Posted on 06/28/2003 12:38:52 PM PDT by shred
I think there are many Freepers who are tired of this constant bashing of the Supreme Court for Lawrence v. Texas. I think they did a great job and stuck a knife in the heart of big government.
Individual liberty is at the heart of what conservatism is all about - the individual having primacy over the state. It disturbs me that there are so many who wanted to see the state prevail in its desire to regulate private, individual freedoms.
I say, good job, to a consistent, conservative SC! You did exactly what you're supposed to be doing.
The right to privacy doesn't have to be in the constitution for it to exist. Read Amendment nine from the constitution below:
Amendment IX
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
The constitution and our bill of rights is not meant to be a laundry list of what we have the right to do. The bill of rights was added to our constitution because these were the overriding concerns of people at that time. And they wanted to gurantee that the government would not deny them these rights.
The right to privacy is one of our natural, inherent rights. For example, even if the right to free speech was not listed in the bill of rights, it would still exist.
If enough busy-bodies such as yourself keep protesting though, we might have to add the right to privacy to our list of rights, since some people refuse to recognize it.
A tyranny of giving individuals more freedom, and governments less? Shocking!
Consistent is one thing the Court ain't. This week, they upheld a law using strict scrutiny and struck down a law using minimal scrutiny. That's completely ass-backwards. Personally, I'm no fan of the 3-tier level-of-scrutiny process, and maybe it is time to chuck it or at least overhaul it. But if that's what the Justices want to do, then they need to just come out and say it. I think that's my problem with the decision. They seem to be changing their own rules while pretending to follow them. It strikes me as dishonest and contrived.
Indeed, that was the fear of some of the founders. By listing some important freedoms, they feared that eventually those listed would become assumed to be exhaustive. Although their fears have been born out, one can also say that had they not be listed at all, even those rights would now be long gone.
Sure. Lets see...I imagine you with a 10 gauge and...no, lets leave it there. :-)
Sure. It means exactly what Justices O'Connor and Kennedy tell us it means. The scope of our rights is now controlled by nine unelected judges instead of principles of law. We are becoming a nation of men and not laws.
Life, liberty, pursuit of happiness. Nothing about telling adults what they can do in their private lives there.
Sure, I'll celebrate.
I fail to grasp the reasoning behind the knee jerk reactions to this decision.
SCOTUS was not telling the states what they should do, rather they were telling them what they cannot do.
Ever since I could walk, conservatives have been trying to keep government out of the bedroom. The state is government and they got into a bedroom.
Leaving the gay issue aside for the sake of argument, what is wrong with affirming the right of privacy regarding the bedroom and taking into account that no illegal substance or other things were involved.
It seems to me that sodomy is still illegal if combined with rape or underage child.
I can see some people attempting to interpret this in other ways, but SCOTUS with clarify this with a second ruling when they do.
Yes, but that would be personal morality, I think.
If we lose it, then as Samuel Adams and Patrick Henry said,
"A general dissolution of the principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy.... While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but once they lose their virtue, they will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader.... If virtue and knowledge are diffused among the people, they will never be enslaved. This will be their great security." - Samuel Adams
"Bad men cannot make good citizens. It is when a people forget God that tyrants forge their chains. A vitiated state of morals, a corrupted public conscience, is incompatible with freedom. No free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue; and by a frequent recurrence to fundamental principles." Patrick Henry
"The Polyamory Society is a nonprofit organization that was founded to support, defend and promote Polyamorists, Polyamory Families, Children of the Polyamory Lifestyle and the Polyamory Institution worldwide." "The Society was created to bring about positive social change for the Institution of Polyamory. This is not to say there were not already a few effective Poly groups working to change the serial monogamous monopoly." "The principle objective of the Polyamory Society is to support the political, educational, social and economic equality of Polyamorists and Polyfamilies worldwide. The Society is committed to achievement through nonviolence and relies upon the press, the petition, the ballot and the courts, and is persistent in the use of legal and moral persuasion even in the face of violent hostility." "Discrimination once permitted can not be bridled. Recent history in all the great movements of 20th century prove that the cultures will permit oppression of subcultures until the subculture that is oppressed stand up for themselves. Taking a lesson from our Gay brothers and sisters we thought it best to develop multiple groups and organizations to represent our position. The Polyamory movement is very young and some Polyactivists, Polyamorists and Polyfamilies felt that the movement needed an extremely visible organizational symbol, vehicle and voice to represent the Polyamory ideal."
If Lawrence was the law before the Clinton scandals, would he have been impeached and would we have ever known about Monica at all?
What does this decision do to the military's "don't ask don't tell" policy?
Will prisoners be allowed to have consensual sex all they want and will this turn prisons into Gay recruitment centers?
What do you think?
You forgot your groin protector.
***WHUMP!!!***
;-)
The Constitution doesn't lay out any procedures for interpretation. SCOTUS erred quite egregiously, and we have every right to shout that fact from the rooftops, without in any way diminishing our fidelity to the Constitution.
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