their books. Now just 13 do. Texas is one of four, along with Kansas, Oklahoma, and Missouri, with laws that apply only to sexual activity between people of the same sex. The sodomy laws of the other nine states — Alabama, Florida, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Utah and Virginia — do not make that distinction. The Georgia law that the Supreme Court upheld was later invalidated by the Georgia Supreme Court.
The Texas law is being challenged by John G. Lawrence and Tyron Garner, who were found having sex in Mr. Lawrence's Houston apartment by police officers who entered through an unlocked door after receiving a report from a neighbor that there was a man with a gun in the apartment. The neighbor was later convicted of filing a false report. The two men were held in jail overnight, prosecuted and fined $200 each. Represented by the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, they challenged the constitutionality of the law and lost in a middle-level state appeals court. The Texas Supreme Court refused to hear the case.
The United States Supreme Court's decision to take the case has been interpreted on both sides as an indication that the court is likely to rule against the state. Both Texas and the organizations that have filed briefs on its side devote considerable energy in the briefs to trying to convince the justices that granting the case was a mistake, a choice of tactics that is usually an indication of concern that a decision that does reach the merits will be unfavorable.
If the justices do strike down the Texas law, the implications of the decision will depend on which route the court selects from among several that are available. The court could find that by singling out same-sex behavior Texas has violated the constitutional guarantee of equal protection. Because the Bowers v. Hardwick decision did not address equal protection, instead rejecting an argument based on the right to privacy, such a decision would not necessarily require the court to overrule the 1986 precedent.
The Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund's brief for the two men urges the court to go further and rule that any law making private consensual sexual behavior a crime infringes the liberty protected by the Constitution's due process guarantee. Several arguments in its brief appear tailored to Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who voted with the majority in Bowers v. Hardwick but is now assumed, on the basis of her later support for abortion rights and her votes in other due process cases, to be at least open to persuasion.
For example, the brief includes a quotation from Jane Dee Hull, then the Republican governor of Arizona, where Justice O'Connor once served in the Legislature, on signing a bill repealing the state's sodomy law in 2001. "At the end of the day, I returned to one of my most basic beliefs about government: It does not belong in our private lives," Governor Hull said.
While I agree with you, it's worse than that. It is a law in an arena in which the goobermint has no business whatsover. For that reason it should definitely be removed. Your reasons are additive, but this one is fundamental.
Do you think people should be able to smoke pot in the privacy of their own home?
Yup. Snort Drano too if they wish.
I wonder what the ratio of AIDs deaths to sodomy arrest are?
Homosexuals cannot survive without the broader heterosexual community around them. Their lifestyle is too destructive to survive on their own. Therefore, they are socializing the costs of their behavior on the heterosexual community. Heterosexuals can survive without homosexuals, but not vice-versa. Therefore, we have every reason to limit their "rights" as we see fit.Celibates cannot survive without the broader non-celibate community around them. Their lifestyle is too destructive to survive on their own. Therefore, they are socializing the costs of their behavior on the non-celibate community. Non-celibates can survive without celibates, but not vice-versa. Therefore, we have every reason to limit their "rights" as we see fit.
-Eric
§ 21.06. Homosexual Conduct
(a) A person commits an offense if he engages in deviate sexual intercourse with another individual of the same sex.(b) An offense under this section is a Class C misdemeanor.
Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. 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
'@sshole Sniffers....there's a career for the WODdies and their ilk!Don't give them ideas....we got the National Firearms Act and marijuana prohibition because the alcohol prohibition agents needed new functions.
-Eric
If the man performs cunnilingus in the other woman, he will not be charged with sodomy.
Nevertheless, if his wife performs cunnilingus on the other woman, she will be charged with sodomy.
Therefore, you have a case where a married woman and a married man are not being given equal protection under the law.
You are conflating racial and gender differences. For instance, abortion restrictions do not apply to men, do they? If you're pro-life, or at least against partial birth abortion, then you are conceding that certain restrictions apply on the basis of gender. But even beyond the pro-life question. For instance, we prudentially observe that women should not be placed in forward combat units, i.e. the SEALS. Only men are eligible for the draft, etc. We do not discriminate on the basis of race (although there are minor physical differences between the races, i.e. African-Americans are more likely to have sickle-cell anemia), but it is impossible to not do so on the basis of gender. Therefore, your admittedly well constructed analogy ultimately fails.
Women and men are equal before the law in almost all regards, however they cannot be in reproductive issues because of the physical differences between men and women.
Smoking a few cigarettes every once in a while represents a significant danger to one's health?
Smoking a cigarette may not make one sick for years,...
My point.
...but it is never a helathy habit,...
Habit means regular use.
...and in the end taxes the system.
Depends how much. Occassional cigarette use represents an insignificant health risk.
Not evil?
Not intrinsically.
One could make the argument that since the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, that putting a substance known to be not only toxic but carcinogenic is also immoral.
Yes, if used in dangerous volumes. The situation is analogous to alcohol use, which Jesus OK'd (see the wedding feast of Cana).
It is already in government schools. It has nothing to do with the law concerning BJs by wives on their husbands. Or same sex relations.
Will you concider it acceptable if it isn't a law?
If there was no law, would you concider it acceptable?
Nothing like trying to ratify a behavior that cuts male life expectancy in half, spreads AIDS and is the lifestyle of child molesters everywhere.
Typical looneytunsian fare...
Exactly. The liberaltarian loons try to claim that the law is unfair, but there is no discrimination at all. They can get married if they want to and enjoy morally-licit heterosexual relations. There are only two sexes, not four or six or eight.
Straw man.
"Those of you"???? Are you insinuating something personal about someone you don't know? I trust your implication was meant as a general remark or else I will have to taunt you.
Both eating junk food and cunnilingus are behaviors.Insert Taco Bell reference here. >:)
-Eric
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