Supreme Court Strikes Down Gay Sex Ban

AP via Yahoo ^ | 6/26/03 | AP

[jethropalerobber]

Supreme Court Strikes Down Gay Sex Ban

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court struck down a ban on gay sex Thursday, ruling that the law was an unconstitutional violation of privacy.

The 6-3 ruling reverses course from a ruling 17 years ago that states could punish homosexuals for what such laws historically called deviant sex.

The case is a major reexamination of the rights and acceptance of gay people in the United States. More broadly, it also tests a state's ability to classify as a crime what goes on behind the closed bedroom doors of consenting adults.

Thursday's ruling invalidated a Texas law against "deviate sexual intercourse with another individual of the same sex."

Defending that law, Texas officials said that it promoted the institutions of marriage and family, and argued that communities have the right to choose their own standards.

The law "demeans the lives of homosexual persons," Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the majority.

[jayef]

States rights my a$$. States do not have the right to target classes of people for different treatment. Don't you remember, we had a war over this? We also have a 14th Amendment. All this stuff happened 150 years ago buddy. Are you just now catching up?

[chanupi]

I thought that this country was founded on the faith of secular humanism.

I'm so sick of christians trying to claim our fore fathers.

Thomas Paine was no christian. George Washington never once refered to jesus christ in any of his writings, and rarely atteneded church. Thomas Jefferson has this to say:

"Religion is a subject on which I have ever been most scrupulously reserved. I have considered it as a matter between every man and his Maker in which no other, and far less the public, had a right to intermeddle." --Thomas Jefferson to Richard Rush, 1813.

[aristeides]

I think you have revealed yourself to be a secular humanist. Certainly you have the attitudes of one. I hope you will have the sense to realize that you are living off the capital of a Christian civilization, and that, to the extent our civilization ceases to be Christian, it will have a very limited lifetime. That is to say, people like you can only live humanist lives to the extent that you allow the bulk of society to remain Christian. If you end that, you not only doom us, you doom yourselves.

[Diamond]

I'm so sick of christians trying to claim our fore fathers.

Thomas Paine was no christian. George Washington never once refered to jesus christ in any of his writings, and rarely atteneded church. Thomas Jefferson has this to say:

"Religion is a subject on which I have ever been most scrupulously reserved. I have considered it as a matter between every man and his Maker in which no other, and far less the public, had a right to intermeddle." --Thomas Jefferson to Richard Rush, 1813.

You need to educate yourself regarding the history of this nation. Numerous previous threads here have dealt extensively with this subject with extensive quotations from the founders. Bless his heart, Thomas Paine, while influential in the Revolution with his pamphlet, "Common Sense" cannot be considered a founder in the sense the others were. Sorry. It's a fact of history. If you feel like being suprised sometime, investigate the denominational affiliations of the signatories to the Declaration and the Constitution.

Cordially,

[Taxbilly]

should divorce and premarital sex be illegal too?

That should be up to the state.

[Naspino]

Your evidence is pretty sparse -- given that God appears just about everywhere in our government. The principles of this country were founded upon the faith of those that comprised it at the time. You cannot deny that the Christian faith and this country are intertwined and have been since its foundation. Just because one or two guys that were involved in its foundation didn't mention the name of Jesus doesn't mean they didn't realize what was the predominate belief at the time.

[Naspino]

I was just responding to your attack on the previous poster. Your argument against bigotry was not relating to the state but to her in particular. What the states can legislate and what people are allowed to do are two different things. However with that said if the people elect a bunch of bigots that pass a law that is perceived as bigotted then that is within their rights as a state so long as its constitutional. What is at issue is was the law constitutional not was it a just law. When the courts can deem whether or not a law is just then we should just abandon the legislative branch and leave it up to 5 justices on the supreme court to decide the course of history for this nation.

[jayef]

You are correct. That is exactly what the Supreme Court must judge. I believe the "equal protection" case is strongert than the "privacy" case. The Texas law is clearly unconstitution on an "equal protection" grounds.

[MHGinTN]

There you go again, worrying about your body parts. Why are homo-apologists so worried about their body parts?

