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.

[jimt]

I thought that homosexuals did that to themselves every day !

We'd agree on that. Apparently we disagree on criminalizing it.

[dark_lord]

Regarding whether this decision will open the door to the legality of bestiality, bigamy, prostitution, and incest...I suspect that at some point prostitution will be legalized. And at some point further in the future incest between adults will be legalized. I don't think that sex with children, nor bestiality, will be legalized because in neither case can the "consenting adult" argument be made. I suspect that someday polygamy might also be legalized. The reason will be that the second and third and however many more "spouses" will want the same property and legal rights regarding children as the first wife. Hoo boy. What an interesting age we live in. Keep an eye peeled for massive comets that will cause flooding and fire.

[rintense]

Let's be clear. Not only gay couples engage in sodomy... I know of many hetero couples who do as well- and enjoy it.

Personally, the thought of going in through the out door is a major turn off.

[spunkets]

"--I can't find this right to privacy in the Constitution. I can find this:

Take the first complete thought from the first sentence, "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated." What this means is that the people have a right to be secure. To do that they must be able to keep things private, or hidden from the government, and everyone else too. It's not all that hard to grasp.

[bvw]

Justice Scalia (joined by the Chief Justice and Justice Thomas in dissent):

While overruling the outcome of Bowers, the Court leaves strangely untouched its central legal conclusion: Respondent would have us announce ... a fundamental right to engage in homosexual sodomy. This we are quite unwilling to do. Instead the Court simply describes petitioners conduct as an exercise of their liberty (which it undoubtedly is) and proceeds to apply an unheard-of form of rational-basis review that will have far-reaching implications beyond this case.

[aristeides]

I'm reading through the Kennedy opinion now. I'm now at a point where Kennedy is arguing that there wasn't really a long legal history of criminalizing homosexual acts as such. It strikes me as being as bad and tendentious history as Blackmun's pseudohistory in Roe v. Wade. It must be taken right out of the briefs of the lawyers arguing for Lawrence and Garner. Lawyers' history in briefs is notoriously bad.

[jimt]

If folks don't realize what's going on, here's a clue: the entire exercise was part of the homo agenda to force their deviant behavior to be protected and given the same right to marriages, etc., equal to the traditional institution of marriage. The homo agenda is to transform this nation into their deviancy play ground.

While I agree with you on the agenda, this decision does not have to be a stepping stone to homosexual "marriage". Not jailing them for their perversions does not have to equate to state sanctioning of them.

[NewJerseyRepublican]

Really, when you think about it, what's more worrisome -- the idea of two people having sex in the privacy of their own home or the government bursting in to your bedroom in the middle of the night to make sure you're only having sex with your wife and, of course, in the proper missionary position?

[Taxbilly]

"Hey guy what about sex btw a man and women? shouldnt that be illeagle too? Why not?"

I believe that laws against sodomy do apply to "man an women." And as to the outlawing of sex between "man an women" that is a ridiculous question. Would you consider a law that would end all humanity the same as a law against man sticking his penis in your butt?

[showme_the_Glory]

May God have mercy on us!!!!!


Amen to that.

[DonaldC]

I am not a lawyer, but I respectfully disagree. The right not to be searched unreasonably, I do not believe, necessarily amounts to right of privacy, particularly with how it is being used (abortion, gay sex). I don't like the government butting into the home, but on the other hand I believe a nation, state, or community has the right to set limits on its citizenry. The supremes are saying that we no longer can.

[MizSterious]

While in general I prefer to keep the government out of the bedroom, I can't help but wonder which lifestyle will next be validated by the USSC--you know the gay groups are also lobbying in favor of sex with children: will that become just another lifestyle that would be "demeaned" by laws against it?

[bvw]

Justice Thomas:

I join JUSTICE SCALIA's dissenting opinion. I write separately to note that the law before the Court today "is ... uncommonly silly". If I were a member of the Texas Legislature, I would vote to repeal it. Punishing someone for expressing his sexual preference through noncommercial consensual conduct with another adult does not appear to be a worthy way to expend valuable law enforcement resources.

Notwithstanding this, I recognize that as a member of this Court I am not empowered to help petitioners and others similarly situated. My duty, rather, is to decide cases‚ agreeably to the Constitution and laws of the United States. And, just like Justice Stewart, I can find [neither in the Bill of Rights nor any other part of the Constitution a] general right of privacy, or as the Court terms it today, "the liberty of the person both in its spatial and more transcendent dimensions."

[jethropalerobber]

from Kennedy's opionion:

"It must be acknowledged, of course, that the Court in Bowers was making the broader point that for centuries there have been powerful voices to condemn homosexual conduct as immoral. The condemnation has been shaped by religious beliefs, conceptions of right and acceptable behavior, and respect for the traditional family. For many persons these are not trivial concerns but profound and deep convictions accepted as ethical and moral principles to which they aspire and which thus determine the course of their lives. These considerations do not answer the question before us, however. The issue is whether the majority may use the power of the State to enforce these views on the whole society through operation of the criminal law."

[ellery]

There's no such thing as voluntary sex between an adult and a minor, as a minor cannot legally consent...

[aristeides]

Uh oh. Kennedy's Opinion of the Court quotes and reaffirms the mysterious passage in Casey:

These matters, involving the most intimate and personal choices a person may make in a lifetime, choices central to personal dignity and autonomy, are central to the liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life. Beliefs about these matters could not define the attributes of personhood were they formed under the compulsion of the State.

[Ol' Sparky]

Upholding laws that existed from the start of the country should have been a no-brainer. Like the laws or not, they were supported by the Founders and the original 13 states. To claim they are unconstitutional is absurd.

[Ol' Sparky]

What about prostitution? Should we legalize that next? Or how about "intergenerational sex" between consenting individuals?

[ArGee]

I wish "right to privacy" meant the homosexual's had to keep their sex lives PRIVATE FROM THE REST OF US!!!

Exactly.

If this had ever been a privacy issue the SC would never have been involved. If the men in question had simply covered themselves when the police knocked on the door and called out that there was no problem, there would have been no arrest.

The whole case was staged to become a public sex act (before the eyes of the police officers) to generate publicity, then redirected as a privacy argument.

Homosexuals would have no problem in this society if they would just stay in the closet. Presidents used to be able to have all the sex with interns they wanted until X42 tried to make it a front page issue.

Shalom.

[aristeides]

Trouble is, though, that similar arguments can be made about abortion laws. Once Roe v. Wade was decided, there was no intellectually coherent way to uphold sodomy laws.