Posted on 06/27/2003 2:19:02 AM PDT by kattracks
(CNSNews.com) - Hours after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Texas sodomy statute, homosexual activists proclaimed their next target would be to overturn a host of laws they view as discriminatory, including those that limit marriage to opposite-sex couples.
Even before the court's 6-3 ruling extended privacy rights to homosexuals, conservatives and pro-family advocates warned that such a decision would lead to an erosion of traditional values. Now, they said, it is even more important to fight back.
"This is a major wake-up call," said the Rev. Louis P. Sheldon, chairman of the Traditional Values Coalition. "This is a 9/11, major wake-up call that the enemy is at our doorsteps."
Sheldon predicted that laws prohibiting same-sex marriage would be one of the first targets, followed by efforts to spread the homosexual message to public schools and force the business community to hire a sexually diverse workforce.
"This decision will open a floodgate," Sheldon said. "This will redirect the stream of what is morally right and what is morally wrong into a deviant kind of behavior. There is no way that homosexuality can be seen other than a social disorder."
For the legal team that convinced the Supreme Court to reverse its 17-year-old decision in Bowers v. Hardwick, Thursday's ruling was a long-awaited and much-welcomed relief. Homosexuals and their supporters celebrated the ruling in 35 cities Thursday night.
Among the 13 states with sodomy statutes before Thursday, only four singled out homosexuals, including the now-defunct Texas law. The two men arrested for having sex, John G. Lawrence and Tyron Garner, were caught in the act after a neighbor filed a false report that an armed man was "going crazy" inside Lawrence's apartment. The 1998 incident worked its way to the Supreme Court.
Now that the court has ruled that these sodomy laws are unconstitutional, homosexuals are prepared to eliminate other forms of discrimination, said Ruth Harlow, lead attorney for Lawrence and Garner and legal director at the homosexual advocacy group, Lambda Legal.
Harlow said discrimination in marriage laws and by the U.S. military would be two of their targets.
"By knocking out both sodomy laws and the justification of morality, this decision makes it much harder to defend those discriminatory schemes," she said. "The actual answer for those issues will be saved for another day."
Even though the decision was based on the right to privacy and not equal protection under the law, Harlow still called it a resounding victory. She said it "very strongly recognizes gay people's equal humanity" and guarantees homosexuals the equal rights under the Constitution.
While disappointed by the decision, Tom Minnery, vice president of public policy for Focus on the Family, said the fact that the court relied on privacy might be the "silver lining" for conservatives.
"The court based all of its decision on the right of privacy," he said. "It did not find a fundamental right for homosexuals to commit homosexual acts. We feared they would find that, and they did not. It's the same flimsy principle they used to decide abortion is constitutional."
Still, there are threats to traditional family values as a result of the ruling, said Robert Knight, director of Concerned Women for America's Culture & Family Institute.
"Expanding the right of privacy indefinitely will lead to a challenge of marriage," he said. "It will jeopardize all the other sex-based laws, everything pertaining to incest, bigamy and prostitution. There really is no logical stopping point.
"They have given away the premise that a community can govern itself and set up a moral foundation for how people live," he added. "It's really a sweeping and radical decision."
Some conservatives said it was especially disappointing that Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, one of President Ronald Reagan's appointees, wrote the decision. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, another Reagan appointee, filed a separate concurring opinion.
"This case today, I think, provides a prime example of the court rewriting the law based on their own understanding of the prevailing winds of cultural fashion rather than actual precedent in the Constitution or the law," said Peter Sprigg, director of the Family Research Council's Center for Marriage and Family Studies.
Conservatives pointed to Justice Antonin Scalia's dissent as one of the lone highlights. In it, Scalia warned that the court's reasoning "leaves on pretty shaky grounds state laws limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples."
Harlow said Scalia was out of touch with most Americans. She also said people with strong Christian views are outnumbered by a majority of Americans who opposed these sodomy laws.
"They are more and more being pushed to the sidelines," she said. "We don't have any problems with individuals making their own choices and having their own religious views. But in our country, a minority of individuals cannot dictate those views for the whole country."
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This was posted by Polycarp on another thread:
As an attorney for the ACLU Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg co-authored a report recommending that the age of consent for sexual acts be lowered to 12 years of age ("Sex Bias in the U.S. Code," Report for the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, April 1977, p. 102).
The paragraph reads as follows: "Eliminate the phrase "carnal knowledge of any female, not his wife, who has not attained the age of 16 years" and substitute a federal, sex-neutral definition of the offense.... A person is guilty of an offense if he engages in a sexual act with another person.... [and] the other person is, in fact, less than 12 years old..)"
You really should read back a post or two before challenging a statement made in the middle of a thread. I didn't bring that up; af_vet_1981 did in post 117
I can't be sure from what I see on Google, but FWIW, it appears that this was her and the ACLU's opinion on legislative policy, not a judiciary proclamation.
As far as I'm able to tell myself, you are correct. This isn't a direct statement of willingness to overturn age of consent laws; however, precisely our concern here is that these judges have been willing to ignore the plain meaning of the law in order to bring about their desires, which the democratic process won't yield them. In other words, the legislative recommendations of Ginsburg could very easily translate into a judicial decision--that is precisely what judicial activism would allow.
I don't see why one needs to go to common law to find Constitutional protection for children from rape. Since it can be demonstrated that they are generally unable to effectively deny consent, sex with them is generally rape (assuming rape is accurately defined as sex without acquiring consent). Rape seems to be a pretty blatant violation of basic liberty, generally implied and protected by the Bill of Rights, irrespective of Common Law.
Getting the high court involved in something like this is of course a mess, and I would only favor it if there were a gross violation like the one af_vet_1981 brought up.
Thanks for the great chuckle in an otherwise discouraging news week.
The first time you claimed that I was engaging is "sophistry" it was due to your ignorance of the conversation you entered. This time it's due to you're failure to stay focused on it.
An 8 year old, which was the subject of discussion when you chose to enter this debate, is by all objective or rational measures unable to effectively deny sexual consent (regardless of what common law says). That's the only claim I've agreed to refute.
Actually, "the challenge to" that claim is the only one I've agreed to refute.
Exactly! IQ measures the ability to give legal consent for an emaciated individual in every state of the union I believe. A score of 70-75, depending on the state, is the standard for power of attorney (taking over your elderly mother’s affairs when she age 90 for example), emancipated mentally handicapped and in Texas as a condition for the death penalty. It is a fact that many young children can achieve this score on an adult IQ test and therefor should qualify as having the ability to consent to sex. It’s only through local legislature and arbitrary law that children can’t consent and it’s there that the slippery slope begins. The Dutch know this is true, as their AOC law is age 12.
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