Supreme Court Strikes Down Gay Sex Ban

AP via Yahoo ^ | 6/26/03 | AP

[jethropalerobber]

Supreme Court Strikes Down Gay Sex Ban

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court struck down a ban on gay sex Thursday, ruling that the law was an unconstitutional violation of privacy.

The 6-3 ruling reverses course from a ruling 17 years ago that states could punish homosexuals for what such laws historically called deviant sex.

The case is a major reexamination of the rights and acceptance of gay people in the United States. More broadly, it also tests a state's ability to classify as a crime what goes on behind the closed bedroom doors of consenting adults.

Thursday's ruling invalidated a Texas law against "deviate sexual intercourse with another individual of the same sex."

Defending that law, Texas officials said that it promoted the institutions of marriage and family, and argued that communities have the right to choose their own standards.

The law "demeans the lives of homosexual persons," Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the majority.

[jwalsh07]

I understand the "penumbra" was invoked in this decision, but I don't think one need think Roe V. Wade should stand just because one agrees with this decision or at least understands it.

This is either the statement of a lunatic or one who hasn't read Kennedy's opinion.

He, the hypocritical sob, used Roe as precedent. The penumbra becomes precedent for expanding the penumbra.

[Skywalk]

Sorry, with all the attention I actually read Scalia's opinion and only skimmed Kennedy's!

[jayef]

You are absolutely hopeless. None of what you have said deals with the question at hand. Healthcare costs? Talk about a strawman. What does that have to do with Texas' struck down law? Deviants want to be identified? I suppose you would prefer that the state break into their homes and tag them . . . as was done under Texas' struck down law?

Intolerance is NOT healthy for society. Bigotry is NEVER acceptable in society. MY DEAR, you are the one who is sick. Your hatred has so twisted your mind that you would tolerate any transgression of the state . . . as long as it targets behavior and people you don't like. Well guess what, pumpkin, one day someone may define something that you do, may put some part of your existence on a hit list.

Won't it just be so fortunate that we will have already had plenty of practice wiping out the fags? Won't it be grand when the "morality police" come charging through your door?

[jayef]

These people don't even realize how much the thinking of the left has invaded their consciousness. Just like the Drug Warriors don't understand that their thinking perfectly parallels the gun grabbers. They think that hating gays is some kind of conservative value without realizing that they are giving away their authority to the state.

[jayef]

The point is that YOU don't have to observe anything. As a heterosexual you were not the target class. Don't worry about it. Tomorrow you can wake up and your life will be completely unchanged. Of course now the gay couple down the street doesn't have to worry about the state busting down their door to see what kind of sex their having. That's not what you're worried about, is it, really?

[jayef]

Why even dignify this guy with an answer? I prefer he think I'm queer as Liberace. In fact, I prefer he live in fear of me the rest of his life and that his mind becomes so consumed with how me and his neighbors are having sex that he doen't have time to think about anything else.

[Naspino]

Hmm -- whats the difference between a painting an a virtual reality rape of a child? Gee -- thats hard... You know that fringe virtual reality leads to reality.

Just like the guy that goes around killing all the cats in the neighborhood ends up killing people. Someone that ends up watching the virtual rape of children all day will end up raping a child.

We can put Osama Bin Laden in a blender -- there is humor in that and no one is going to go out on a killing spree. So don't compare other virtual reality to this -- There is something much more insidious and evil about getting off on the rape of child.

I hope you don't have children.

[Naspino]

Bigotry is NEVER acceptable in society

Definition: One who is strongly partial to one's own group, religion, race, or politics and is intolerant of those who differ.

So exactly what part of bigotry is never acceptable? Having a strong partiality or not tolerating people who differ? Is tolerance required under the law? I have a hard time tolerating murderers -- am I bigot?

Sorry but this word has been hijacked by liberals. I'm a bigot on many fronts and proud of it and you obviously are partial to your opinion are not being very tolerant of the majority opinion of the people in this country so who is the bigger bigot -- me or you?

[Kerberos]

"I predict that the next laws to be nullified will be those regarding sex workers/prostitution"

One can only hope.

