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Posted on 06/29/2003 12:32:00 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Republican leader of the U.S. Senate said on Sunday he supported a constitutional amendment that would ban gay marriage.
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Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist expressed concern about the Supreme Court's decision last week to strike down a Texas sodomy law. He said he supported an amendment that would reserve marriage for relationships between men and women.
"I very much feel that marriage is a sacrament, and that sacrament should extend and can extend to that legal entity of a union between, what is traditionally in our Western values has been defined, as between a man and a woman," said Frist, of Tennessee. "So I would support the amendment."
The comment, during an interview on ABC's "This Week" program, comes days after the U.S. high court struck down sodomy laws that made it a crime for gays to have consensual sex in their own bedrooms on the grounds the laws violated constitutional privacy rights.
The court's decision was applauded by gay rights advocates as a historic ruling that overturned sodomy laws in 13 states.
Conservatives have expressed their fears that the June 26 ruling could lead to the legalization of gay marriages.
The marriage amendment, reintroduced in the House of Representatives last month, says marriage in the United States "shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman."
Amending the constitution requires the approval of two thirds of each of the houses of the U.S. Congress and approval of 38 state legislatures.
Frist said he feared that the ruling on the Texas sodomy law could lead to a situation "where criminal activity within the home would in some way be condoned."
"And I'm thinking of, whether it's prostitution or illegal commercial drug activity in the home, and to have the courts come in, in this zone of privacy, and begin to define it gives me some concern," Frist said.
Frist said the questions of whether to criminalize sodomy should be made by state legislatures.
"That's where those decisions, with the local norms, the local mores, are being able to have their input in reflected," Frist said.
The European Court of Human Rights has followed not Bowers but its own decision in Dudgeon v. United Kingdom. See P. G. & J. H. v. United Kingdom, App. No. 00044787/98, ¶ ;56 (Eur. Ct. H. R., Sept. 25, 2001); Modinos v. Cyprus, 259 Eur. Ct. H. R. (1993); Norris v. Ireland, 142 Eur. Ct. H. R. (1988).
Exactly. That's why issues as important as this should be decided by those accountable to the people, not by judges with a lifetime appointment.
I do believe you're right in the face of it, but I can't recall the Congress having exercised the right. Besides, the Court seems to have assumed plenary power during Madison vs. Marbury. It seems Congress and the Executive prefer to acquiesce and drop the monkey on the Court rather than duke it out.
Maybe it's time to start turning this state of affairs around. After all, if the Court can find imaginary powers of privacy for abortion in penumbras to the Constitution, surely the actual text of that document ought to suffice for Congress to bring these ursurpers to heel - despite 200 years of legal precedent?
Man, I wish we had Bork there instead of this clown.
I think that is pretty much derived by the fact that the Court is the judicial branch of government, and, ironically enough, has judicial powers. There is no doubt the Constitution establishes that.
I read you link, and could not find the cite, and then did a search for the word "Europe" and "European" and came up empty. Perhaps your younger and sharper eyes and mind can find it. In any event, it is all bs. Kennedy was chatting about changing Western mores, and mentioned Europe. Big deal. What is a big deal, was his go with the flow via soaring rhetoric result, creating a judicial precept that is highly subject to a whole new round of judicial legislation, particularly in the hands of a court with another liberal on it.
The Europe cite brouhaha is just one of those red meat thingies, to stir up the crowd.
He cites relevant cases and states: " Other nations, too, have taken action consistent with an affirmation of the protected right of homosexual adults to engage in intimate, consensual conduct. See Brief for Mary Robinson et al. as Amici Curiae 11-12. The right the petitioners seek in this case has been accepted as an integral part of human freedom in many other countries. There has been no showing that in this country the governmental interest in circumscribing personal choice is somehow more legitimate or urgent."
Here are the words for all to see and I'll allow others to judge who's dissembling.
CHIEF JUSTICE BURGER, concurring.
I join the Court's opinion, but I write separately to underscore my view that in constitutional terms there is no such thing as a fundamental right to commit homosexual sodomy.
As the Court notes, ante, at 192, the proscriptions against sodomy have very "ancient roots." Decisions of individuals relating to homosexual conduct have been subject to state intervention throughout the history of Western civilization. Condemnation of those practices is firmly rooted in Judeao-Christian moral and ethical standards. Homosexual sodomy was a capital crime under Roman law. See Code Theod. 9.7.6; Code Just. 9.9.31. See also D. Bailey, Homosexuality [478 U.S. 186, 197] and the Western Christian Tradition 70-81 (1975). During the English Reformation when powers of the ecclesiastical courts were transferred to the King's Courts, the first English statute criminalizing sodomy was passed. 25 Hen. VIII, ch. 6. Blackstone described "the infamous crime against nature" as an offense of "deeper malignity" than rape, a heinous act "the very mention of which is a disgrace to human nature," and "a crime not fit to be named." 4 W. Blackstone, Commentaries *215. The common law of England, including its prohibition of sodomy, became the received law of Georgia and the other Colonies. In 1816 the Georgia Legislature passed the statute at issue here, and that statute has been continuously in force in one form or another since that time. To hold that the act of homosexual sodomy is somehow protected as a fundamental right would be to cast aside millennia of moral teaching.
This is essentially not a question of personal "preferences" but rather of the legislative authority of the State. I find nothing in the Constitution depriving a State of the power to enact the statute challenged here.
Well, to that I plead guilty.
From a legal standpoint, no he was not. BTW, if pretending he was, then Scalia oddly overlooked a prime avenue of attacking the Opinion of the Court. As I've already stated thrice, Kennedy was responding directly to the arguments advanced in Bowers. So, if you wish to find the correct target for your ire, perhaps you should review the Bowers ruling yet again and focus there..
Kennedy actually cited recent cases in Europe and went on to embrace and endorse their arguments.
As for Scalia, I'm not in charge of him and I doubt he'd be willing to take legal advice from a blue collar guy. But I'd give it a shot if you could arrange a meeting.
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