SCOTUS strikes down Texas sodomy ban

FOXnews

[Thane_Banquo]

SCOTUS sided with the perverts.

[ninenot]

Sorry. It has been said that Ted Bundy had a mental disease, and for the sake of argument, maybe he did.

He's still responsible for several murders he committed, and was appropriately sentenced.

Right Order must be preserved and encouraged.

Further, the Texas law does not call for penalties which are unreasonable, nor cruel and unusual.

[ninenot]

Read Scalia's dissent. Wrong decision, all the wrong reasons. No compelling interest, ignoring stare decisis, and finding "liberty" in the 14th (???)

The old broads, momma's boy, and the reliable idiot all went along because it is PC.

That's not a good reason, Sink.

[ninenot]

Learn to read posts.

Then read mine.

Then understand: let Texas VOTE on 'gay marriage' and pot-smoking.

[Cathryn Crawford]

Oh, come on, tpaine. I ain't no more devoted to Clint than, well, than..than I am you. Ha!

[ffusco]

That's the Tenderloin isn't it?

[El Gato]

And if you look at the laws of that period, 'individual rights' did not include blacks or women. In fact, escaping a plantation was punishable by death in many of the colonies/early states.

With regards to blacks, and other ethnic groups/races that's why we have the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments. Where is the "homosexual rights amendment"? (I guess in the same place as the federal power to prohibit (some) drugs amendment)

Some "individual rights", most in fact, did apply to women, just not all, especially at the state level, (although all of those were protected by the first eight amendments, but for most of that period those only applied to the federal government) as well as those in Articles III and IV applied to women. The right to vote was an exception and was not protected for women until passage of the 19th amendment.

[Clint N. Suhks]

You have some insane idea that I'm "a hypocrite when it comes to regulating incest"? -- Why?

Of course, because it’s consensual sexual behaior regulated by the 10th, you know that pesky dead amendment. Why are you a hypocrite?

You are making a fool of yourself by reposting your original idiocy.

I know "idiocy and non-sense" are powerful arguments where you come from but psssst even an eight-year-old understands the question and your obfuscation of it.

[Action-America]

Sorry. It has been said that Ted Bundy had a mental disease, and for the sake of argument, maybe he did.

He's still responsible for several murders he committed, and was appropriately sentenced.

That argument doesn't wash.  Bundy committed a real crime against another person.  In other words, there was a real victim.

In the case of sodomy between consenting adults, there is no victim, so punishing that act is simply punishing the participants for having a disease or birth defect.  Where there is no victim and an obvious sickness or defect is present, we should be trying to cure the problem, not punish people for having that particular sickness.

 

[tpaine]

Even the privacy, such as it is, of being "secure in one's person, house, papers and effects", protected by the 4th amendment is only secured against unreasonable searches and seizures. It does not protect any an all actions taken in private.

The only possible place to find a right of privacy is in the 9th amendent, but to find one there, and one that protects private sexual conduct at that, one would have to submit some evidence that such a right was recognized at the time of adoption of the 9th amendment..
and that would be a tough row to hoe, --
-El Gato-



"A right to live unmolested" was well known to the founders:

__ The great lawyer of the [Puritan] period, Sir Edward Coke, made it a maxim that the common law was the embodiment of reason; -- it followed that judges must not only give reasons for their decisions, but must use reason to iron out the kinks created by bad cases…. "Nature is the twin of reason in that both are given: man is the reasoning animal by nature, and nature is what man finds ready-made to be reasoned about. It acts apart from his will and wishes. Natural law and natural rights seem plain when one argues about fundamentals;

for instance, that every human being has a right to live unmolested,

that government is needed to ensure that right, and that man-made laws must serve and not defeat natural rights.
If any civil law does work against a natural right, the law of nature warrants disobeying the law and even overthrowing the government."

"These reasonings are familiar to those who remember the preamble to the Declaration of Independence…."

[sinkspur]

Scalia's dissent is not legal reasoning; it's political posturing.

