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 were not giving up hope and were 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 Burgers 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
Unfortunatly, you are correct. I have had several interchanges with libertartians advising them not to advocate an activist SCOTUS as a source of personal liberty, because in my observation activist courts take away far more rights than they confer. But I've had no luck persuading them. If the SCOTUS again deviates from the plain language of the Constitution in taking away 2nd Amendment rights, I'm gonna have precious little sympathy for the wails of the libertarians.
If one may legally purchase a sheep to cut its throat and eat it, by what reasoning now can it be illegal to have sex with it?
Can't a "life partner" put it in his or her will that he wants his necrophile life partner to have sex with his corpse post mortem? Why not?
The man can decide to be burned to ashes after death, or donated to a medical school, why can't he permit his necrophile partner to have sex with his body? Please explain your reasoning.
"But it's totally different!!!" does not constitute reasoning.
You better bring some really big steaks for the dogs and a bullet proof vest.
But she wouldn't be bathing with the window open anyway. What if old Mr. Gramson from next door walked by?
"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
My point being that while privacy is not a constitutional right, the Ninth Amendment makes it clear that all our rights are not listed in the Constitution.
I believe that I have a right to privacy, and if I believe that's my right, by extension, privacy is a right of yours as well.
The first requirement is not a problem, I am a food broker.
The second...
I don't understand. I thought Texas did make sodomy illegal for all citizens. It's just they hardly ever are given evidence of sodomy. This was a freak occurence.
Obviously it should under the plain meaning of our Constitution. But even further, it doesn't belong with the judiciary at any level. Federal or state. This is a legislative function.
But look at what's happening. People left and right now practically beg the courts to legislate when they don't get their own way in the legislature. It's an ugly and ominous sign when the people in a Republic toss out the rule book and support the power grab.
You have a right against unreasonable search and seizure. You don't have the right to do anything you want just because it's done in private.
The Federal government has absolutely no business telling the state what they can or cannot do, unless the state has infringed on one of the Rights that the Federal Government has been charged with insuring.
Privacy is not a protected right under the Federal Constitution. And therefore a state can make a law that decrees what you can or cannot do. The Federal Government has no business overturning state law, because the Federal Government was never explicitly given the authority to do that in the case of privacy.
Neither is owning a house.
What would you say if your State decided that red-haired people could no longer own houses?
So. The court's logic would still have overturned it if they had made anal and oral sex illegal for both homosexuals and heterosexuals.
Besides Texas should be allowed to discriminate against homosexual behavior, if they so choose. They are not a protected class by any federal statute.
Discriminating on red hair would effectively be racial discrimination.
What I don't understand is that the Supremes said there was no compelling state interest. If the plagues of AIDS, Hepatitis, and MSRV don't constitute a compelling state interest, I don't know what does.
Oh don't worry, as soon as judicial fiat stops going the liberal way, then Gephardt (and one can assume he speaks for other leftists as well) or any other leftist who assumes the presidency will simply rule by executive order.
Therefore taxes -- forget them! The state has no interest that people haven't complained about loudly wrt/ taxes!
The STATE is only allowed to give you free drugs, free money, free education. How they pay for it? Who knows?
Probably by creating a slave class, (using a different label than slave, of course -- slavery is illegal, so call it something else) that today's ruling doesn't apply to.
Probably white men and women over 35.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.