Free Republic

In September 1998, two men by the names of John Lawrence and Tyron Garner were having sex in their home in Houston, Texas. Without warning, police broke into Lawrence's home and found the two engaged in what Texas law calls sodomy. The police had been summoned by a neighbor who had complained about a man allegedly "going crazy" in Lawrence's house. Lawrence and Garner were arrested, held for 24 hours and subsequently fined $200 after pleading no contest to the charge of sexual deviation. The neighbor was subsequently convicted of filing a false police report. Lawrence and Garner then challenged...

In the Friday edition of the Washington Times, in the Metro section, the following item appeared. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a link to it on the paper's website. GOP activist sentenced on child porn charges A longtime Republican activist in Northern Virginia was sentenced to two years' probation after pleading guilty to a charge of child pornography. Richard Delgaudio was charged with taking sexually explicit photographs of a 16-year-old girl. According to court documents and Baltimore police, he paid the girl by the hour for the photo shoots at a Maryland hotel. As part of a plea agreement, a Baltimore...

The Politics of Deviance Anne Hendershott Encounter Books 2002 194 pages Occasionally a book is published that examines the dogmas of the dominant culture with such clarity that the gatekeepers can only regard it as subversive. Anne Hendershott's "The Politics of Deviance" is such a book. Hendershott, a professor of sociology at the University of San Diego, follows the lead of former Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan who warned in the 1965 speech "Defining Deviancy Down" that "[society] has chosen not to notice behavior that would be otherwise controlled, disapproved, or even punished." Moynihan's warning proved true. Behaviors once considered deviant...