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)
In order for something to be codified, it must be in the code. Since There is nothing in the Code for Attempt, Soliciation, Conspiracy, and Compounding a Felony, they are not codified.
The other internet lawyer claimed that only crimes specifically spelled out in a statute could be punished. You are trying to defend that. Problem is, it is wrong.
There are no statutes that cover the above.
There is no statute that defines Crimes Against Nature or Common Law Robbery.
AHAH!
The Free Will argument.
Man cannot and does not have free will. Man left to himself knows only evil, can only do evil. Man can never come to a saving knowledge unless Almighty God draws him.
John 6:44
No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up at the last day.
Romans 9:11-24
(for the children not yet being born, nor having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works but of Him who calls), it was said to her, "The older shall serve the younger." As it is written, "Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated."
What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? Certainly not! For He says to Moses, "I will have mercy on whomever I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whomever I will have compassion." So then it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy. For the Scripture says to the Pharaoh, "For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I may show My power in you, and that My name may be declared in all the earth." Therefore He has mercy on whom He wills, and whom He wills He hardens.
You will say to me then, "Why does He still find fault? For who has resisted His will?" But indeed, O man, who are you to reply against God? Will the thing formed say to him who formed it, "Why have you made me like this?" Does not the potter have power over the clay, from the same lump to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor?
What if God, wanting to show His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, and that He might make known the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy, which He had prepared beforehand for glory, even us whom He called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles?
Ephesians 1:4-5
just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will,
God Decides who will be saved and who will be left in their sin. Man has no Free Will to choose God or save himself.
A Man can no more choose God than he can sprout wings and fly into heaven.
Way back in 1815, The Pennsylvania Supreme Court decided an important case, here are excerpts from that case: It reflects the case law of the day, and the attitude on which our nation was founded.)
This court is...invested with power to punish not only open violations of decency and morality, but also whatever secretly tends to undermine the principles of society... Whatever tends to the destruction of morality, in general, may be punishable criminally. Crimes are public offenses, not because they are perpetrated publically, but because their effect is to injure the public. Buglary, though done in secret, is a public offense; and secretly destroying fences is indictable.
Hence it follows, that an offense may be punishable, if in it's nature and by it's example, it tends to the corruption or morals; although it not be committed in public.
Although every immoral act, such as lying, ect... is not indictable, yet where the offense charged is destructive of morality in general...it is punishable at common law. The destruction of morality renders the power of government invalid...
No man is permitted to corrupt the morals of the people, secret poision cannot be thus desseminated.
No I'm not. My, you're really, really thick. Time to cut your losses, FF.
Mark 4:12 quoting Isaiah 6:9
O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!
Matthew 23:37
No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up at the last day.
Romans 9:11-24
Draw doesn't mean force. An advertisement draws you to buy the product. But it doesn't force you to. God draws each one of his Children to him. Accepting God's invitation is your choice. With regards to free will, the Bible contradicts itself. I believe in Free Will. You can believe what you wish. BTW, Shakespeare said, "Brevity is the soul of wit."
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