Posted on 06/26/2003 8:28:58 AM PDT by Polycarp
U.S. Supreme Court rewrites
Constitution and 3,000 years of history
WASHINGTON – The U.S. Supreme Court today rewrote the U.S. Constitution and 3,000 years of legal history by striking down the Texas sodomy law in a 6-3 decision.
The court overrode the Constitution, the history of American law, and its own precedent by declaring in Lawrence v. Texas that there is a right to privacy to protect private, adult consensual sexual activity. Justice Kennedy wrote for the majority, and only Justices Scalia and Thomas and Chief Justice Rhenquist dissented. The majority reasoned, unbelievably, that because of the trend in state legislatures to repeal sodomy laws, these laws have become unconstitutional.
The Alliance Defense Fund, a national legal organization based in Scottsdale, Arizona, said the framers of the Constitution could never have imagined an interpretation finding in the Constitution a right to engage in the act of sodomy.
“We are disappointed but we’re not giving up hope and we’re not going away,” said Jordan Lorence, a senior litigator with the Alliance Defense Fund. “This ruling provides us with new opportunities. We have already prevailed in other key cases, and we must persevere.” The Alliance Defense Fund supported the prevailing parties in Hurley v. Irish-American Group of Boston and Boy Scouts of America v. Dale.
In its 1986 Bowers v. Hardwick decision, the court upheld laws against sodomy. Then Chief Justice Warren Burger wrote in his concurring opinion “… in constitutional terms there is no such thing as a fundamental right to commit homosexual sodomy.” Burger continued: “Decisions of individuals relating to homosexual conduct have been subject to state intervention throughout the history of Western civilization. Condemnation of those practices is firmly rooted in Judeo-Christian moral and ethical standards…[Sir William] Blackstone described ‘the infamous crime against nature’ as an offense of ‘deeper malignity’ than rape, a heinous act ‘the very mention of which is a disgrace to human nature’ and ‘a crime not fit to be named.’ To hold that the act of homosexual sodomy is somehow protected as a fundamental right would be to cast aside millennia of moral teaching.”
“It would have been a better day if the court had taken Burger’s words to heart, and followed its own holding in Bowers, and 3,000 years of history and precedent,” Lorence said.
The Alliance Defense Fund serves people of faith; it provides strategy, training, and funding in the legal battle for religious liberty, sanctity of life, and traditional family values.
Richard K. Jefferson Senior Director National Media Relations Alliance Defense Fund rjefferson@alliancedefensefund.org (480) 444-0020 15333 North Pima Road, Suite 165 Scottsdale, AZ 85260
but do you know why?
Lock up your gerbals...
You mean typical? A high IQ, celibacy, and drop dead gorgeous looks aren't typical either.
Right, I am a Real Republican, not part of the crypto Fascist "Religious Right" that have slithered into the party in the last 40 years.
Actually, leaving the law intact and choosing not to enforce it was an option.
That is a hideous idea. Unenforced laws are just traps waiting for a malignant prosecutor or cop who has a personal dislike for someone to attack. The Sodomy Law would not affect me, but there have been other unenforced laws.
So9
Puckle's gun (the "Defence") was patented on May 15, 1718 at the London patent office. There is a mention of it in Ian Hogg's "Machine Guns" (should be available through Amazon). I would also be amazed if a google search didn't turn something up about it (if not, send a private message and I can e-mail you a photograph of it along with a short history).
The design presented to Congress was unrelated, and used an approach similar to the modern australian metalstorm gun (multiple charges and bullets loaded in the same barrel; reloading took a bit of time but the rate of fire was comparable to a modern machine gun, and the designer had plans for a "speedloader" using pre-loaded cartridge / magazine tubes). Congress did not see the utility of a repeating firearm, and chose not to fund its development (and thus the design faded into obscurity). It is generally ignored by the firearms history books, but if you know anyone with a subscription to American Rifleman who keeps them, go through their back issues (last page, "second shots" column sometime in the mid-1990s) and you should be able to find a small (paragraph or two) article on it; that is the only place I have seen it mentioned in print (maybe you can get some Freeper on the bang list who keeps back issues to volunteer for the research task).
Today, the Supreme Court held that the Constitution protects the liberty of homosexual persons to engage in "intimate conduct" in accordance with their personal preferences. Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy effectively demolished the Court's precedent from Bowers v. Hardwick, expressly overruling it and its holding that states could regulate the conduct of homosexual persons.
What does this mean for the current law banning gays in the military?
That ban exists as a matter of federal law -- 10 U.S.C. 654 -- and presumably can be overruled by a decision of the Supreme Court. I think that one of the first effects of Lawrence will be to trigger a challenge in U.S. District Court to the current policy banning gays in the military. That challenge will essentially cite Lawrence for the proposition that homosexual conduct is a fundamental right that the state cannot burden without some compelling interest -- and that the restrictions must be narrowly tailored to that compelling interest. The plaintiffs will argue that this policy (the "Don't ask, don't tell" policy) burdens the right of gay soldiers to engage in the conduct they want to, and that such a burden on a fundamental right is unconstitutional. Given the Court's holding today in Lawrence, I think that a lower court would almost certainly side with the plaintiffs.
The only possible savior for the military's ban will be the "national security" deference sometimes given to the Executive Branch and the military by the courts. In recent cases, such as challenges to President Bush's war on Iraq, the courts have expressly deferred to executive judgment on military matters, and left such issues to be decided by the political branches. Such "national security" deference was also invoked by the Supreme Court in Korematsu v. United States, where the Court upheld the detention of Japanese-Americans during World War II.
However, I don't think such deference will save the ban on gays in the ranks. The Court has held in religious freedom cases that the military can curtail certain personal freedoms, such as the right of Jews to wear certain religious garb. However, this is different. This ban places much more of a burden on the rights of gays than the military's uniform policies do, and this ban has a much more drastic effect (automatic discharge). After reading the Court's opinion in Lawrence, I think it's likely that this ban will be struck down as unconstitutional.
posted by Phillip at 8:21 AM
http://philcarter.blogspot.com/2003_06_22_philcarter_archive.html#105664089655662077
Well it's a good question. All powers not given to the Federal government are supposed to be held by the people. But the people can excorcise that power at the state level, because the Federal has taken over.
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