U.S. Supreme Court rewrites Constitution and 3,000 years of history

Alliance Defense Fund | 6/26/03 | Richard K. Jefferson

[Polycarp]

U.S. Supreme Court rewrites

Constitution and 3,000 years of history

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Supreme Court today rewrote the U.S. Constitution and 3,000 years of legal history by striking down the Texas sodomy law in a 6-3 decision.

The court overrode the Constitution, the history of American law, and its own precedent by declaring in Lawrence v. Texas that there is a right to privacy to protect private, adult consensual sexual activity. Justice Kennedy wrote for the majority, and only Justices Scalia and Thomas and Chief Justice Rhenquist dissented. The majority reasoned, unbelievably, that because of the trend in state legislatures to repeal sodomy laws, these laws have become unconstitutional.

The Alliance Defense Fund, a national legal organization based in Scottsdale, Arizona, said the framers of the Constitution could never have imagined an interpretation finding in the Constitution a right to engage in the act of sodomy.

“We are disappointed but we’re not giving up hope and we’re not going away,” said Jordan Lorence, a senior litigator with the Alliance Defense Fund. “This ruling provides us with new opportunities. We have already prevailed in other key cases, and we must persevere.” The Alliance Defense Fund supported the prevailing parties in Hurley v. Irish-American Group of Boston and Boy Scouts of America v. Dale.

In its 1986 Bowers v. Hardwick decision, the court upheld laws against sodomy. Then Chief Justice Warren Burger wrote in his concurring opinion “… in constitutional terms there is no such thing as a fundamental right to commit homosexual sodomy.” Burger continued: “Decisions of individuals relating to homosexual conduct have been subject to state intervention throughout the history of Western civilization. Condemnation of those practices is firmly rooted in Judeo-Christian moral and ethical standards…[Sir William] Blackstone described ‘the infamous crime against nature’ as an offense of ‘deeper malignity’ than rape, a heinous act ‘the very mention of which is a disgrace to human nature’ and ‘a crime not fit to be named.’ To hold that the act of homosexual sodomy is somehow protected as a fundamental right would be to cast aside millennia of moral teaching.”

“It would have been a better day if the court had taken Burger’s words to heart, and followed its own holding in Bowers, and 3,000 years of history and precedent,” Lorence said.

The Alliance Defense Fund serves people of faith; it provides strategy, training, and funding in the legal battle for religious liberty, sanctity of life, and traditional family values.

Richard K. Jefferson Senior Director National Media Relations Alliance Defense Fund rjefferson@alliancedefensefund.org (480) 444-0020 15333 North Pima Road, Suite 165 Scottsdale, AZ 85260

[brownie]

The framers of the Constitution didn't include the 14th Amendment into the document (obviously enough) upon which this case revolved; however, their inclusion of a clause permitting future amendments implies that they could have imagined that anything may at some point get added to the Constitution...

yes, but through the amendment process, not through judicial fiat with the Supreme Court inventing new rights out of thin air. I, for one, am ready for the revolution against the new tyranny of the left, who have abandoned the constitution altogether. they do not even try to hide thier abandonment of the constitution or rule of law any longer. I no longer have faith in the Supreme Court, or the any of our governmental branches to abide by the constitution or rule of law.

[RJCogburn]

"If God doesn't respond here, then he owes an apology to Sodom and Gomorrah."

Nah....I still know ten righteous men.

[Weimdog]

As it should be.

[HatSteel]

Per city of approx 30-50 thousand max.

Sodom & G weren't that big, imho, based on the size of force used in the war that Abraham won for them.

[DoughtyOne]

That may be true, but it also means that on landlord's property, anything now goes!

[almcbean]

Many people miss the point. The issue is not whether this law is a good or bad one-that would be for the Texas legislature to decide-but whether this law, good or bad, violates the constitution. Without the mythical right to privacy, it clearly does not. Our supreme court has become nothing more than a super-legislature, which it was never supposed to be. And a pretty bad one I might add. And, sadly, abetted by four Republican appointed judges, two by Reagan.

[y2k_free_radical]

The SUPEME COURT is suppose to be impervious to trends and politics

[Jim Noble]

This is Justice Kennedy's rationale:

"These references show an emerging awareness that liberty gives substantial protection to adult persons in deciding how to conduct their private lives in matters pertaining to sex".

This is a very broad ruling, and it asserts the power of the Supreme Court to rule based upon "emerging awareness" rather than law.

It also places the Court's discernment of "emerging awareness" in a superior position to the acts of elected officials, who live their lives to be up on what awarenesses are actually emerging.

[y2k_free_radical]

SUPREME

[Churchillspirit]

"In your own home anything goes"

I would not argue with that, but what gets me is gay 'PRIDE'.

[Desdemona]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/935982/posts

Scalia wrote the dissent. Thomas and Renquist sided with him. It's worth a read.

[thegreatbeast]

False. The Framers were not authoring a document under which anything might be made legal. A great deal of the struggle in writing the Constitution was delineating the source of rights and circumscribing what government can do, presumably including the SCOTUS.

[Servant of the Nine]

Why get so worked up about what a fag you don't know does to another fag you don't know when 34 states have never bothered to outlaw necrophilia?

Who knows what they are legally doing to dead family members down at the Funeral Home?

So9

[Darksheare]

Well...
It does make it easier to go and perform bestiality, necrophilia, and other acts.
The dog is of age, the corpse is of age..
And so on and such.
Kinda stupid move on the Court's part, actually.

[CobaltBlue]

I disagree. Sodomy laws are hypocritical. The vast majority of heterosexual adults have engaged in oral sex, but the laws remain on the books, even though nobody is ever prosecuted. That's hypocrisy.

If you've never engaged in oral sex with your spouse, that's your loss.

[lilylangtree]

Bring down the Supreme Court! Since they're violating Constitution, then we don't need them.

[AntiGuv]

I just finished reading Justice Kennedy's majority opinion in the Lawrence v Texas ruling. Interestingly, he addressed the very issue brought up here as his final remarks:

Had those who drew and ratified the Due Process Clauses of the Fifth Amendment or the Fourteenth Amendment known the components of liberty in its mani-fold possibilities, they might have been more specific. They did not presume to have this insight. They knew times can blind us to certain truths and later generations can see that laws once thought necessary and proper in fact serve only to oppress. As the Constitution endures, persons in every generation can invoke its principles in their own search for greater freedom.

[Delbert]

Reminds me of the Sam Kinison routine on the Homosexual Necrophiliacs that break into a funeral home.

[Technogeeb]

Nor could they have imagined automatic and semi-automatic firearms, which must mean that we're not allowed to possess them under the Second Amendment, right?

Nonsense; a design for a fully-automatic firearm was presented to Congress for a funding request at the second Congress, and working designs for machine guns go back at least as far as 1718 (James Puckle's design). Concepts for machine guns go back even further. The founders were well aware of the inevitable progress of technology, especially in the field of firearms in which many of the founders were personally interested.

If you're going to try to equate sodomy with a fundamental (and constitutionally enumerated) right, I suggest you get your basic facts straight. It also seems somewhat queer that you would select firearm rights in your comparison, considering (even though they are an enumerated right upon which the Constitution is clear that should "not be infringed") that the modern court have often abridged such rights in spite of explicit Constitutional constraints, restraints which do not exist in the case of rules relating to sodomy.