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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You need to read a bit more. The book of Acts specifically refutes your point of view. The Jewish Apostles knew the Gentiles would corrupt themselves with sexual sins and so proscribed those.
You beat me to it. This may indeed be the beginning of the end of this once great country.
I am the others here are not "afraid" of homsexuals. And we do not call them "gay" because they are not happy, joyful, or carefree. They have stolen a useful word and made it mean disgusting "sex" acts.
My opinion follows. Who cares if they marry?
Most of them don't even want to marry, lesbians consider it a remnant of evil patriarchy and male homosexuals are in general so wildly promosicuous that monogomamy has no meaning. They just want to declare war on the natural order.
Who cares if they have sex?
I don't believe many Freepers want cops searching peoples' private homes to see if people are practicing sodomy or not. What I object to is the normalization of deviancy. Beucase homosexuals' sex appetites are voracious, they have "taken over" so many parks and beaches in their prowling for anonymous "partners". And the AIDS and other diseases they get have to paid for by MY tax money. And now children in schools are being taught the "how-tos".
I've never befriended a gay person and I probably never will. I don't think it has anything to do with subconcious bigotry...
I have two homosexual-identified people in my family. And some rabid homo-supporters. I am very familiar with them. They are angry, lost people. They generally need some kind of medication to get through their lives, to not hear the voice in their hearts telling them they are doing the wrong thing.
I just don't have anything in common with them.
Actually, they so identify with their sexual urges that they make you think that. They keep their sex desires in the forefront of their lives. But inside, they want happiness just as everyone does. They have God in their hearts as everyone does. That is why there are many former homosexuals.
How does it affect you if a gay person gets married?
Even though they are only about 2% of the population, they want to force their against-nature sex acts in everyone's face. If you read much about the SCOTUS decision, they even admit that they now want to oppress the normal majority more and more. It opens the doors to every other unnatural, immoral sex act or "relationship" - are you aware of how many professors and psychologists are pushing adult/child sex as the new frontier? What about brother and sister? Or brother and brother? If there are no moral absolutes (which is what they are saying) where do you draw the line?
Hello, troll - are you here from DU?
Some folks want to draw it at sodomy; most draw it at incest.
As you do, I love liberty and with liberty comes freedom from government intrusion -- an expectation of privacy. We may, however, restrict that expectation of privacy through our republican government and within the constraints of the Constitution.
You must have not read any of the threads about homosexuality of FR. If you had, you would have read more than you care to know about the health problems associated with homosexuality.
It isn't forbidding it that demeans them. It's doing it.
Nice thinking...
UGH. I can only reiterate what Justices Scalia and Thomas both said in their dissents... if you want to argue about minority and majority views, take your fight to the democratic process. The fact that these laws existed means that, up to this point, in these 13 states there did not exist a voting majority that wanted these laws done away with. The greater tragedy here (since these particular laws were almost totally unenforced) is that the Supreme Court is yet again taking the powers of governance from the states, and that more and more both the lawyers fighting for liberal causes and the justices themselves talk about "emerging awarenesses" and the majority views of Americans. The reason that the Supreme Court exists, and why it has lifetime appointments, is precisely because it is not supposed to be subject to the wavering desires of the people, but only to the Constitution. These activists will do anything to see their desires attained, and at this point the only hope for defeating same-sex "marriage" is a Constitutional amendment.
You must have noticed that 90 percent of the anti-gay posters, and 99% of the emotion comes from fundamentalist Christians, not heath care workers. Sure, there's overlap, but just like when socialists suddenly become environmentalists to being down an industry, the motivation's transparent.
Who said anything about torturing animals ? The Bible forbids humans having sex with animals but Sandra O'Connor and her ilk have no use for the Bible in legislative matters. She will not tolerate it. Therefore why would they defraud you of your right to pleasure animals ? Is that worse than killing and eating them ? Why did a Republican appoint her and Kennedy ?!?
There is no limit to the depravity of man but God.
The age of consent used to be 21. Before that it was much lower. Kids were hunting, killing, and marrying in their young teens. The libertine crowd could certainly drop the age of consent again. There is a market for it. They will cry, "Free the teens ! Everybody party !"
What is the difference between homosexuality and incest ? Do don't think the children of homosexuals are going to be warped ? There is a chance for anyone to have a deformed child. With the right to private sexual behavior that Sandra gave out, what business is it of the state ?
The probability of deformity is very high when people are closely related. You know sex without consent is rape. Rape is not "pleasure". You're talking nonsense.
Just how do animals give you consent to kill and eat them ?
What is your source for this ?
Compare and contrast it with other birth defects and the abortion your side of the supreme court endorses.
My Bible has this verse about "the law":
31 "Behold, the days are coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, 32 not like the covenant which I made with their fathers when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant which they broke, though I was their husband, says the LORD. 33 But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it upon their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 34 And no longer shall each man teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, `Know the LORD,' for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the LORD; for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more." Jeremiah 31:31
From this, it appears that "the Law" of the OT may have been replaced by a new one where love conquers death (John 3:16). I was taught that there was only ONE unforgiveable sin, that of blasphemy or rejection of the Holy Spirit. (Sorry, can't remember that verse.)
1. How do you know that 90% of the posters and "99%" of the emotion (is it wrong to feel strongly about someting?) comes from so-called fundamentalist Christians?
2.Is it wrong to be religious? Does this disqualify one from a debate?
3.And how do you know there aren't health care workers among them?
Many observant Jews are also opposed to defining deviancy down.
FYI, I would be considered a Hindu.
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