[MHGinTN]

Well! Now you're starting to make sense! Read Sandra O'Connors message in support of the majority ... she had it right, as far as she took it. Sadly, the wrongheadedness of the Texas law should have been addressed by the Texas elected representatives, not the SCOTUS. Had they taken O'Connor's route, I believe they would have addressed the particular behavior without opening the door to 'ANY private activity between consenting adults', which is an invitation to nullify a spouse's protection in the law to sue for divorce based on adultery (a degeneration of the marriage contract) since the activity will no longer be proscribable as a breach of the marriage contract because it is done bewteen consenting adults in private.

[Taxbilly]

Do the states have the right to make laws? 10th Amendment

[Eagle Eye]

Fools both.

Right there you show that you aren't interested in discussion.

Read Scalia's dissent; read Kennedy's decision. Your comments show that do not understand the stakes of the game being played. This is not a libertarian decision--it is a pro-homosexual, pro-Leftist agenda decision.

I haven't yet read the dissents. Those dissents wont' change my mind about the morality of homosexuality or the origins of it. And I know very well what the stakes are. This fight needs to be fought with believers, not the courts.

And when they're done inventing a constitutional right to homosexual marriage, they'll move against other "antiquated" rules on sexual matters, like those barring sexual congress with your children.

The Constitution doesn't restrict people, but government. The amendments only enumerate SOME of the rights that citizens have. Look at the 9th and 10th. You tell me what the unenumerated rights are and what they are not. I don't think that you can.

Wake the f!@#$ up.

You know what they say about people who need to curse to make a point, right?

[thakil]

Deviants. I notice homosexuals being described as deviants here. How so?

Becuase they do not act the way they do- because they are attracted to members of the same sex? That, is, apparently, against nature. Well how can anything be against nature? Nature is by very definition is everything- we do what is in our nature, and if it is in ones nature to love someone of the same sex, then that is what happens.

Equally, homosexuals do not go against evolution. How could they? Evolution is a natural force. If having homosexuals within our population was detrimental to the survival of our species, then they would not exist anymore. Thats how it works. Maybe they are slowly dying out- in which case we need to do nothing to encourage or discourage as it will happen anyway. Homosexuals could promote survival of the species, incidentally, because they do not have natural offspring, and therefore do not increase the numbers of people on this planet, which is straining to cope with so many of us.

Maybe, of course, you could cite the Bible. But if you take the Bible on face value as the direct word of God then you are naive. Check out http://www.ffrf.org/lfif/contra.html for all those contradictions. If the Bible was direclty the word of God would it be so confusing? I doubt it. And if it has been written like that deliberately by God, or, more likely, people with their own agenda, there is no way you can trust the Bible as an absolute book of morals. Certainly you can take it as a rough guide, but not as a totalitarian pointer. And, of course, you have to deal with mistranslations within the book which have happened over the past 3000 years or so.

Finally, while gays all want to be accepted for who they are, they all have different methods of goign about this goals, and different ideas. To say one homosexual represents every single one is idiotic to say the least.

[TaxRelief]

The Court cannot review the constitionality of laws that have been struck down. (Unless an amendment is added to the constitution OR another ruling creates ambiguity OR when Supreme Court Legislators or the Senate change the rules).

---

Who, now, has the power to stop the Supreme Court? They have been granted supreme authority.

The nine Supreme Court justices are the appointed heads of the United Oligarchy of America.

There is no force that can stop the justices from doing anything that they choose to do. Considering the fact that the current Court is now legislating (dictating?) from the bench, future Courts will be compelled to find ways to reverse rulings [that have struck-down laws]: The justices will cite the unconstitutionality of previous rulings. Eventually it will become common practice for the laws of the land to yo-yo depending on who is sitting on the bench.

---

Is there a flaw in this logic?

[Taxbilly]

If a state voted to put scocrates to death?

Do states execute people?

[Churchjack]

The point is that YOU don't have to observe anything. As a heterosexual you were not the target class. Don't worry about it. Tomorrow you can wake up and your life will be completely unchanged. Of course now the gay couple down the street doesn't have to worry about the state busting down their door to see what kind of sex their having. That's not what you're worried about, is it, really?

The state you're worried about was the legislation passed by the representatives of the citizen's majority here in the state of Texas, not some federal executive agency. Our right to self-rule includes the right to prohibit immoral sexual behavior.

I'm not the least bit interested in busting someone's door down to inspect their genitals. I simply prefer, in common sense fashion, sexual deviants to feel the pressure of a just society and live their lives with one eye over their shoulder, watching their backs and concerned with the consequences.

Instead of my children, that is.