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Email: "U.S. Supreme Court Strikes Down Texas Sodomy Law"

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Judges accused of undermining democratic process BY LifeSiteNews.com WASHINGTON, June 26, 2003 (LifeSiteNews.com) - In a 6-3 ruling today the U.S. Supreme Court declared the Texas law against homosexual sex acts unconstitutional.  The ruling calls into question anti-sodomy laws in twelve other states.  Justice Kennedy wrote for the majority, and only Justices Scalia and Thomas and Chief Justice Rhenquist dissented   The case, Lawrence and Garner v. Texas (case no. 02-0102), began when John Geddes Lawrence and Tyron Garner were arrested and pled “no contest” to charges of committing “deviate sexual intercourse,” defined under the Texas statutes as “deviate sexual intercourse with another individual of the same sex”.  They appealed to the Texas Court of Appeals, which upheld the convictions, and then to the U.S. Supreme Court.  The Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), one of the interveners in the case, commented on the ruling saying, “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.  The majority reasoned, unbelievably, that because of the trend in state legislatures to repeal sodomy laws, these laws have become unconstitutional.”  The precedent referred to by ADF was the 1986 Bowers v. Hardwick decision, in which the Supreme 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.”  Jan LaRue, chief counsel for Concerned Women for America (CWA) author of CWA’s amicus brief in support of Texas said, “If there’s no rational basis for prohibiting same-sex sodomy by consenting adults, then state laws prohibiting prostitution, adultery, bigamy, and incest are at risk.”  Focus on the Family’s Vice President of Public Policy Tom Minnery commented saying, “With today’s decision the court continues pillaging its way through the moral norms of our country. If the people have no right to regulate sexuality then ultimately the institution of marriage is in peril, and with it, the welfare of the coming generations of children.”  Family Research Council President Ken Connor said, “Once again judicial activists have used their fertile imagination to create rights that simply don’t exist in the Constitution.  In doing so, they have imposed their own moral judgments in place of state legislatures and have thereby undermined the democratic process.  Unelected warriors wearing black robes become the chief architects of public policy.  See the full ruling online at:  http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/02-102.ZS.html http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/us-supreme-court-strikes-down-texas-sodomy-law/

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