[RonF]

First, I wonder why Malcom Lazin would figure that this SC decision settles various questions once and for all, but that the Dale SC decision doesn't settle whether or not homosexuals can be in the BSA once and for all. It's the same set of justices, and the issues the questions raised and were decided on were quite different.

I also have a prediction on homosexual marriages. Should the SC rule sometime in the near future strike down laws banning them, within two years they'll be overruled by a Constitutional Amendment. In their euphoria over this ruling, homosexual rights activists very much mistake the issues involved and the public tenor on this topic.

Favoring the right of people to engage in various sexual practices without having cops break down your doors to break it up is one thing. I'm not surprised at the public feeling on that. But as any married person can tell you, sex doesn't equal marriage. There are numerous sexual relationships that aren't viewed as leading to marriage, and being allowed to legally have sex with a particular person doesn't mean that marriage between those two persons is legal.

Secular marriage gives state sanction to the bonding of two people for various purposes. And although we have separation of church and state, the public perception of marriage has a spiritual component, even if the ceremony itself takes place at the County courthouse. The public can tolerate something that goes on behind closed doors between consenting adults, but asking them to bless it and give it legal and societial sanction is different. As homosexual rights activists will find out when they put it to the test.

[You Dirty Rats]

Many married people would also say that marriage doesn't equal sex.

Fortunately, I'm not one of them :)

[AntiGuv]

First, I wonder why Malcom Lazin would figure that this SC decision settles various questions once and for all, but that the Dale SC decision doesn't settle whether or not homosexuals can be in the BSA once and for all. It's the same set of justices, and the issues the questions raised and were decided on were quite different.

The reason is obvious: because those who would retain sodomy statutes know that the majority is against them, so they have to raise the spectre of gay marriage or gay scouts to drive their rhetoric..

Otherwise, had Lawrence been an Equal Protection ruling, then you would have a conflict with the Dale ruling as well as Don't Ask - Don't Tell. However, since this was a Due Process (right to privacy) ruling, there's no conflict with the latter.

If marriage becomes an issue before the Court, it will be on the basis of Full Faith and Credit, not on Due Process or Equal Protection (at least not anytime soon).

[RAT Patrol]

In reading Kennedy's words, don't you think he has done some changing since Dale? It looks like this Court is quite comfortable with changing their minds. Prepare yourself well (you always do).

[Travis McGee]

Why only two persons? What's so important about two people forming a marriage? If two men or two women can marry, why not three or five? If there is nothing unique about a marriage being the union of one man and one woman, then why the hangup on the number two?

And by what rationale may a state now forbid bestiality, or consensual (in the will) necrophilia or cannibalism? What if a deceased "life partner" consents to having his tattooed skin made into outerwear for his life-partner?

After this ruling, every father is free to spend 18 years seducing his children, and taking them as sex partners on their 18th birthdays, and even marrying them.

Can anyone explain to me why states may NOT outlaw one perversion, but MAY outlaw other "consensual" perversions, such as the ones I have listed?

[Conservative til I die]

Give it 20 years and public sentiment will change. Gay marriage will be a reality. Don't get complacent and think that these obscure SC decisions don't actually mean anything as it regards public opinion or legal precedent. What's being done here is that barrier after barrier is being struck down.

When a gay marriage case comes to the SC, we'll get a Shylock speech ("If you prick us do we not bleed, if you tell a joke, do we not laugh?") accompanied by melodramatic revisionist films in the vein of "And the Band Played On" or "The Laramie Project" or even "Boys Don't Cry" which had the hilarious tagline about "Having the courage to be yourself (while taping your breasts down, stuffing rolled up sweatsocks in your pants and misleading the girl you love by telling her you're a man)."

Again, I think the antiquated sodomy laws are dumb, but the Supreme Court set bad precedent by being activists on this one. A very bad precedent that's going to open up Pandora's Box.

[jimt]

The public can tolerate something that goes on behind closed doors between consenting adults, but asking them to bless it and give it legal and societial sanction is different. As homosexual rights activists will find out when they put it to the test.

Well put. I agree.

[PatrioticAmerican]

If TV would show one man shoving his penis into the rectum of another man, I think the views of this subject would be very different.