The Supreme Court: Unlocked Doors and Whitey

IntellectualConservative.com ^ | Friday, December 6th | Brian S. Wise

[Illbay]

What does your "living, breathing" Constitution actually SAY about sodomy in the Ninth Amendment?

And why for centuries was this undiscovered until YOU in your incredible wisdom were able to discern it?

[Illbay]

Yes, they're located in the Bush Red Zone.

[Illbay]

"Someone" is. That "someone" is the community, all of us.

This notion that only individuals can be "harmed" by crime or there is no crime is false. It is NEWTHINK.

Note that in a criminal prosecution it isn't "The Victim vs. The Alleged Perpetrator."

It is "The State vs. The Alleged Perpetrator."

There's a reason for that.

[Illbay]

"I (or my particular religious fantasy) feel that it is wrong, and therefore it should be a jailable offense."

"It" can also be murder, or grand larceny, or armed robbery.

In some Muslim countries, it is absolutely considered proper for a male relative to kill a female relative if they have "dishonored" the family by committing fornication, for example. To us, that's a "jailable offense" because our "particular religious fantasy" proscribes it (and don't give us any guff about "human dignity." If humans determined this stuff ANYTHING would be legal. Religion is the single palliative to a host of human ills).

[Illbay]

Tell me, is it okay then for this to take place at the street-corner in front of your house? Why or why not?

[PeoplesRepublicOfWashington]

Is it possible for a Texan to publically expose his anus in a non-provocative manner?

[mhking]

Black conservative ping

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[PeoplesRepublicOfWashington]

"Conventional (normal, heterosexual) sex between consenting adults in privacy" is prohibited in all states except Nevada if money changes hands.

"Conventional (normal, heterosexual) sex between consenting adults in privacy" virtually requires, in most if not all states, that money change hands. Have you checked on divorce laws?

[jammer]

This case is about lowering public standards of decency.

I am a more than a little skeptical about the universality of the shibboleth, "You can't legislate morality." But, really, this case isn't about lowering public standards of decency. It's about removing laws that attempt to legislate private activity.

I am of two minds, however. The principles of federalism, as stated above about Roe v Wade's intellectual quicksand, require that the court allow cities to make their own laws. This just isn't a federal matter. I don't agree with the laws--I just don't agree that it is Washington's business.

[meyer]

Did the police have to enter to discover the activity, or was opening the door and observing from outside sufficient?

I don't know the particulars of the case, but I beleive that they merely had to open the door and look in. It was the living room where the "activity" was taking place. Does this matter legally? Should this matter legally?

[csvset]

Tyron Garner, right, and John Lawrence, left, listen to their lawyer, Suzanne Goldberg, center, speak to reporters after a Harris County Criminal Court judge found them guilty and fined them for homosexual conduct on Dec. 22, 1998, in Houston. The Supreme Court said Monday, Dec.2, 2002, it would consider whether states can punish homosexuals for having sex, a case that tests the constitutionality of sodomy laws in 13 states. The justices will review the prosecution of these two men under a state law making it a crime to engage in same-sex intercourse. The two men, arrested for having sex in a private home, appealed their conviction under Texas' sodomy law. (AP Photo/Michael Stravato,file)

[meyer]

Its hard to beleive that their lawyer which is apparently the one speaking is a woman. I would have expected, from looking at the picture, that the two on the right were the guys that were "light in their loafers" as it were. Strange...

[laredo44]

This is a state's rights issue. There's nothing in the U.S. constitution that delineates a right to sodomy...

Your thinking faces 180 degrees away from liberty. Our tyrannies come from just your kind of logic and are supported by you and those that think like you do.

The Constitution is not a deliniation of rights eventhough it does list a few, Amendment IX is very specific about that. Rights are not something dispensed by government. They inhere to individuals and are independent of any state or form of state.

All governments, including states have no rights. Only individuals have rights. States have powers, not rights. The purpose of those powers is to secure the rights of individuals.

[Straight Vermonter]

Ronald Reagan’s long held wish to get government off of the people’s backs

It wasn't the government who was on that guy's back. LOL

[bvw]

Produce the comprehensive survey of the laws of private spaces -- which term, btw, changes within a body of laws, and can be peculiar in statute definition and case law interpretation.

Do you think I used the term "g-string" for naught, it was a clue -- that is this -- when you can be clear be so, and sodomy is clear -- modesty, public decency, and privacy are not so clear and perversion is like a spider's web -- each strand barely noted, but with continued efforts a trap is sprung. Good folks go along with simple seemingly harmless concepts when stated -- such as "we already protect against lewdness and sexual acts in public" or "we already define private spaces".

Yet go into any convenience store -- look near the counter at the vista any five year old sees -- naked and near-naked men and women in provocative pose on many a magazine. Do the concepts work there? NO! Or consider the misfortune and aggravation had in many a nieghborhood once a lap-dancer bar moves in -- why that's a private space -- the bar itself, in some places, or a okay under a relaxed intrepretation of public decency and modesty in others. I'll even exempt and allow for long established red-light districts off the usual school-age kid and families day-to-day business path -- still you have fierce and contentious battles every day about what constitutes lewdness, nakedness, a sex act, and a private space. That is a common sense, a known warning, yet good folks miss it at the time some down-sliding, yet amiable, gaffer says "We we already a have provision for that aspect of it. Let us remove this ancient marker in the law, let us be more modern."

Again, Karsus -- show us the facts, the as-it-really-is, the survey, the comprehensive researched narrative that shows how adequately modest "private areas" are already defined in the law so that removing a far more clear ban on sodomy, no innocent child would suffer entering a park restroom to see a 69 in progress, or no family on the beach would have to leave to avoid having kid chance to glimpse under the boardwalk were those two men are actively engaging under a big-enough-for the-local-court blanket.

[laredo44]

This is a states rights

States have no rights. Your ignornace of the reason for government gives rise to your own foolishness in this arena and aid and comfort to tyrannts everywhere.

[laredo44]

It is also amazing to see "conservatives" who hate big goverment want to get the goverment involved on issues they don't like.

They are, of course, not really interested in limited government. They simply have their own reasons for wanting to be tyrannts.

[bvw]

If only the laws of physics obeyed such human constructs as "privacy" as well as your fervid imagination would have it! Why we could bax in a black hole and never worry about the rest of the local univesre falling in after it. Even inside the most artfully and tightly constructed box physicists have learned that at least by gravity and inertia, the aspects of the thing inside the box and what goes on within it do indeed affect the outside world.

Physics teaches us, at least by suggestion, of what can happen in the social, the psychological, and spiritual world we live in too. No act, even under the greatest cover, in the darkest room, goes on without affect on all of us. Not only at the time of the act, but also the actors in that act carry the results -- the fruit, the scent, the echo -- out of that private space with them.

[laredo44]

Also the government has the right

Governments do not have rights.

[bvw]

If humans determined this stuff ANYTHING would be legal. Religion is the single palliative to a host of human ills.

The question then becomes which religion is the true religion -- and that, for all the pain that goes along with it -- is still a far sight better than the alternative.

We already have reports of te final result of the alternative. Most recently: the lives and fate of the aboriginal inhabitants of Van Damien's Land.