Free Republic

You may not know how the town of Springfield, home to the Simpsons, was founded. In the late 1790s Jebediah Springfield and his partner Shelbyville Manhattan led a group of pioneers across the country to start a new community. They finally stopped at a beautiful spot atop a hill looking down on a lush valley: Jebediah: People, our search is over! On this site we shall build a new town where we can worship freely, govern justly, and grow vast fields of hemp for making rope and blankets. Shelbyville: Yes, and marry our cousins.Jebediah: I was — what are...

I have a sneaking sympathy for Dick Gephardt. Hitherto the Democratic Party's most reliably unexciting presidential candidate, the former House minority leader went bananas the other day and said if the Supreme Court did something he didn't like he'd sign an executive order overturning it. Several conservatives did a bit of pro forma huffin' an' a-puffin' about why this makes Gephardt unfit to be president. But, speaking personally, I can't see why rule by Dick-tat would be worse in principle than the present system, whereby the nation's course for the decades ahead is effectively set by executive orders from Sandra...

BLAME THE GOP FOR PRO-SODOMY COURT DECISION By: Reed R. Heustis, Jr. June 27, AD 2003 With one stroke of the pen, [homosexuality] has triumphed at the Supreme Court. And guess what? Republican-appointed Justices are to blame. With a convincing 6-3 decision in Lawrence v. Texas, the United States Supreme Court on June 26 overturned a 1986 case, Bowers v. Hardwick, which had upheld the legitimacy of an anti-sodomy law. Sodomites and perverts all across America are hailing the Lawrence decision as the biggest gay rights victory in our nation's history. Mitchell Katine, the openly gay attorney representing John Lawrence...

When gays rose up against police during the Stonewall Riots in 1969, they were living in a country that considered them criminals. But when their descendants in the struggle for equal rights march down Fifth Ave. in today's Gay Pride Parade, they will do so in a nation whose Supreme Court has forcefully ruled that they are "entitled to respect for their private lives." In the matter of Lawrence vs. Texas, the justices ruled 6 to 3 Thursday that the sodomy law in Texas, which criminalized consensual sexual activity between homosexuals, was unconstitutional. But the court didn't leave it at...

Is Lawrence Worse Than Roe? CRISIS Magazine - e-Letter June 27, 2003 ********************************************** There has been a lot of lot of talk since yesterday's Supreme Court decision in the case of Lawrence v. Texas, a dispute over Texas' law making sodomy illegal. The Supreme Court overturned that law by a vote of 6 to 3, saying that such laws "demean the lives of homosexual persons" and infringe upon their right to privacy. Let me tell you right now: Lawrence is a devastating decision, worse than most people think -- and for reasons that haven't fully dawned on them yet. I...