Posted on 12/10/2002 11:21:41 AM PST by Liz
Like whist, whilst, and self-abuse, the word sodomy has an old-fashioned ring to it. You don't even see it alluded to much anymore, except in punning tabloid headlines about the situation in Iraq. But it—or its kissin' cousin, the nearly as archaic-sounding "deviate sexual intercourse"—can be found in the criminal codes of thirteen states of the Union, where it is punishable by penalties ranging from a parking-ticket-size fine to (theoretically) ten years in prison.
Even at this late date, many people are vague about just exactly what sodomy is. Montesquieu defined it as "the crime against nature," which is not especially helpful. Blackstone called it "the infamous crime against nature, committed either with man or beast," which gets us a little further, but not much. Back in the U.S.A., the statute books tend to be franker. Some states bring animals into the picture, some don't. The Texas Legislature's definition is nonzoological.
SKIP THIS IF EXPLICIT LANGUAGE OFFENDS. According to Section 21.01 of the Texas Penal Code (readers of delicate sensibilities may at this point wish to skip down a few lines), " 'Deviate sexual intercourse' means: (A) any contact between any part of the genitals of one person and the mouth or anus of another person; or (B) the penetration of the genitals or the anus of another person with an object."
RESUME READING HERE What the Lone Star State does and does not view as some kinda deviated preversion became of national interest last week, when the United States Supreme Court agreed to consider Lawrence v. Texas. The Lawrence of the case is John G. Lawrence, fifty-nine years old, of Houston, who, on the evening of September 17, 1998, was in his apartment with a guest, Tyron Garner, who is thirty-five. Texas got involved when police, having been tipped off by a neighbor that a "weapons disturbance" was in progress, busted down the door. (The tip was a deliberate lie on the part of the neighbor, who was later convicted of filing a false report.)
What the officers found Lawrence and Garner doing is really none of our business, any more than it was any of Texas's; suffice it to say that it was consensual, nonviolent, and noise-free. The two men were arrested, jailed overnight, and eventually fined two hundred dollars each. They appealed, a three-judge panel of a district appeals court reversed their conviction, the full nine-judge appeals court reversed the reversal, and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals declined to do any more reversing. And so to Washington.
The statute under which Lawrence and Garner were convicted, Section 21.06 of the Texas Penal Code, is officially known as the Homosexual Conduct Law. Ironically, this statute was a product of the progressive mood of the early nineteen-seventies. In most of the states that still criminalize sodomy, it doesn't matter, legally, whether a couple engaging in behavior (A), above, consists of two men, two women, or one of each.
That's how it was in Texas, too, until 1974. In that bell-bottomed year, the Texas Legislature made heterosexual sodomy legal, but it couldn't quite bring itself to do the same for gays. The result is that Texas is now one of only four states (the others being Kansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma) where it is a crime for gays to please each other in ways that are perfectly legal for straights. The panel that overturned the conviction saw this as discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
The full state court disagreed. Rather, confirming what Anatole France called "the majestic egalitarianism of the law, which forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges," the court pointed out that in Texas homosexuality is illegal for heterosexuals and homosexuals alike. No discrimination there.
According to the Times's Linda Greenhouse, the Supreme Court probably wouldn't have taken the case unless a majority had already decided to "revisit" Bowers v. Hardwick (1986), which upheld the constitutionality of Georgia's sodomy law.
The decision in that case—by a vote of five to four, as with so many of the Court's clunkers—was an embarrassment. Both its language and its reasoning were shockingly coarse. Writing for the majority, Justice Byron White defined "the issue"—leeringly, sarcastically, obtusely, and repeatedly—as "whether the Federal Constitution confers a fundamental right upon homosexuals to engage in sodomy," or protects "a fundamental right to engage in homosexual sodomy," or extends "a fundamental right to homosexuals to engage in acts of consensual sodomy." Any such claim, he added, "is, at best, facetious."
Caricaturing the well-established constitutional right to privacy in this nyah-nyah way is like dismissing the First Amendment as being all about the right to make doo-doo jokes. It was left to the author of the dissenting opinion, Justice Harry Blackmun, to point out, quoting Justice Brandeis, that the case was really "about 'the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men,' namely 'the right to be let alone.' "
Justice Lewis Powell, who tipped the balance in Bowers v. Hardwick, expressed regret years later that he had voted the way he did. He's gone now. John Paul Stevens, who dissented, William Rehnquist, now Chief Justice, and Sandra Day O'Connor are the only holdovers from the Court that upheld Georgia's sodomy law (which, by the way, was thrown out, a few months after Lawrence and Garner were arrested in Houston, by Georgia's supreme court, for violating Georgia's constitution).
Half the states that had sodomy laws when Bowers was decided have got rid of them, and those that still have them seldom enforce them. But when they are enforced the consequences can be more onerous than it may appear. Lawrence and Garner aren't just out four hundred bucks; they may also be banned from certain professions, from nursing to school-bus driving, and are deprived of other privileges denied to persons who have been convicted of "crimes of moral turpitude."
Anyway, sodomy laws are a standing insult to, among others, millions of respectable citizens who happen to be gay. They are an absurd anachronism and an obvious violation of the right to privacy. Whatever they may have represented in Montesquieu's day, or even Byron White's, in 2002 they are nothing but an expression of bigotry. If the Supreme Court takes a truly honest look at Section 21.06 of the Texas Penal Code, it will surely agree with the view of Dickens's Mr. Bumble: this is one case where, at bottom, "the law is a ass."
--SNIP -- Clink on source link for rest of story (go to next)
I mean, it enters MY head when I see them bring it up on threads like this. Is it normal to sit around and obsess about people humping camels?
I could go twenty years and never even remember that people do that, if not for the obsessions of these religious zealots...
Why do you insist on comparing a paraphilic disorder with a normal man/woman relationship. If you can compare one pathology to sane behavior you can compare others i.e. animals, consenting children and relatives.
Nice to see you think so highly of our Vice Presidents daughter.
Psssst! Smart money says there's no way in hell that individual is a LEO.
Speaking from experience...
A married heterosexual couple? Yes. It's natural, and the way man/woman kind is built. "Enjoy the wife of your youth."
When a man and woman marry, they become one, and reproduce to form a family, and man/woman kind live on.
Group sex is out. First of all, any disease will be pased on among many. This type of behavior has proven that. Also, a womans body has an immune system designed for her husband. It just occures. Multiple sex partners is linked to uterine cance in females, prostrate cancer in men.
He brings it up and uses the comparrison because FF578 wants him put to death for getting a blow job from his wife.
The zealots like FF are wrong for their views. And your side is wrong for attempting to make business owners (with private property) assign you benefits against their will.
Freedom is not increased when you force a business owner to recognize your relationship by providing benefits to your partner.
ROFLMAO!!!!!
I thought he was talking about homosexual sodomy, what happens between a man and woman is irrelevant and not a pathology.
Homosexuals should have no rights any other mentally ill person wouldn't get. Homosexuals should be put back in the mental institutions. I'm not sure who it was that let them out in the first place.
Since their release into a healthy society, there's plagues, boy molestring teachers and priests, and a moral deline like never before. The cost of AIDs to the American tax payer is out of control, and now we're ask to pay for a cure for the entire world.
Homosexuals have caused great damage to this nation. Name one good thing homosexuality has done good for America!
Might makes right. They have the might, therefore they have the right.
Using Anti-discrimination law in lawsuits would be force.
I have no objection to business voluntarily doing assigning benefits. But groups (and they exist) that are attempting to use law (backed at the end by a government gun) to make a business owner pay benefits, or hire X% blacks, gays or women, etc.... are simply wrong.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.