Posted on 06/29/2003 1:54:39 AM PDT by kattracks
When gays rose up against police during the Stonewall Riots in 1969, they were living in a country that considered them criminals. But when their descendants in the struggle for equal rights march down Fifth Ave. in today's Gay Pride Parade, they will do so in a nation whose Supreme Court has forcefully ruled that they are "entitled to respect for their private lives."In the matter of Lawrence vs. Texas, the justices ruled 6 to 3 Thursday that the sodomy law in Texas, which criminalized consensual sexual activity between homosexuals, was unconstitutional. But the court didn't leave it at that. In a breathtaking majority opinion by Justice Anthony Kennedy, the court overturned its 1986 decision in Bowers vs. Hardwick, which had upheld a similar statute in Georgia, saying that ruling "demeans the lives of homosexual persons."
The ruling was stunning for another reason: For the first time in history, the rights of gays to live their lives with dignity, free from state persecution and prosecution, was vigorously defended by the nation's highest court - a conservative one, at that.
Noting that intimate contact is but one expression of a deeper bond between two people, Kennedy wrote, "The state cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime." He added, "Their right to liberty under the Due Process Clause gives them the full right to engage in their conduct without intervention of the government."
Not everyone is thrilled. Most notably Justice Antonin Scalia. The man who aspires to be the next chief justice penned a dissenting opinion laden with intolerance. Scalia blasted the majority for eroding moral codes across the country, for imposing its views on the nation, for having "taken sides in the culture war" and for "largely sign[ing] on to the so-called homosexual agenda."
The retrograde language in Scalia's opinion reflects a time when gays and lesbians were considered abnormal, a queer oddity, if you will. But society - in the state, the country and the world - has changed and continues to change for the better.
This paper has changed too. Stonewall - the advent of the gay rights movement - was heralded by a then very different Daily News with the July 6, 1969, headline "Homo nest raided, queen bees stinging mad." The story dripped with the condescension toward homosexuals that was customary for the time - because it reflected the sentiments of much of the city. And America.
Thirty-four years later, the sentiments have matured. And now, with last week's historic decision, gays and lesbians have won something they always deserved but never expected to get from the Supreme Court: respect.
[snip]
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Originally published on June 29, 2003
Descendants of gays? Frauds and Nazies who deny the true descendance of nation and manufacture it.
Of course. Younger people do not realize the media was ever different than it was today and that societal norms have been turned inside out.My favorite old article:
The Daily News
July 17, 1934
If homosexual sodomy is an act that occurs in the privacy of someone's bedroom, why take to the streets and declare that one participates in the act? Sort of negates that "privacy" I heard so much about.
I think that this is referred to as Gay Pride Month.
That's the ticket, dude.
Today the bedroom - tomorrow the schoolroom!
Wrong. Their acts were (are?) considered criminal. The homosexuals themselves were (are?) considered mentally ill.
Scalia's intolerant? Seems like the Court's actions against Federalism and the state legislatures fit THAT bill.
Gay Rights Ruling Affects Kan. Case
The Supreme Court announced yesterday the first ripple effect of its landmark decision on gay rights, ordering a Kansas court to reconsider its approval of a 17-year sentence meted out to an 18-year-old man for having consensual sex with a 14-year-old boy.
Without comment or published dissent, the court vacated the Kansas Court of Appeals' ruling last year that Matthew Limon's sentence was constitutional even though the same conduct between two persons of different sexes would have received a far lighter penalty under Kansas law.
In fact, as that excerpt makes clear, there was never even a slightest question of vacating the original conviction, because the Kansas ruling under appeal itself only dealt with the constitutionality of the sentence disparity. To reiterate yet again, the conviction has not been vacated no matter how many ways you figure out to suggest otherwise.
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