U.S. Supreme Court rewrites Constitution and 3,000 years of history

Alliance Defense Fund | 6/26/03 | Richard K. Jefferson

[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

[CobaltBlue]

If you don't see the difference between eating an animal and having sex with an animal, please don't invite me to dinner.

[CobaltBlue]

Most people think that sex is fun. Marriage is serious and procreation is serious, but sex doesn't require marriage and doesn't require procreation, at least not for everybody.

Your mileage may differ.

[weegee]

Texas should have just simply made sodomy illegal for all citizens.

Today's action by the court made ALL sodomy legal nationally. It wasn't the "equal protection" aspect by which the court overturned the law. It was "privacy".

Try to keep up.

[aristeides]

You misunderstood me. My point is, today's decision opened a Pandora's box that eventually will involve more than homosexuality.

[weegee]

Sodomy was legalized for heterosexuals in Texas back in 1973. But that is neither here nor there now. In fact, the privacy issue that the court used to overturn the law has invalidated all sodomy laws (hetero, homo, etc.). This is the same reason that many are wondering what other sex acts have been thrown into the legal arena.

[weegee]

This was not the basis on which the law was overturned.

Homosexuals as a type still have not been recognized as a special class by the Supreme Court but sex laws have been ruled unconstitutional. So have drug laws but don't expect them to be dropped any time soon.

[CobaltBlue]

>>There must be a clear violation of an existing constitutional provision.<<

Wrong. This was the argument of the federalists, Madison, John Jay and Hamilton prior to the enactment of the Constitution, but was opposed by the anti-federalists, like George Mason. The enactment of the Bill of Rights was a compromise with the anti-federalists.

If your argument were correct, the Ninth and Tenth Amendments would be meaningless.

Further, how do you define "liberty"? The Supreme Court say says that liberty includes the right to be let alone. Is that wrong?

[CobaltBlue]

You may be correct. However, the Court can only decide what's in front of it. The other items in Pandora's box will have to wait their turn to see if they come into being or not.

[weegee]

The law against heterosexual deviant sexual intercourse was changed over 20 years ago. It was done in the legislature; not in an activist court.

The homosexual agenda could have been fought by going to the legislature. Many people say that this was a goofy law. Few tried to overturn it and prove that it was an unwelcome law.

This is counter to a previous supreme court ruling. No further constitutional ammendments have been passed. What has changed?

[colorado tanker]

Please read the opinion which gives the reasoning of the court.

I will do so when my stomach is feeling especially strong. Like Justice Scalia, I'm no friend of substantive due process, "penumbras," or phantom rights of privacy. I am a friend of the Constitution as written. As written the decision whether to criminalize homosexual conduct is a matter for the state legislative processes, not SCOTUS. All that has changed since Bowers is a trend by most states to decriminalize homosexual conduct, which the Court decided to impose on all states. This is more "living Constitution" bull puckey, nothing less.

[weegee]

People who have red hair have a genetic trait from the races who have red hair. That is racism and your argument is a red hair-ing.

[Luis Gonzalez]

Had that law been written differently, the issue would have not reached the SCOTUS.

[Luis Gonzalez]

Red-haired people are not a constitutionally protected class of citizen.

[aristeides]

Did you read Kennedy's opinion? There's a lame attempt at the end to distinguish things like prostitution and sex with children. But Kennedy barely goes through the motions of providing any reasoned basis for the distinction. Apparently sex with children is different because the sex in the case involved "two adults who, with full and mutual consent from each other, engaged in sexual practices common to a homosexual lifestyle." No explanation of why the fact that they are adults makes a difference. No explanation of why minors are incapable of "full and mutual consent."

That's a very weak basis indeed for not extending the result to sex with children. Why isn't that a lifestyle matter as well? Why doesn't it involve the full expression of self in a very intimate matter? So why doesn't Kennedy's reasoning apply to it as well?

[weegee]

Does an animal that has been sodomized taste any different? Can you be certain that at no point in your life you have eaten an animal that has been sexually molested?

[liberalnot]

stupid.

[weegee]

Most people think that sex is fun.

The guilt/jealousy that people go through in a relationship isn't fun. Ask teenagers how fun they think their emotions are in the days following the sex act.

Of course, anonymous sex in parks and in bathroooms (using glory holes) carries no names, no jealousy. The only guilt is in wallowing in an empty lifestyle.

[Redcloak]

...the framers of the Constitution Bill of Rights could never have imagined an interpretation finding in the Constitution 2nd Amendment a right to engage in the act of sodomy own assault weapons.

The writer's logic about how the founders would have felt about this or that subject has other applications.

[Luis Gonzalez]

"The homosexual agenda could have been fought by going to the legislature."

The law was challenged on the basis on an arrest and fine imposed on two men "caught in the act".

It worked its way through the courts until reaching the Supreme Court.

Texas at any time could have changed the law, it chose not to, instead it chose to defend it.

[Luis Gonzalez]

"If the plagues of AIDS, Hepatitis, and MSRV don't constitute a compelling state interest..."

Then we ban all sex?