Texas Sodomy Law Challenge in Supreme Court

Reuters ^ | Dec 2, 2002 | staff

[oldtimer]

Bush would dearly love to appoint Conservative Judges to the Supreme Court...but watch the rats try to destroy them in hearings.

They will filibuster any tried and true Constitutionalist. Just watch the rats perform!

[Hodar]

I don't have the "right" to engage in the perverse act of sodomy. And gays don't either.

Yes, lots of people have been tortured and died throughout history because of belief systems just like yours. The Crusades, Inquisition, then such noteworthy individuals like Adolf Hitler and now we enjoy Osama Bin Laden. So, what do you propose we do with our soccer fields? Would you prefer to behead or simply shoot people who live differently than you do? Why stop with Gays? Those Jehovah Witnesses reallly torque me off. Then who?

You may live your life as you see fit. If you chose not to do certain things, that is your right. However, your rights do not extend into anyone else's bedroom.

[AntiGuv]

Whoops! I take that partly back. It wasn't Dallas v England that had cert granted; it was Lawrence & Garner v Texas, now that I looked again... Dallas v England was the other one working its way through the courts.

[weegee]

There was a deaf lesbian couple that deliberately conceived deaf children. Should such actions be outlawed?

If you search FR, you might find the thread (from last year or earlier this year).

Not all incestuous couples are going to have children. Are consenting incestous couples over the childbearing age permitted to couple in your worldview?

What other eugenics are verbotten?

[rwfromkansas]

No.

[rwfromkansas]

If you would have bothered to read, you would have realized I am only attacking homosexual sex acts.

[weegee]

If drugs were a constitutionally supported right, where would the government get the ability to tax alcohol and tobacco?

Whiskey tax has been imposed since the founding of this nation.

If the government is permitted to tax our constitutionally supported rights, then that makes Rhode Island's previously mentioned tax on sex acts permissible.

How about a "free speech" tax?

[rwfromkansas]

Wrong.

The police have a mandate to uphold the law. If a cop goes to a house for a domestic disturbance and finds a crack pipe and cocaine, it is his duty to punish that offense, not just the domestic violence.

[jejones]

If the point is that people shouldn't have sex in public (after all, it scares the horses...), then the law should forbid sex in public.

[weegee]

Furthermore, Jefferson proposed a law in Virginia that punished sodomy. Here is a portion of that law: "Sect. XIV. Whosoever shall be guilty of rape, polygamy, or sodomy with a man or woman, shall be punished; if a man, by castration, a woman, by boring through the cartilage of her nose a hole of one half inch in diameter at the least."

And to think there are those who claim that the death penalty falls under cruel and unusual punishment...

[AntiGuv]

Thank you for your reply. Can you please differentiate what the full impact of a reversal on the freedom of association/right to privacy would be versus DOMA? Thank you.

Hmmm. I can't imagine how either a Freedom of Association ruling or a Right to Privacy ruling would have any impact on DOMA statutes. In the first case, the Court would just state that the government cannot criminalize sodomitical association - this doesn't require any further accommodation. Similarly, the second case would simply state that sodomy is not a legitimate sphere for government interference - again, this wouldn't mandate anything more than government indifference. The only peripheral consequence that I could easily imagine is that a ruling on either basis could very well overturn the adultery & fornication statutes as well.

[jejones]

There are public health costs to all forms of sexual activity. Do you want to prohibit all sex?

[weegee]

Alternate law. Unmarried partners may not engage in sodomy. As it stands, there is no legal standing for homosexual marriage in Texas.

[tpaine]

I make no such assumption.

- As you well know, you & I have argued these points, in detail, w/references, for literally hundereds of posts on many different threads.
- Now, you come back to claim I "never can give any actual references". - Dream on.

I reference the constitution when needed, while you dream of states somehow having the power to legislate morality. The case was closed on our 'debate' months ago. -- You have no constitutional leg to stand on, and never have.

[AppyPappy]

Oral sex isn't sex in the eyes of the court. If it was, we would have sodomy laws. Everything could be covered under "sex". But we have this problem that gays want to have sex in public and it needs to be stopped.

[BillSharp]

In Roe v. Wade as I previously stated. The only constitutionally meaningful argument in Roe was the point that under the common law one couldn't be prosecuted for an abortion prior to the "stirring" which occurs roughly at 6 months. This tied the decision to the constitution & shielded the decision from the argument that it was make believe constitutional law.

When the 9th Amendment talks about other rights retained by the people they were talking about rights that were then in existence. When the Constitution was passed not only was there no right to gay sex but it was a common law crime!

This is why there is no constitutional right to suicide - it was a common law crime. This is why in 86 the court said there is no right to gay sex.

Your argument is that the framers, when talking about retained rights, meant rights which could be created out of whole cloth by judges 215 years later. Don't you see the absurdity of your argument?

I'm not supporting the law, just stating it's not a Constitutional issue.

[Dimensio]

Yep. I live in Kentucky and I've spoken to high school students who, since the repeal of the state sodomy law, were taught that homosexuality and same-sex live-in partners were acceptable and sometimes even preferrable.

Oh, wait. I haven't. That hasn't happened. Nevermind.

[Dimensio]

Yes, because we all know that if you are anti-abortion, anti gun control, in favour of curbing immigration and don't care at all for wasteful spending of tax dollars on demonstratably broken federal programs, you must also consider homosexuality to be immoral. How can you believe the former and not the latter? They're so clearly related!

[Dimensio]

Examples include live sacrifice and drug ingestion.

Except that it's the act of sacrificing or drug intake that is outlawed because it is considered 'bad'. There is nothing outlawed specifically because it is considered a sacrament of some religion.

Not that this has anything to do with the current debate.

[Dimensio]

Two consenting adults minding their own business? Well, that's down there with people who don't use turn signals.

I beg to differ. I've never felt an urge to kill anyone for 'minding their own business' like I have with some of the dolts who don't use turn signals around here.