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If the single most important and inviolate standard is that consenting adults (or possibly even consenting minors of roughly equal ages, but let us avoid the minor's issues for now) have innate rights of privacy (and intimate association?) that make it unconstitutional to outlaw or even condemn any consensual and freely joined act between them, then we would have to strike down ANY statute that would discourage ANY adult from freely participating in ANY intimate acts with ANY other adult.

We would then have to strike down all statutes against sodomy, homosexuality, incest between adult siblings of same or opposite genders, incest between parents and adult children of any gender, adultery, premarital sex, extramarital sex, bigamy and other group "marital" relationships (whether the abundance is females, males or both), prostitution both male and female, sadomasochism (even leading to death?), and other activities that I will not describe in detail. This standard could NOT just apply to the same-gender "intimate" relationships that this article tries so hard to support. If privacy and adult consent are the highest law then all of these acts and more would have to be legalized.

If we were instead to use reasonable standards to make statutes for the common and individual protection to restrict activities known to lead to disease, death, destruction of communities, families and individuals, and/or higher incidences of birth defects and many other harms, we would continue to outlaw and/or discourage all of these activities and more. In fact there are a number of activities that are now allowed and even encouraged and supported (in this country at least) with tax monies that would also become discouraged or punishable under these standards. Under these standards we would not have tax monies buying books and paying for curriculum and even dedicating school rooms to support these activities which most of us understand to be hazardous and undesireable.

Good points. And what about murder? There was a case a few years ago where a young woman in Maryland met a man on the internet, travelled a distance to his home, where he promptly killed her. He maintained that she wanted to die, and that's why she came to him. Sort of like an internet Dr. Kevorkian service I suppose. He was charged with murder. But if the Supreme Court upholds the rights for gays to participate in whatever depravity they wish, doesn't that mean that people like him could get away with murder, using "consenting adults" as the excuse? All a defense lawyer would have to maintain is that "its a private matter" and that would be it.