[spunkets]

"--I can't find this right to privacy in the Constitution. I can find this:

Take the first complete thought from the first sentence, "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated." What this means is that the people have a right to be secure. To do that they must be able to keep things private, or hidden from the government, and everyone else too. It's not all that hard to grasp.

[aristeides]

I'm reading through the Kennedy opinion now. I'm now at a point where Kennedy is arguing that there wasn't really a long legal history of criminalizing homosexual acts as such. It strikes me as being as bad and tendentious history as Blackmun's pseudohistory in Roe v. Wade. It must be taken right out of the briefs of the lawyers arguing for Lawrence and Garner. Lawyers' history in briefs is notoriously bad.

[NewJerseyRepublican]

Really, when you think about it, what's more worrisome -- the idea of two people having sex in the privacy of their own home or the government bursting in to your bedroom in the middle of the night to make sure you're only having sex with your wife and, of course, in the proper missionary position?

[DonaldC]

I am not a lawyer, but I respectfully disagree. The right not to be searched unreasonably, I do not believe, necessarily amounts to right of privacy, particularly with how it is being used (abortion, gay sex). I don't like the government butting into the home, but on the other hand I believe a nation, state, or community has the right to set limits on its citizenry. The supremes are saying that we no longer can.

[Sci Fi Guy]

To do that they must be able to keep things private, or hidden from the government, and everyone else too. It's not all that hard to grasp.

You're twisting the meaning of the passage, which was prohibiting unreasonable searches and seizures. The so-called right to privacy does not begin or end at someone's house. The court didn't say that the sodomy law could not be enforced only inside someones home, it cannot be enforced anywhere. If 2 homos engage in a sex act in a public park, there is no expectation of privacy, yet this ruling would protect them from the sodomy charge.