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."
E-mail a news tip to Robert B. Bluey.
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Not if the child can pass an IQ test with 70-75 or above.
Experience, maturity, social roles of authority figures as well as IQ play a role in the ability to consent to sex. A 75 IQ alone does not automatically give an 8 year old the ability to effectively consent. There are of course exceptions, but generally, 8 year olds would be raped and have their constitutionally protected liberties violated by sex.
Not really, I can demonstrate that an emaciated Downs syndrome adult has less experience, maturity, social roles than some 8 year olds in the world and some supposed “grown-ups” I know as well.
A 75 IQ alone does not automatically give an 8 year old the ability to effectively consent.
If it works for an adult, why should it bedifferent than for a child?
You understand I’m not advocating this other than demonstrating that substantive due process clause is a lame excuse for anti-sodomy laws because you can apply the same to bestiality, incest and child sex laws as well. An 8 year old is an extreme example but the closer that age come to the AOC law the more realistic the slippery slope becomes.
I guess it's time to strike the laws that outlaw duelting, too, then.
Idiot.
Yet another leftist wishful thinking lie! Survey's say the opposite, and I am sure she knows it! I still can't understand how the leftist's can celebrate a decision from such an extreme hate filled Supreme Court! They hated the Justices just a short time ago.
I think we're misconnecting. I said Experience, maturity, social roles of authority figures as well as IQ play a role in the ability to consent, and you disagreed by saying that an adult with a low IQ (and likely challenged in many of the other ways) has less an ability than some 8 year olds. I don't see the disagreement.
"If it works for an adult, why should it be different than for a child? "
It shouldn't, other than age being easier to measure. I guess if a state chose to write a statute saying that severely mentally disabled people can consent to sex, the supremes could override as well, but I doubt that it would light up their radar in the same way due to the ubiquity of 8 year olds and our instinct to protect them.
Well, maybe the religion of socialism does eh? And it isn't just democrats is it?
Atheism is the perfect example of hypocrisy. The atheist sits at the top of a great mountain, from which he can view the entire universe and all that is beyond it, the past, present and future, and, seeing all, declares, "There is no God!". In other words, he is saying that HE is God, because Who else can know everything? At least someone who says "I don't know if God exists or not" is honest.
Someone who says "no one can know" is an an atheist with a small mask. Just because one person doesn't know doesn't mean no one knows. Very arrogant. "If I don't know, (and I'm the smartest person ever to exist) no one can know."
Ah, Trace - showed up from DU again! Nice to see you promoting deviancy as usual.
Actually, those who exhibit an unhealthy obsession with people who know homosexuality to be unnatural and unhealthy need psychological treatment. They (you) should also ask themselves why they are so upset just because someone disagrees with them. Would you prefer Thought Police? Maybe those of us who don't agree with homosexuals and their followers should be incarcerated - I mean treated - in mental hospitals, just like they did with dissenters in the Soviet Union?
>1)Observation and no. 2) No
Bogus, my friend! Your observation is actually your own person anti-religion bias showing. Second, if you say being religious doesn't disqualify, why do you bring up a bogus percentage of people being "fundamentalist" Christians in the first place?
You seem to be under the impression that a decline in morality has no detrimental affect on society as a whole.
Perhaps you would like to explain yourself. Im sure all of us here would like to hear you explain how a decline in morality better serves a civilized society.
No! Definately not, i've never supported ANY kind of 'affirmative' action... the idea discriminates and is wrong...if we are headed in that direction then God help us.
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