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.
?!
God obviously intended that he have that capability.
Man has the capability to do many evil things. Does that mean that he has a right to do evil things? I don't think that defense will hold up on the judgement day.
God couldn't make them decide to just up and leave? You must be consulting the definition of the word "omnipotent" found in the Clinton Dictionary.
2. To stave off any possibility of Israel being influenced by foreign pagan nations to stray from following the one true God.
God was less convincing to His chosen people than a bunch of defeated (though not exterminated, if God has been sufficiently moral to instruct His people in the basic concepts of of Just War doctrine) pagans?
This sort of order, of course, counted only for the chosen nation of Israel at that time.
God is a moral relativist?
Remember also that we are owned by God, every one of us. He can take me off this earth, or any memebr of my family, in a moment if He so chooses. All the world belongs to Him.
So much for our nosiness in saying dreadful things about the way (for example) Saddam Hussein treated the people under his rule.
Examples of "unnatural activity": jumping out a window and flying like Superman, walking through a wall without damage to either yourself or the wall, becoming invisible at will, etc. I haven't noticed any of these being terribly pressing social problems.
When he's doing the "evil things" to himself or a consenting adult and violating no one's rights, yes he does have a right to do "evil things".
God will take care of judgement day.
I wonder how Aquinasfan would deal with this, given that Aquinas agreed that it was impossible for God to create (for example) a triangle with internal angles that did not add to the sum of two right angles (assuming that we are drawing our triangles on a Euclidean plane).
Because it derives from First Principles which can be known with certainty.
We can also speculate that God had nothing to do with it, and that the Israelites were trying to dress up a horrific act by saying "God made me do it".
You can put a tuxedo on a pig but it's still a pig.
I'll search through the posts when I have time and I'll give you the number.
Come again?
Your idea of God derives from first principles? It sounds more to me like unquestioning belief in the Bible. "God said it, I believe it, and that settles it."
Not so?
He didn't tell the soldiers to put down their swords, did He? He told them to be content with their pay and to refrain from corrupt practices. Clearly He accepted the role of the military.
Because someone with no right to harm himself has no option but to live life hidden under the bed, emerging for only just long enough to eat (the blandest and most non-fattening possible food) and perform other such absolute necessities.
So why should anyone care?
I would care if the statement was true.
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.
No, I was trying to elicit the answer you provided above.
Yes, and you are a fan of Protagoras.
Post that to someone who cares about it.
Are you interested in the truth, or simply in endless debate? Perhaps your namesake provides the answer.
This is such obvious nonsense as to expose the stupidity of the advocate. Under a utilitarian system, if stealing from you makes you very happy, but losing your stuff to a thief makes you only somewhat annoyed, the theft is good because it increases the net amount of happiness in the world. Under a libertarian system, the theft is evil because it violates the rights of the victim (no matter how little he might care, so long as he does not care so little as to actually consent to it).
The creator of a painting has the natural right to destroy it. The creation belongs to the creator, by definition. Analogously, the Creator of life has the right to take life away.
Keep in mind though that, although God has the right to destroy His Creation, he does not destroy human beings. In fact, he is merciful to us, in that when our earthly life is ended we have the opportunity to live with Him forever in eternal bliss. God also honors the choice of people who choose not to live with Him forever. Therefore, it's possible that many of the Canaanite children that were killed went on to a greater life.
If God wanted the Canaanite children dead, He should have killed them Himself. To convey instructions to others to undertake the sin on His behalf is both immoral and downright idiotic (when someone hears the "voice of God" commanding him to kill, the sensible interpretation is not to assume that God has commanded a murder, but to diagnose the person hearing the voice as a dangerous psychotic).
We cannot know God positively, in Himself. However, we can know what God is not and can therefore know certain things about God through natural reason, such as the fact that He is One, Good, True, Beautiful and Being. God is of an entirely different category than human beings, and as such, we can only express truths about Him by anaology or negatively. Nevertheless, the knowledge is certain.
We can also know God through revelation.
His own right to life, obviously. And of course, all sin hurts others. No man is an island.
You seem to have accepted, at least to some degree, the prevalent equation of freedom with license. True freedom rests in the freedom to do God's will. Slavery to sin is just that, and is the opposite of human freedom.
You can, and many people do, but I don't find the argument compelling.
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