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.
No. Jesus is silent regarding enforcing his will by violence or threat thereof. Certainly, He didn't force anyone's conscience, nor is forcing the conscience of another consonant with the Gospel. But that's a straw man. We cannot know with certainty what God's will is for us in every circumstance. Therefore, it is logically impossible to enforce God's will in every circumstance.
Nevertheless, at the very least we can say with certainty that Jesus accepted civil authority:
Luke 3:14Scripture tells us what earthly authority represents:
Then some soldiers asked him, "And what should we do?" He replied, "Don't extort money and don't accuse people falsely–be content with your pay."Mark 12:17
Then Jesus said to them, "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's."
Romans 13:5-6
"Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also because of conscience. This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God's servants, who give their full time to governing."
Generally speaking, what about the person engaging in unnatural acts? Is he harming his life? Why does he have a "right" to harm himself? Where does it come from? Is his right to life violated? Does the harm to his life, health or soul resulting from such acts represent a loss to others as well as himself? Why does he have a "right" to harm or diminish society? Where does this "right" come from? Define rights.
It leaves moral judgements to the individual and God.
******************************* Contradiction alert *******************************
The Libertarian Party defines rights, thus making a moral judgement, and then defends their definition of "rights," thus imposing their morality (or lack thereof) on others. The Party does not leave the judgement or determination of what constitutes a right to the individual.
************************************************************************************
Does good and evil really exist? If it does, please define both terms or provide a link to a definition to which you agree.
Arguments regarding ethics derive from the First Principle that the good is to be done and evil avoided. (Such arguments are also consonant with divine revelation, since the God of Reason is also the God of Revelation). Read Aristotle and Aquinas.
Wow, so many questions in so little space. Is this leading somewhere?
To answer: The person engaging in the "unnatural acts" is doing so by choice. He may be harming himself. He has a right to harm himself. God obviously intended that he have that capability. else he'd have been created without free will. The right to harm himself comes from his self-evident nature as a free being. He can't violate his own rights. (Should he sue himself?) The things he does to himself may "hurt" others who want something from him. Your contention that he harms or diminishes "society" is just that, a contention. I'm not buying. "Society" is an abstract - the individual we're discussing, while hypothetical, is real.
In your zeal for the philosophy lesson, you ignored my question while citing it.
I'll rephrase - what makes your idea of God's will more accurate than mine?
Who are you posting this nonsense to? It's worse than a strawman. You made something up and then pretend I said it, then debate yourself.
Thank you for admitting that. Hint, he didn't leave you in charge.
Nevertheless, at the very least we can say with certainty that Jesus accepted civil authority:
Your interpretation is used continually and incorrectly by those who love violent authority. The correct interpretation is that he told these people to focus on important things, that they need to look past this world and it's problems and focus on God and the kingdom to come.
And don't attribute things to Jesus that others said, it is off topic and intentionally misleading. Your reference to "scripture" for the last verse is an attempt to blur the question.
See how it works?
I don't. Declaring "up to be down and black to be white" is nonsense, and therefore conveys no meaning. Essentially, you're declaring nothing.
Regardless, God is the God of Reason. Therefore, any assertion regarding the morality of a specific act must necessarily be reasonable.
Me, and many,many others, but I never represented it as anything other than my opinion. You took it out if the context of the exchange I was having and tried to make it look like I was making an unattributed doctrine of some authority. Very disingenious, your many posts lead to the conclusion you are not an honest person.
That is a reasonable argument, but not very inspiring.
You are the Aquinas fan, not me. Post that to someone who cares about it.
This is simple utilitarianism, which is a simply idiotic philosophical system.
Name one.
I label your philosophy as violent theocracy. I think your philosophical system is idiotic.
Your opinions carry no weight with me in any case since it became clear that you cannot debate in good faith but instead continually debate yourself and misrepresent my posts.
God is the Creator of life. It is the prerogative of the Creator of life to take life away. Moreover, since God is just, his acts must necessarily be just and, although it isn't always the case, in this instance, it is not difficult to see why theCanaanites were punished. They engaged in abominable practices:
Two large grottos situated under the sanctuary must also have played a part in this worship. But the most disgusting traces of this idolatry are the skeletons of infants -- mostly new-born babes -- sacrificed to the deity, which at Gazer were found buried in jars beneath the floor of the sanctuary, and elsewhere, especially at Mageddo, in its immediate neighbourhood. Several times the remains of these human victims, among which have been adults, were found beneath or in the foundations of houses and other buildings; a striking illustrations of the words of Jos., vi, 26: "Cursed be the man before the Lord that shall raise up and build the city of Jericho. In [or with] his firstborn may be lay the foundation thereof, and in [or with] the last of his children set up its gates."This should give our pro-abortion society pause.
Why did God also require the killing of the Canaanite children? Again, in the first place, it is the prerogative of the Creator of life to take life away. His Ways are above our ways and His Mind is unsearchable. However, we can speculate, and it is possible that these children would have gone on to commit the crimes of their parents. God would know that with certainty.
Why does God permit evil? That's another question.
Sounds like you haven't been following this thread very closely, because I did name one: namely, the wholesale slaughter of the Cannanite children as commanded by God. Some theists on this thread have been arguing that God is the source of moral absolutes, but I've demonstrated that the God of the Bible obviously considers infanticide to be moral in some cases, which is hardly an example of moral absolutism...
Your argument does nothing to refute the fact that infanticide is sometimes morally justifiable according to God, which is a prime instance of moral relativism. The facts clearly demonstrate that God is morally relative and thus cannot be the source of moral absolutes.
God told me that your arguments are all worthless sophistry. Since His ways are above our ways and His Mind is unsearchable, you have no way to dispute either of the assertions (that I received this divine communication, or that it is an accurate evaluation of your comments) contained in the previous sentence.
Game, set, match.
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