Lawrence v. Texas; How the case helps gun owners...

[Gray Peterson]

FYI: The Lawrence court did not use the words "Right to Privacy". They used the word "individual right".

 

[El Tejon]

Lonnie, your analogy falls short in that there is no right to engage in sodomy. However, the 14th Amendment was included to specifically prevent Alabama (as well as the rest of the Souf) from denying blacks their Constitutional rights (sodomy was not one of them).

There was a basis for the Supreme Court to act in extending the Bill of Rights to the Southern states as they denied blacks their Constitutional rights. Criminalizing sodomy is not a Constitutional question, but rather a state legislature question. It is a question of "ought to", not "is."

Since the Supreme Court has chosen to ignore its Constitutional role and act as superlegislature to correct the behavior of unenlightened states such as Tejas, this bodes ill for us as the Court is now free to ignore the Constitution to validate their own policy, not the Constitution.

 

[Gray Peterson]

However, the 14th Amendment was included to specifically prevent Alabama (as well as the rest of the Souf) from denying blacks their Constitutional rights (sodomy was not one of them)

There's also no constitutional right to attend public school or a public university. Therefor, blacks could be excluded from public university systems?

The issue wasn't the "right to an education", as there isn't any under the federal constitution. It was a matter of equal protection.

As you're quite well aware, Texas' homosexual conduct statute (as you can see, on it's face, the statute announced it's intent to single out homosexuals in the title of the section) only applied to "deviant sexual intercourse between two of the same sex".

As for asking the legislature to change it, why should they? A huge majority of the Legislature is heterosexual? Why should they care to change the law just to decriminalize it? Btw, the Legislature did have a few bills in the past few years to repeal the homosexual conduct statute, but it never went anywhere, and don't think it wasn't because the "gay rights" groups didn't push hard enough. It's because the AFA and other statewide "pro-family" groups threatened any politician with defeat if they tried to repeal it. The pro-segregationist forces did the same thing to the Alabama and other southern legislators if they tried to repeal the segregationist laws back in the 1950's and 1960's.

 

[Preacherman]

Folks, I think this thread is spinning in endless circles at the moment. Each side has valid points, and neither side is convincing the other. Also, it's verging on (some would say it's gone headlong over!) the borderline of OT.

Perhaps we should re-word the well-known phrase to read "life, liberty and the happiness of pursuit?"

Closed.