Wrong, Wrong, Wrong
Here’s a bit of willful stupidity from The Wall Street Journal:
The Supreme Court ended its term yesterday by issuing two controversial opinions that suggest an odd understanding of its judicial obligations.
The Court was perfectly happy to instruct Texans on what they ought to think about homosexuality, a subject not addressed in the Constitution and historically left to state legislatures.
No, that’s not what the high court said. On a legal basis, the Supremes ruled that Texas can’t have one set of rules for gays (sodomy BAD), and another set of rules for straights (Sodomy? Cool!)
On a moral basis, no one told anybody what to think. Or what to say, or even how to feel. Not one Texan will change what he thinks or says or feels about gays because the Supreme Court struck down an unjust law — nor does the ruling require them to.
All that changed is that two men or two women in Texas can no longer get arrested for doing what straight couples have forever been doing there without fear of prosecution.
What he said.
And as a Texan, I am happy to see this idiocy struck down. It was always a source of embarassment whenever this was brought up in conversation by someone from out of state.
If we don’t want to be treated like hicks then we shouldn’t have shit like that as the law of the land.
Really? You:
No, that’s not what the high court said. On a legal basis, the Supremes ruled that Texas can’t have one set of rules for gays (sodomy BAD), and another set of rules for straights (Sodomy? Cool!)
ABC:
The landmark ruling invalidates similar anti-sodomy laws that apply only to homosexuals in Kansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma. It also strikes down anti-sodomy laws in nine other states that criminalize those same sexual acts for both heterosexual and homosexual couples. Those states are: Alabama, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Louisiana, Utah, Virginia, Idaho and Mississippi.
O’Connor’s brief said that it should be struck down under Equal Protection–that gays can’t be criminalized for doing the same thing that straights do legally. But the majority brief said that the law was struck down under Due Process, saying that the Texas law violated the liberties of the defendants. That means that anti-sodomy laws everywhere are invalid, whether they apply only to gays or to everyone.
This is a Good Thing.
I hadn’t heard the “equal protection” argument before. I guess it amounts to the SCOTUS giving Texas men the same right to be assfucked as Texas women now enjoy. OK, maybe. Regardless, just as everyone mocked the Scalia types back then when it was pointed that the Griswold case would lead to SCOTUS imposed abortion on demand, so too shall we rue this case with its explicit reliance on a generalized right to sexual privacy.
BTW, like the Griswold contraception case, it seems this case was similarly manufactured. Neighbor calls in disturbance complaint, cops respond, knock on door, announce their presence, enter condo, and observe in plain sight condo occupants CONTINUING to engage in sodomy. Apparently it takes quite a bit to get arrested, even in Texas.
Christopher Johnson is right. O’Conner’s concurring brief rested on equal protection grounds. The majority brief, however, was based on the right of privacy.
I’m afraid you’ve mixed up the Journal and the New York Times when it comes to which one is more likely to make these sorts of blatant mistakes.
The Texas law was stupid, unenforced, and all but repealed…these two were the only ones to be charged under it in a decade.
But what the Court did was usurp the role of Texas voters. Worse, despite lame protestations to the contrary, they’ve just amended the Constitution to include a Right to Privacy. And declared themselves the Supreme Un-elected Legislature.
Legal prostitution, narcotics use, suicide & assisted suicide and more are all on the table now, along with gay marriage and indeed, group marriage. And given the penchant for coercive indoctrination by the public schools, all this will eventually wind up in the classroom.
You praise the Colorado Amendment process as democracy in action. But when the voters of Colorado used it to block preferences for gays, The Court struck it down, substituting it’s judgement for the voters’. This Court will not rest until it imposes hiring & other quotas for gays also.
Which begs the question, how will it know if one is gay? Race is problematic enough; are we going to have a Gay Registry?
That will get government out of the bedroom!
Despite what you may think, I’m not some knuckle-dragging gay-basher. But I disagree with this agenda on moral, cultural and Constitutional grounds. I do not want my neighbor to open a whorehouse or have my children step over discarded syringes on the sidewalk. I do not want them taught the joys of anal sex in their schools.
And I will not have my Constitution shredded, that The Vision of the Annointed may replace the consent of the governed.
