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I've never said that everything that's done in privacy ois legal, so don;t put words in my mouth. As a marre of fact, I haven't made much of an argument about the ritght to privacy, and my entire argument is in the disparity displayed by the Texas law.

You all keep bringing the Founders into the argument, so I went searching for some pearls of wisdom from the departed architects of our society, and lo and behold, it appears that Jefferson had something to say on the matter, he believed that sodomites "should be punished, if a man, by castration, if a woman by cutting through the cartilage of her nose of one-half inch in diameter at least", I guess old Tom was not enlightened enough to draw some absurd law that would have that castration, or that nose cutting carried out depending on the coupling of the offending "deviants".

Imagine that, Tom saw sodomy as being bad regardless of whether the sodomite was in the majority, or the monority of the population.

by cutting through the cartilage of her nose of one-half inch in diameter at least

He must have foreseen the advent of mass body piercing. :-)

There are two parts of the argument, and i understand that even though you have argued some "right to privacy," you have stuck more to the 14th Amendment side of it--namely, that if sodomy is illegal for homosexuals, why not heterosexuals too?

As a policy matter, my personal opinion is that it should be illegal for both. As I was telling tpaine hundreds of replies ago, we would prevent a lot of babies from getting AIDS and other horrible diseases if we actually stopped the spread of STD's through sodomy, which is probably the most risky activity for spreading STDs.

However, because homosexuals are not a protected class under the 14th amendment--and in fact are not properly a "class" at all, but rather a group of people who like to engage in certain kinds of activity--it seems unnecessary to advance a constitutional objection to the Texas law.

Think of it this way:
John belongs to a group of people who really like to do X.
Jim belongs to a group of people who really like to do Y.
The state legislature passes a law outlawing X.
So, does that give John an equal protection claim?
Of course not.

So the law should be changed, IMHO, but let's leave the constitution out of it. Let Texans change their own law.

Otherwise, you'll have gay marriage very quickly, since the argument will fly right through the court that state marriage laws are discriminatory, and equal protection requires it.