[RDUBOOKS]

Most of you who are having conniptions over this decision, which finally brings us our of the dark Ages, will find your personal lives NOT ONE BIT different than they already were. For one thing, only a handful of states even had such laws on the books anymore, so only 13 states are even affected. Second, why are you so obsessed with where others are sticking their peepees, anyway? I have to wonder about you, and the phrase "get a life" comes to mind...

This is about CONSENTING adults. Maybe YOU want to live in a country where the Govt tells consenting adults what they're allowed to do in the privacy of their own bedroom, but I don't. Perhpas you should move to Iran or Iraq, where many sexual acts are highly restricted and severely punished.

And for those bemoaning the fate of ""The Children"...huh? We are not talking about ped0philia, we are talking about sodomy between consenting adults. Sometimes these consenting adults were man and wife, BTW--many states still outlaw what husband and wife do in their own beds. Even regarding homosexual sodomy, CONSENTING ADULTS are the focus here; ped0philia has always been, and will continue to be, illegal and severely punished. (BTW, over 95% of pedophiles are men who prey on GIRLS. Why don't you outlaw those freakish "Child Beauty Pageants" where the tots dress up in makeup and strut around like Hooters waitresses, if you're concerned about "Children"??).

Bottom line, in what purports to be a FREE country, it is absurd that any laws telling consenting adults what they can do behind closed doors have been on the books EVER. Thank God 6 justices realized this, instead of keeping us in a "Big Brother" type government.

[RDUBOOKS]

"Where do you and other posters on this thread get the idea that a right, such as a right to privacy, must be specifically given to us by a provision in the Constitution? The Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, do not GIVE any rights...just because the Constitution does not GIVE us a right to privacy, does not mean we don't have such a right."

THANK YOU. I mean, the Constitution does not SPECIFICALLY give us the right to eat peanut butter on Mondays, you know? Does this mean it should be considered illegal until otherwise dictated? According to some of you, I guess so...

[Diamond]

And thus, there is no morally legal basis (say as opposed to a law against murder) for passing legislation against things that you merely do not like.

Thank you for your reply. When I ask what the Court's authority is to dictate cultural traditions I am making a distinction between a Federal Court and a State legislature.

It seems to me that polygamy, sodomy and incest go far beyond one's personal taste in music. None of the former have ever been traditionally regarded as moral or legal in this country. At the same time, I am unaware of any traditional jurisprudence against country music.

It is just ironic to me that libertarians will praise a de-novo fiat from a virtual soviet triumvarate who presume to have the authority to dictate such cultural and moral decisions for the rest of us. This decision does not bother you because you happen to agree with it. But the power that they have abrogated to themselves will come back to bite you.

Cordially,

[MHGinTN]

Second, why are you so obsessed with where others are sticking their peepees, anyway? I have to wonder about you, and the phrase "get a life" comes to mind... RDUBOOKS This is the sort of vacuous comment that exposes the poster's hoomo-apologist leanings and/or displays the poster's lack of understanding for the true issues at the heart of this idiocy ruling.

Homos are chattering all over the threads about 'stormtroopers pounding on doors and dragging people away simply because of how they want to have sex.' You offer this juvenile comment about 'where others are sticking their peepees.' Then you pontificate 'get a life'. How very childish, belongs right up there with the homos swishing from thread to thread trying to bait folks into commenting on homos, digging for something to be famously queer and outraged over.

The community of deviants does have an agenda. They want to be defined as normal, protect as normal, as just like everyone else, and they are willing to destroy any institution of this society in order to bring the nation down to their level of deviancy else they wouldn't spend so much time, money, and emotional energy 'pushing' and getting 'in your face'.

There are very many Americans who will never accept deviants as normal. I, for one, don't want to be forced to work with or hire someone who is so obsessed with their sexual identity that they force their sexual proclivities out into the open as a badge of identity to be addressed in every aspect of life. Are you homo-apologists proud of the fellow queers who push into a Catholic Church during Mass, to shout obscenities and smear their feces on the interior of the Church, 'in protest for not being accepted as just like everyone else?' Yeah, you likley see such 'protest' as legitimate, 'the in-your-face action needed to end this obsession of where others put their peepees'. Here's a clue, homo-apologist, sex isn't that importnat, but a sex obsessed deviant cannot focus on anything else, so it oozes out even in casual comment.