So, what are you going to do if I call you some knuckle-dragging gay-basher? Go crying to your mommy because I hurt your widdle feewings? Too bad our Big Bad Evil United States Supreme Court won’t let you and your Moral Gestapo break down the doors of homosexual men and women while they are making love and drag them away for “re-education”. We’re all FREE now, homosexual AND heterosexual (and even a-sexual like you), thanks to the heroic John Geddes Lawrence and Tyron Garner and JUSTICES Kennedy, Stevens, Ginsburg, Souter, Breyer, and O’Connor. Go live in Saudi Arabia, you lying sex-hating self-hating ChristiaNAZI un-American Communist scum.
The Supreme Court in an amazing act of gymnastic legal thinking demonstarted that the Constitution is a tissue meaning no more than the court says it does. Rights are protected under the first ten amendments and the ninth amendment gives further protection, but where in the constitution is there a right to privacy? We enjoy all the right “of Englishman” but Englishmen never enjoyed a right to privacy. Under the dictim of “privacy” isn’t wife beating, drug use, molestation of children, multiple wives protected? Prostitution? What exactly can now be denied? The Court demonstrated that the people of any state cannot be trusted to pass their own laws and that complusory serfdom is now the order of the day to the imperialistic court. But Hitler utilized the laws in the same manner and since we now have seen the constitution is a joke why should be expect any further dependence on it to preserve life, liberty, or the pursuit?
The decision stands. It was 6-3. What are you planning to do? Overthrow the United States Supreme Court? Forcibly kidnap homosexual men and women to murder and rape them? Install cameras in all our bedrooms since you obviously have no respect for anyone’s privacy, you totalitarian un-American treasonous Hitlerite CommuNAZI scum? The Ninth Amendment: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, SHALL NOT BE CONSTRUED TO DENY OR DISPARAGE OTHERS RETAINED BY THE PEOPLE.” What part of that can’t you understand, retard? We also have the Second Amendment, which means: If you ever so much as think of barging into MY home to enforce your ChristiaNAZI “morality”, I have a gun and I’LL KILL YOU.
I guess it amounts to the SCOTUS giving Texas men the same right to be assfucked as Texas women now enjoy.
Oh, dear Glub, I have to bite my tongue — or perhaps my fingers — from typing all the horrid jokes that this sentence brings to mind. I have an image in my mind of a Photoshopped “Welcome to Texas” sign that says, “Now EVERYBODY can get assfucked in Texas!”
BTW, like the Griswold contraception case, it seems this case was similarly manufactured. Neighbor calls in disturbance complaint… [snip]
IMHO, the neighbor, said to have had a grudge against the two defendants, should have been prosecuted for falsely reporting a disturbance. Or, at the very least, the two men should have sued him for his last red cent.
You praise the Colorado Amendment process as democracy in action. But when the voters of Colorado used it to block preferences for gays, The Court struck it down, substituting it’s judgement for the voters’.
I seem to recall something from my high school civics classes about protecting minorities from the tyranny of the majority. If you’d held a referendum on anti-lynching legislation in most Southern states a century ago, think it’d have passed?
We enjoy all the right “of Englishman” but Englishmen never enjoyed a right to privacy. Under the dictim of “privacy” isn’t wife beating, drug use, molestation of children, multiple wives protected? Prostitution? What exactly can now be denied?
Uh, that which clearly harms other people without their consent, such as wife-beating (or husband-beating) or molestation of children? Consensual anal sex doesn’t fall under that category.
Neither do drug use, prostitution, sadomasochistic sexual activities, or polygamy (either polygyny or polyandry). But then, I’m one of those weirdo Americans who doesn’t think the government has any right to tell us what we can’t ingest, which consenting adults we can’t penetrate or be penetrated by, what toys we can’t pleasure ourselves with, how we may not use our bodies for pecuniary purposes, or what sort of marriage we must or can’t enjoy. (Radley Balko makes a great case for that last bit.)
A couple more things:
Steven M. Anderson, as tempting as it is to flame those stuck in the 19th century, you’d be a much more effective persuader if you calmed down and tried arguing from reason. T.J. Jackson broke Godwin’s Law by comparing the SCOTUS decision to Nazi policies. You could have pointed this out (and possibly claimed the right to end the thread), but instead you fell into the Godwin trap yourself.
Second, those who defend “sodomy” having a criminal status might want to consider Robin Williams’ observation back when M4M sex was illegal in the Peach Tree State: “If you commit sodomy in Georgia, they’re gonna throw you into a cell with a guy who’ll sodomize you.” I wonder if some men learned more about gay sex in prison than they ever learned on the “outside.”