The law banning homosexual sodomy was "silly." Clarence Thomas said so.

Be careful about "stare decisis." If you stand on that principle, Roe v. Wade is here to stay.

[tpaine]

I've read your posts here. At 298 you said:

"The Supremes are wrong."

Apparently, you imagine we have no right to live a private life. Weird idea.

[tpaine]

Dream on..

[af_vet_1981]

Apparently, you imagine we have no right to live a private life. Weird idea.

You have the same rights and privileges as the citizens of Sodom and Gomorrah.

[El Gato]

The point is, if it's not a guaranteed specific "right", then it's under the law, and the judiciary is not supposed to be making laws

Well not quite.

Amendment IV

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

The question here is, is engaging in homosexual acts such a right? Was it recognised as a right at the time of the adoption of the Constitution? It's not like homosexuality sprang forth in the last half of the 20th century and so the courts have to figure out how the Constitution applies to homosexual behavior. It's existed for a long time, and the behavior has rarely been treated as a right, if ever. So where did the right come from? Was it recognize by English Common Law, or by the Constitutions of any of the then existing states or by the compacts of any of the colonies?

It's one thing to be against sodomy laws, say as bad public policy, and quite another to assert that homosexual behavior is the exercise of a Constitutionally protected right.

[Clint N. Suhks]

El GATO says The only possible place to find a right of privacy is in the 9th amendent, but to find one there, and one that protects private sexual conduct at that, one would have to submit some evidence that such a right was recognized at the time of adoption of the 9th amendment.. ,

pain says: that every human being has a right to live unmolested, that government is needed to ensure that right,

Except when it comes to homosexual consensual incest, Hypocrite alert!

[tpaine]

Loony 'suhks' alert..
Take your baseless idiocy about hypocrisy to the backroom.

You're dismissed.

[ninenot]

If over 3000 years of prohibition don't indicate some sort of 'victim' problem to you, you are drinking the KoolAid that O'Connor promotes: "recent evolution in societal values..."

I do not advocate executions for sodomy, although there were such in Colonial times. I do not advocate umpty years of jail-time for sodomy (that would mean that most jailbirds would be there forever, wouldn't it?)

But to simply ascribe it to "illness" and say "there's no [apparent] victim--are the johns of whores "ill?" There's no "victim" there, either--except for the people who have to live in the neighborhood where these crimes occur...along with all the OTHER criminal activity that seems to follow.

[ninenot]

Well, you're certainly a better legal scholar than Scalia.

Frankly, he covered all the bases--and showed quite clearly that "stare" is only enforced when it is politically desirable--as in Roe.

But not against the queers.

[ninenot]

You have every right to a rightly-ordered private life, as the Constitution states.

There is NO "right to privacy" in the Constitution or any of its amendments. There is no right to sex (natural, un-natural, married or not) in the Constitution.

Under the Constitution as written, the several States legislate regarding sex, theft, murder, etc.

[Torie]

While Kennedy cited Roe, what is so interesting about this decision, is that it backed away from the right to privacy concept. The rationale of this decision, along with Griswald and Roe in a repackaging effort, were wrapped in a yet even broader and more vague concept about the due process right to liberty where its exercise is fundamental to the person. No, I am not making this up.

So now, if the Court really wanted to get activist, with this vague, amorphous, and subjective tool, combined with equal protection sledge hammar (all laws by definition are unequal in protection because they make distinctions, and thus are fair game for bludgoning), well SCOTUS can simply pass any legislation it wants.

Lamar Alexander had this demogogic line (yes, I don't like Lamar), about cutting the pay of Congress, and sending them home. If SCOTUS really gets going, the pay should be cut to zero, and they should stay home forever, and sell off the Capitol Building. The legislative branch will have become as vestigal as an appendix.

In short John, you might not have liked the manufactured penumbra right of privacy, but it had the virtue of by its very nature, being somewhat limited in its application. The standard applied in this case is as limitless as the West Texas horizon. We have a brave new world out there.

And so it goes.