SCOTUS strikes down Texas sodomy ban

FOXnews

[Thane_Banquo]

SCOTUS sided with the perverts.

[E Rocc]

"Adult" is whatever a legislature says it is.

Watch for boy-lovers to push the defintion down.

It will have to be attempted legislatively, and it will fail.

-Eric

[george wythe]

The Supreme Court struck down a ban on gay sex Thursday, ruling that the law was an unconstitutional violation of privacy.

The 6-3 ruling reverses course from a ruling 17 years ago that states could punish homosexuals for what such laws historically called deviant sex.

The case is a major reexamination of the rights and acceptance of gay people in the United States. More broadly, it also tests a state's ability to classify as a crime what goes on behind the closed bedroom doors of consenting adults.

Thursday's ruling invalidated a Texas law against "deviate sexual intercourse with another individual of the same sex."

Defending that law, Texas officials said that it promoted the institutions of marriage and family, and argued that communities have the right to choose their own standards.

The law "demeans the lives of homosexual persons," Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the majority.

Laws forbidding homosexual sex, once universal, now are rare. Those on the books are rarely enforced but underpin other kinds of discrimination, lawyers for two Texas men had argued to the court.

The men "are entitled to respect for their private lives," Kennedy wrote.

"The state cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime," he said.

Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer agreed with Kennedy in full. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor agreed with the outcome of the case but not all of Kennedy's rationale.

Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas dissented.

"The court has largely signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda," Scalia wrote for the three. He took the unusual step of reading his dissent from the bench.

"The court has taken sides in the culture war," Scalia said, adding that he has "nothing against homosexuals."

The two men at the heart of the case, John Geddes Lawrence and Tyron Garner, have retreated from public view. They were each fined $200 and spent a night in jail for the misdemeanor sex charge in 1998.

The case began when a neighbor with a grudge faked a distress call to police, telling them that a man was "going crazy" in Lawrence's apartment. Police went to the apartment, pushed open the door and found the two men having anal sex.

As recently as 1960, every state had an anti-sodomy law. In 37 states, the statutes have been repealed by lawmakers or blocked by state courts.

Of the 13 states with sodomy laws, four -- Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma and Missouri -- prohibit oral and anal sex between same-sex couples. The other nine ban consensual sodomy for everyone: Alabama, Florida, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Utah and Virginia.

Thursday's ruling apparently invalidates those laws as well.

The Supreme Court was widely criticized 17 years ago when it upheld an antisodomy law similar to Texas'. The ruling became a rallying point for gay activists.

Of the nine justices who ruled on the 1986 case, only three remain on the court. Rehnquist was in the majority in that case -- Bowers v. Hardwick -- as was O'Connor. Stevens dissented.

A long list of legal and medical groups joined gay rights and human rights supporters in backing the Texas men. Many friend-of-the-court briefs argued that times have changed since 1986, and that the court should catch up.

At the time of the court's earlier ruling, 24 states criminalized such behavior. States that have since repealed the laws include Georgia, where the 1986 case arose.

Texas defended its sodomy law as in keeping with the state's interest in protecting marriage and child-rearing. Homosexual sodomy, the state argued in legal papers, "has nothing to do with marriage or conception or parenthood and it is not on a par with these sacred choices."

The state had urged the court to draw a constitutional line "at the threshold of the marital bedroom."

Although Texas itself did not make the argument, some of the state's supporters told the justices in friend-of-the-court filings that invalidating sodomy laws could take the court down the path of allowing same-sex marriage.

The case is Lawrence v. Texas, 02-102.

[jgrubbs]

"We have no government armed with the power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion... Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

--John Adams

[Dan from Michigan]

If we didn't want government regulating morality, we would have to get rid of government altogether.

What? That doesn't even make sense. Government's main job is to protect private property.

[-YYZ-]

"If we didn't want government regulating morality, we would have to get rid of government altogether."

Really, I thought the reason we had laws and governments was that the alternative is anarchy. The majority of the laws you mention may represent some general sort of morality of the "golden rule" type, but not necessarily a codification of traditional Judeo-Christian morality.

[Straight Vermonter]

"Right to Privacy... let's see, Right to Privacy..." Hmm.... Don't seem to really find that in the Constitution....

Do you really think the constitution gives us our rights? Our rights come from our creator. The Constitution limits government rights not individual rights. One of Madison's concerns in drafting the Bill of Rights was that those enumerated rights would become the ONLY protected rights. It appears that today even conservatives wish for a powerful federal government that restrains us within the narrow framework of the Bill of Rights.

[Paradox]

This is bizarro as hell, pardon my french. I could have expected it to have been overturned on equal protection grounds (i.e. because TX didn't forbid male to female anal sex acts on equal terms) but "privacy"?

Excellent point. I am all for the results of the ruling (yep, consenting adults and all that..), but the "privacy" issue needs to be addressed. When a court can manufacture "rights" out of thin air, there is no end to the mischief that can result.

[B Knotts]

It has long been established, by the 14th Amendment, that states may not infringe Constitutional rights. The question is: how was the Constitutional right to sodomize established? It is based on an awful decision, that also led to the "right to abortion": Griswold v. Connecticut.

[BaghdadBarney]

"I never cease to be stunned by Freepers who want big government in people's bedrooms."

How about people's barns as well?

[tdadams]

I'm sure despite the fact that the Supreme Court should have certainly deferred to consult you on the matter, they've taken all these things into consideration and did not foresee the apocalyptic collapse of America as we know it by overturning this law.

[george wythe]

Of the nine justices who ruled on the 1986 case, only three remain on the court. Rehnquist was in the majority in that case -- Bowers v. Hardwick -- as was O'Connor. Stevens dissented.

O'Connor seemed to have changed her mind about her vote in the 1986 Bowers case

[Past Democrat]

Prove the animal didn't give consent, the woman sticks it in the air and the animal jumps on thats consent, and that's what we are heading for

[LanPB01]

PING Check out this lively debate!

[B Knotts]

Don't seem to really find that in the Constitution....

You have to look in the "penumbras."

[jgrubbs]

"It can not be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religions, but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ."

--Patrick Henry

[mrsmith]

"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. "

Apparently some people think the states did not have laws against homsexuality when the Constitution was ratified.
Or they don't care and just read into this whatever rights they want to, instead of what the founders meant.
Nothing like a living Constitution for flexibility.

[george wythe]

Do you really think the constitution gives us our rights? Our rights come from our creator. The Constitution limits government rights not individual rights. One of Madison's concerns in drafting the Bill of Rights was that those enumerated rights would become the ONLY protected rights. It appears that today even conservatives wish for a powerful federal government that restrains us within the narrow framework of the Bill of Rights.

Bump.

I cringe every time I hear some conservatives say that our legal rights are only the rights enumerated in the US Constitution.

[Aquinasfan]

Government's main job is to protect private property.

It is? Where'd that come from?

The job of government is to promote the common good, or the "general welfare" as it's termed in the Constitution.

Why? The whole is greater than its parts. Therefore the common good is greater than the good for any single citizen.

[B Knotts]

When a court can manufacture "rights" out of thin air, there is no end to the mischief that can result.

Exactly! That is the problem, and we've seen the results of this sort of thing before (millions of dead pre-born children).

[VRWC_minion]

An amendment to do what?

Regarding limits on privacy.