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
Well, I agree with Clarence Thomas. Unenforced laws are "silly" and should be repealed. They make a mockery of the legal system and there is no "right order" in a silly law.
Would you apply this to a heterosexual couple having anal sex in a public park?
What if 5,000 gay couples announce they had sex. You gonna prosecute 'em all?"
Yep
A DA who spent precious taxpayer money prosecuting 5000 gay couples would be ridden out of town on a rail before he could do it.
Not under Texas law. But in a state where heterosexual anal sex is illegal I would. It's the state's right and the Fed's have no business overturning it.
"A DA who spent precious taxpayer money prosecuting 5000 gay couples would be ridden out of town on a rail before he could do it. "
Or he would be viewed as a hero for enforcing the law.
No he wouldn't, not even in Texas.
The Texas I know he would. Louisiana and Tennessee too.
I live in Fort Worth. Tim Curry, Tarrant County DA, would never prosecute a gay for consensual sex. Under any circumstances.
I have two sons who are cops in Dallas. The department policy is to ignore calls against homosexuals, unless they are in a public place.
Well, that's not an unreasonable policy. What are they going to do? Go get a search warrant and bang the door down 40 minutes later?
Or are they going to knock on the door? and see if they answer it while still performing the act?
At least they are going after the public acts.
Typical, run away from the question when you have no answer.
So then, will you be lobbying for laws making fornication illegal?
How about adultery?
Adultery already has some pretty severe civil penalties when you think about it.
It's not that it's a bad idea. If you could stop adultery and fornication, it would mean and end to sexual diseases, out of wedlock pregnancies, and most abortions.
But I'm afraid just like Moses with divorce, that man's heart is too hard. I think the best we can do here is litigate around it, provide for divorce, provide for adoptions, and protect children and teenagers.
"SCALIA'S MORALITY OF PREJUDICE: Antonin Scalia's dissent in Lawrence vs Texas is, as usual, interesting and not quite as chock-full of animus toward homosexual dignity as in the past. It comes down to two arguments: that an assertion of "morality" is justification enough for any law anywhere, regardless of its rationality; and that a law that covers only same-sex sodomy is not discriminatory toward homosexuals. Both ideas strike me as wrong. On the first count, surely the government does need to provide some kind of reasonable justification for a law expressing "morality," which doesn't just rely on what people have always believed or always assumed. One reason that this law was struck down is because its supporters couldn't come up with an argument that justified persecution of private sexual behavior, apart from the notion that stigmatizing gay sex was somehow good for families. Allowing sodomy for 97 percent of the population, while barring it for 3 percent cannot possibly be defended as a law designed to prevent or deter the immorality of sodomy. It was a law entirely constructed to stigmatize gay people. It had no other conceivable purpose. And when "morality" is simply a rubric under which to persecute a minority, then we don't really have the imposition of morality at all. We have the imposition of a prejudice. At least the Catholic Church makes no distinction between heterosexual sodomy and homosexual sodomy. In fact, I know of no religious or moral tradition which makes the distinction that Texas law made until today. Scalia is not upholding any morality. He's upholding prejudice. As to his notion that the law doesn't single out gays because two straight guys getting it on would be criminalized as well, that's like saying that a law banning Jewish religious services is not anti-Jewish since goyim could not conduct such services either. It's the kind of sophistry you need to deny the obvious, hostile intent of the Texas law." --- Source.
In reading his dissent he said that the "majority concensus" had always been accepted as a basis for legislating sexual behavior. I would argue that it's really that concensus that is the basis of all our laws and notions of rights.
and that a law that covers only same-sex sodomy is not discriminatory toward homosexuals.
Here I would argue 1) So what if it's discriminatory against homosexuals? It is that behavior that the majority finds immoral. Same thing with pedophilia or incest or what have you. Homosexuals have never been a protected class and should not be. And 2) homosexual sodomy is different from heterosexual sodomy. In fact different states have defined "sodomy" differently. The fact is that the majority finds homosexual acts of sodomy more offensive more against nature, more immoral than they find heterosexual sodomy.
It was a law entirely constructed to stigmatize gay people. It had no other conceivable purpose.
I dissagree. The law was designed to stigmatize homosexual behavior. As such the law sought to prevent people turning into homosexuals in the first place. It may well have been designed as well to stigmatize homosexuals and drive them out of the community. It's no different treatment than we would give pedophiles.
"surely the government does need to provide some kind of reasonable justification for a law expressing "morality," which doesn't just rely on what people have always believed or always assumed"
No it doesn't. There is no other basis for any of our perceived rights and notions of fairness other than the majority consensus. Unless you are willing to recognize a work like the Bible as an authority. In ditching the majority consensus, the court imposed a minority viewpoint of morality with less justification than that with which the legislature had enacted.
But not to stigmatize homosexuals...
Never mind.
Good night.
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