Is Lawrence Worse Than Roe?

CRISIS Magazine - e-Letter ^ | 6/27/03 | Deal Hudson

[cherrycapital]

Except there is not a rational basis to be found in the sodomy laws. There is only the gratification of ignorance.

[WOSG]

"There is only the gratification of ignorance." Same could be said for minimum wage laws, any law attempting to set wage and price controls, all laws passed on the basis of the bogus second-hand smoke theory (now disproven), forbidding land-owners from using their own land as they wish due to 'wetlands' or EPA restrictions, somehow I doubt SCOTUS would go *near* 97% of these issues. ah, so much for 'equal rights' under the law.

[WOSG]

The word "public safety" is not found in those amendments nor in the constitution. nor is the word 'privacy' nor is the word 'private behavior'. Indeed NOTHING in 9th amendment raises up 'private behavior' to any higher plane than other behavios or actions of citizens that might be subject to state action.

Since when is "public safety" more of a 'rational basis' than the 'public morals'?

hmmm, I think I know the answer.

[lentulusgracchus]

The Founders, ....would be wondering why we were worried about what the morality of 3% of the population when we ourselves were so massively immoral.

No, sorry, won't let you have that one -- that's another fallacy of distraction (boy, you're full of them, ain't you?) and totally irrelevant to the question at hand.

Rather, they'd be wondering why, in a compromised country, we weren't trying harder to defend even this.

That "they all do it, and so's your old man, and I know you are but what am I" stuff is just so much sand in the eyes, and you know it. Now stop it. If you have something to add, please do.

[lentulusgracchus]

Get your facts straight.

Get your own facts straight:

"And the Lord said, Because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grievous; I will go down now, and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which is come unto me; and if not, I will know."

-- Genesis 18:20-21.

That is what God Himself said. And their sin was the one that bears their name.

[lentulusgracchus]

Except there is not a rational basis to be found in the sodomy laws.

Sure there is. AIDS.

[lentulusgracchus]

There is also the Epistle of Jude:

Even as Sodom and Gomorrha, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire. Likewise also these filthy dreamers defile the flesh, despise dominion, and speak evil of dignities.

-- Jude 7-8.

I think that pretty well covers it.

[lentulusgracchus]

Please be advised that we do NOT live in a democracy.

But we do. It's a modified democracy, or more specifically, it's a constitutionally constrained democracy with a republican form of representative government.

Great Britain has a representative government, but it isn't republican. It is not a democracy, either, but a constitutional monarchy, despite the fact that Members of Parliament are elected democratically.

Athens was a participatory democracy with an executive and a judiciary. Sparta was a constitutional dual monarchy.

[Luis Gonzalez]

So, you don't think the Founders wou;d find it disgusting that we granted the right to sodomy to the mnajority of the population in Texas willingly, but instead would be questioning why we did not stop this?

The Nile is a river in Africa.

[StAthanasiustheGreat]

Actually, they did just that in the Michigan Case. They said that the 14th Amendment has to take a timeout for the sake of diversity. Two really bad rulings in less than a week.

[MalcolmS]

So list some rights that you think are included under the 9th Amendment's protection.

No! The point I was making was that the article said that privacy was a right in the constitution. It's not. I looked, it's not there.

The right to privacy has been read into the constitution by legal precedent.

You can argue that privacy is a natural or God-given right which would fall under the 9th. You might be right. Nevertheless, it's an argument from silence. It's not actually there. I could claim that there is a constitutional right to food, housing and life-saving medical care with greater authority because there is that mention of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness". Without food, housing and medicine, I might lose my life.

The opposing side would argue that under the 10th ammendment, the "powers reserved to the states" include the power to legislate morality.

If the Constitution was meant to be a living document, why is there an ammendment procedure?

As a final statement, it does seem to me that the first charge a prosecution was questionable as the police entered the residence in violation of the 4th ammendment.

Amendment IV

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Once it was determined that the neighbor's call was bogus and malicious and there was no "gunman going crazy", it seems that the entry of the police did, in hindsight, violate the 4th.

[Van Jenerette]

These quotations are in my classroom for my students to be reminded each semester. None of the students had been taught the importance of religion to the founders and our nation. I will do my best to change a small part of that...

thanks!

Van - www.jenerette.com

[Natural Law]

Please put away the dictionary. No body cares what the ancient Greeks did. We live in a republic in which individual, not collective rights are supreme. There is no such thing as a federal plebescite. The constitution clearly establishes that:

1) God, not the government is the origin of our rights. The government is merely here to preserve and protect those rights (natural law - get it?)

2) The constitution places limits on government, not the people )"congress shall pass no laws")

[Natural Law]

Public Safety is not a Federal issue, but is reserved to the states. I am not aware of any federal no-smoking statutes, although there are many examples of abuses of the interstate commerce provisions.

[WOSG]

"Public Safety is not a Federal issue, but is reserved to the states."

This is a reasonable opinion, but I dont see any statement like this in the Constitution.

Putting "public safety" in a different category from "public morals" is a matter of philosophy of governance.

If you live in (believe in) a moralistic and religious society that believes Hell awaits the violators of the public moral rules, you will be quite concerned about persons falling
by the wayside and will want government to "light the path".
If you live in (support) a secular irreverent and materialist society, you wont believe 'public morals' is worth a bucket of warm spit, and so will only want to
regulate peoples safety.

It begs a question to me why for example Government should be more concerned with regulating to protect bodies than to protect souls. I conclude its a consequence of simply not believing in the latter.

anyway, interesting discussion to have with someone with a handle like yours!

[Natural Law]

If you want to argue this in theological rather than legal terms I can accommodate that too. Original sin is the knowledge of right and wrong. God created free will in man so that obedience was voulntary not coerced. We are not here to judge, but to be judged. We will be forgiven to the extent that we forgive.

The 10 Commandments and the Beatitudes do not compel us to intervene in the actions of others, but rather to manage our own spiritual affairs and, above all else, to forgive. If God wanted coerced worship he could surely accomplish that better than any of mankinds laws and prohibitions.

[WOSG]

"If you want to argue this in theological rather than legal terms I can accommodate that too."

last thing I want to do, as is it something the political majorities and elites explicitly reject. AND I DO TOO.

It was more an observation. Think it through - we *used* to care about public morals because we cared about "soulcraft".
We regulate even to the point of making people wear their own seatbelts. WHY???!?!? Why is the slight improvement of life expectency more important than the ETERNAL STATE OF ONE'S SOUL? If you say "nonsense", you are making my point: Modern secular society doesnt believe in guilt, hell and damnation and so there is nothing to be saved from.

Public safety of our age is the 'public morals' of a more reverent age. Just a matter of whether the spiritual or physical safety is the bigger issue.

What I find a bit shocking is the USSC enshrining secular modernity as a constitutional principle in a document written before 1800.

[I got the rope]

Our constitutional republic ensures that individual rights are superior to majority social morays.

Hmmm. You have painted yourself into a corner. Individual rights are from God. If you believe this then how can you believe that homosexuality is O.K.? You can't. Unless you just made up your own diety.

[Natural Law]

The Constitution indirectly acknowledges and affirms the existance of God, but does not endorse or prohibit any single religion or creed. In short we are not a theocracy. The founders took a rather novel approach. Rather than enumerate what the citizenry could do they enumerated what government could not do. Under their system we have individual freedom and limited government, under your system we would have inquisitions and mullahs.