There are ridiculous laws on the books in states, that need to be removed by the state legislatures. But when senile Justice Kennedy and five other liberal SCOTUS judges reach out to wipe a state law off the books, under the same false guise used to legitimize the slaughter of 42,000,000 alive human beings, this nation is in big trouble, because the SCOTUS was never designed to play 'philosopher king', to rule America. Was the Texas sodomy law in need of removal? If so, it needed to be done by the state of Texas, not the kings of the Federal bench.

You homo-apologists don't like what is about to follow, even spend energy screaming it is not true ... but it is factual and relevant in order to fully understand the agenda you support. The deviants who succeeded in getting the Texas case into the court system planned their actions and their means to entrap the LEOs, the neighbor was a fellow deviant who called in the warning that some crime was occurring in the apartment, and the deviants fudgepacking in the back bedroom made sure to continue their behavior until the LEOs stopped them when they reached the back bedroom and pushed open the door and dragged one queer off of the other. These same homos had tried to create a challenge to the Georgia state marriage laws.

The Texas deviants are part of a larger 'movement' to peck away at society's institutions and taboos ... for what purpose? To corrode the society to the point that deviancy will be completely acceptable and in fact PROTECTED as legitimate. Does that make me and millions of others angry? Damn right it does, and intolerant of deviants.

Get a life? That's a familiar inane deviant catcalled from behind the frame of a uniformed officer doing his or her job but being manipulated to do that job over something really objectionable. How do I know?... Because I've spoken with law officers assigned to stand guard outside an abortion mill, where a pro-abortion person called in threats to the clinic under the guise of being part of the pro-life movement.

Deviant sexual proclivities are not the important factor in this society degrading saga, the issue of states' rights to legislate and the over reaching SCOTUS are far and away more important than 'where someone puts their peepee' ... and the fact that you would try to divert the discussion to the peepee placement is evidence of your shallow, sexual driven foolishness, just like the deviants who want America to focus on anything, anything at all, except the reality of the deviancy.

[Tares]

Thank you for posting the links to the ruling and dissents.

[Tares]

Lots of biblical heroes had multiple wives...

And they all suffered for it. Read Genesis chpt 30, look at the strife. Read 2 Samuel chpt 12, not only was Bath-sheba married, David was too, people forget that. Read the next few chapters, see what children from David's various wives did to each other and to David. Read the end of Ecclesiastes chpt 7 for Solomon's opinion.

None of the "biblical heroes" were blessed by having multiple wives.

[jethropalerobber]

Thus the stage has been set for the overturning of Roe.

huh? if anything, this decision has made roe stronger than ever.

[jethropalerobber]

It seems to assume that, for some reason, homosexuals have to be sexually active...

boy that really is odd! he assumed that humans actually engage in sex. it's almost like he thinks it's some sort of natural drive we have or something. strange!

[aristeides]

Natural drives need not be indulged. There have been many celibate homosexuals in history. You seem to want to cheapen their accomplishment in controlling their impulses.

[jayef]

Having affinity for your "own group" is certainly your right. We all have the right to freely associate with whomever we please. Unfortunately, that is not what is at issue here. What is at issue is institutionalized bigotry. The issue is what compelling interest of the state is served by regulating the sexual behavior of a particular group. It's equal protection under the law. Just as Texas does not have the right to violate the rights of blackes, neither does it have the right to violate the rights of homosexuals.

[jethropalerobber]

Natural drives need not be indulged. There have been many celibate homosexuals in history. You seem to want to cheapen their accomplishment in controlling their impulses.

satisfying our physical drives is not 'indulgence'. do you feel guilty every time your give in to the urge to drink a glass of water?

celibacy is about as much of an 'accomplishment' as getting off 7 times in one night is.