Posted on 03/19/2003 12:48:02 AM PST by RJCogburn
This would be the a dumb call for the SCOTUS. They don't seem to realize that the culture wars are about to come back, big time.
Why? Because the left-wing media dominance of the last 40 years is collapsing. They are increasingly less able to promote and enforce their pro-homosexual, pro-abortion dogma. There are now other outlets, and we are not going away.
This would be a stupid, stupid move to overturn that statute. It's not the '70s anymore, and my generation (Gen-X) has lived through the cultural minefield of the last 40 years. Many of us are not amused.
That's it in a nutshell. Well said.
It's even in the Constitution.
Exactly. It's a prudential judgement, to be made by the people of Texas, not a robed elite confecting yet another "right" from the text of the Constitution. SCOTUS--stay out of it.
But they can't have same sex marriages like the Founding Fathers intended --- er, uh, or something like that.
The Texas Fourteenth Court of Appeals, sitting en banc, earlier upheld the states same-sex sodomy prohibition under the state and federal constitutions. The courts majority disagreed with a decision by its three-judge panel, which had found that the law violated the rights of the two men arrested at home for private, consensual sex.I'm going to say it for the last time.The three-judge panel had held that the Homosexual Conduct law violated the mens right to equal protection under the Texas Equal Rights Amendment by criminalizing conduct between same-sex partners but leaving the identical conduct legal for different-sex couples. On rehearing, the full court held that the law does not violate the right to equal treatment under the laws or to privacy from government prying into intimate adult conduct.
In a strong dissent from the en banc decision, Justice John Anderson said that the Homosexual Conduct laws prohibition on sodomy for same-sex couples cannot... be explained by anything but animus toward the persons it affects - which is not a legitimate motive for government discrimination against one group of people.
I do not see anything unconstitutional in banning sodomy across the board, at the state level or county level.
Nevertheless, banning sodomy between woman and woman, or man and man, wil not survive constitutional scrutiny.
My personal views on whether cunnilingus is a sin or unnatural or acceptable will have little to do with the Supreme Court's decision.
Your concern for the health of homosexuals is touching.
Locking them up will prevent them from being violated.
Ok, how about this:
Prohibiting actions that do not in themselves advance the public good is the ultimate in collectivism.
Think about it. "You want to do something? How does it help me? It doesn't? Well, then you can't do it."
This implies a slave type relationship between an individual and his nosy neighbor. That one cannot do something simply for himself reeks of socialism and communism.
I would think a libertarian would rather do this legislatively, instead of having a judge do the heavy lifting for him.
Lots of name calling from the libertarians here - calling people Nazis, comparing people to the Taliban and Hillary.
No wonder nobody takes them seriously.
I think you'll find Nessie in Loch Ness before you'll find one of those...
Again, the doctrine that government is constrained only by such considerations, and not by absolute principles which draw a bright line around personal liberties, is the essence of totalitarianism.
Yes -- there are those who believe that there are absolute moral standards which bind the powers of the State (libertarians) and those who take the moral relativist view that the State is bound only by prudential considerations (statists).
Not everything prescribed or proscribed in the Bible belongs in law.
Shall we execute adulterers?
What punishment sall be enacted for those who take the Lord's name in vain?
I know, let's send squads out with machine guns to shoot shoppers and storekeepers on Sundays !
You and I both have rights to our views about sodomy. There is absolutely no right to make them law. That violates the right to liberty and to pursuit of happiness. While I may agree that those who are pursuing happiness through homosexual sex are on the wrong path, we have no right to criminalize private, consensual sex between adults.
None.
But I see no problem whatsoever with ratifying male-female sex as the norm and discouraging homosexual sex as a threat to the social order.
Your racial/gender analogy fails because we do have laws that pertain only to one sex because of biological reality. Equal protection survives only as far as the male and female body are reasonably equal. There you have it. Two hundred and fifty posts and no one's layed a glove on me.
Probably because social conservatism is actually more logical than libertarianism, by far.
***BBBBZZZZTTT***! The reason censorship of speech is evil is precisely because it violates the rights of the speaker.
George, I'm sure we're on the same page regarding morality. This kind of sick, Bacchanalian debauchery in public should be punished...
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