Dback Jon

It may not be what you would expect - he supports the ruling, and thinks straights should get their own marriage house in order, then maybe they might have an argument against gay marriage:



< < Back to Start of Article WASHINGTON The Supreme Court has just slammed America's bedroom door. Sodomy - defined in the new 11th edition of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate as "anal or oral copulation with a member of the same or opposite sex" - when practiced between consenting adults, straight or gay, is none of the government's business.
.
Libertarian conservatives like me who place a high value on personal freedom consider Lawrence v. Texas a victory in the war to defend everyone's privacy. Homosexuals hail the decision as the law's belated recognition of fairness, which it is, but some would escalate that to American society's acceptance of their lifestyle, which is at least premature.
.
Traditionalist conservatives put forward a concern that officially decriminalizing sodomy might undermine state laws against adult incest (as between grown-up siblings). But that universal taboo is driven as much by the genetic dangers of inbreeding as by morality or law.
.
Of more immediate concern to traditionalists is the dramatic warning issued from the Supreme Court bench by dissenting Justice Antonin Scalia. He predicted that this legal triumph for gays would lead to the next big antidiscrimination item on the homosexual agenda: legal sanction of the marriage of two people of the same sex.
.
Scalia is right about that. We can now expect this question to be asked of every candidate for political office. Because polls will show a majority of voters are uncomfortable with the notion, the issue of same-sex marriage will be evaded or fudged by those primary candidates with an eye on the general election campaign. But the s-s-m issue is now seriously in play.
.
Don't underestimate the depth of feeling about this on the religious right. Not just fundamentalists, but many churchgoers and congregants see this as a perversion of the institution of marriage and an assault on American standards of morality. Branding them as mindless bigots, or for daring to argue that a child's sexual orientation may be influenced by that of his or her parents, is unfair and divisive.
.
Believers in family values should take up the challenge and repair our own house. Sooner or later, one of our states - perhaps Vermont, which already has "civil unions," or Massachusetts or some other liberal bastion - will get in step with Canadian trends and make it legally possible for gays to marry, with all the tax breaks, insurance benefits and spousal visitation rights and protections.
.
What about all the other states that anticipated this cultural battle and passed laws refusing to recognize any such marriages? The coming dispute among states will go to the Supreme Court, and even if the next three appointees are Scalia clones, I'll bet the court will hold that the laws of one state that do not offend the U.S. Constitution must be recognized by all other states.
.
After that decision, some wedding guests will be hard pressed to forever hold their peace. One reason is that straight marriage is showing signs of strain. More nubile women are postponing weddings to pursue careers. More eligible men dither along into uncommitted cohabitation. More of our marriages are ending in divorce, as no-fault life doth us part. Now marriage isn't even between one man and one woman, the way it's been for thousands of years. Traditionalists despair: What's happening to the idea of the rock-solid, procreative, mutually supportive family?
.
Rather than wring our hands and cry "abomination!", believers in family values should take up the challenge and repair our own house.
.
Why do too many Americans derogate as losers those parents who put family ahead of career, or smack their lips reading about celebrities who switch spouses for fun? Why do we turn to the government for succor, to movie porn and violence for sex and thrills, to the Internet for companionship, to the restaurant for Thanksgiving dinner - when those functions are the ties that bind families?
.
I used to fret about same-sex marriage. Maybe competition from responsible gays would revive opposite-sex marriage.
.
Last week (IHT, June 24) I misquoted Walt Whitman as writing "Very well then I am inconsistent." What he wrote, in "Song of Myself," was "Very well then I contradict myself." Best of a torrent of corrections came from Prof. James Bloom of Muhlenberg College: "Whitman knew that using an active-voice transitive verb always beats a copula-and-adjective-complement combo."
.
E-mail: safire@nytimes.com WASHINGTON The Supreme Court has just slammed America's bedroom door. Sodomy - defined in the new 11th edition of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate as "anal or oral copulation with a member of the same or opposite sex" - when practiced between consenting adults, straight or gay, is none of the government's business.
.
Libertarian conservatives like me who place a high value on personal freedom consider Lawrence v. Texas a victory in the war to defend everyone's privacy. Homosexuals hail the decision as the law's belated recognition of fairness, which it is, but some would escalate that to American society's acceptance of their lifestyle, which is at least premature.
.
Traditionalist conservatives put forward a concern that officially decriminalizing sodomy might undermine state laws against adult incest (as between grown-up siblings). But that universal taboo is driven as much by the genetic dangers of inbreeding as by morality or law.
.
Of more immediate concern to traditionalists is the dramatic warning issued from the Supreme Court bench by dissenting Justice Antonin Scalia. He predicted that this legal triumph for gays would lead to the next big antidiscrimination item on the homosexual agenda: legal sanction of the marriage of two people of the same sex.
.
Scalia is right about that. We can now expect this question to be asked of every candidate for political office. Because polls will show a majority of voters are uncomfortable with the notion, the issue of same-sex marriage will be evaded or fudged by those primary candidates with an eye on the general election campaign. But the s-s-m issue is now seriously in play.
.
Don't underestimate the depth of feeling about this on the religious right. Not just fundamentalists, but many churchgoers and congregants see this as a perversion of the institution of marriage and an assault on American standards of morality. Branding them as mindless bigots, or for daring to argue that a child's sexual orientation may be influenced by that of his or her parents, is unfair and divisive.
.
Believers in family values should take up the challenge and repair our own house. Sooner or later, one of our states - perhaps Vermont, which already has "civil unions," or Massachusetts or some other liberal bastion - will get in step with Canadian trends and make it legally possible for gays to marry, with all the tax breaks, insurance benefits and spousal visitation rights and protections.
.
What about all the other states that anticipated this cultural battle and passed laws refusing to recognize any such marriages? The coming dispute among states will go to the Supreme Court, and even if the next three appointees are Scalia clones, I'll bet the court will hold that the laws of one state that do not offend the U.S. Constitution must be recognized by all other states.
.
After that decision, some wedding guests will be hard pressed to forever hold their peace. One reason is that straight marriage is showing signs of strain. More nubile women are postponing weddings to pursue careers. More eligible men dither along into uncommitted cohabitation. More of our marriages are ending in divorce, as no-fault life doth us part. Now marriage isn't even between one man and one woman, the way it's been for thousands of years. Traditionalists despair: What's happening to the idea of the rock-solid, procreative, mutually supportive family?
.
Rather than wring our hands and cry "abomination!", believers in family values should take up the challenge and repair our own house.
.
Why do too many Americans derogate as losers those parents who put family ahead of career, or smack their lips reading about celebrities who switch spouses for fun? Why do we turn to the government for succor, to movie porn and violence for sex and thrills, to the Internet for companionship, to the restaurant for Thanksgiving dinner - when those functions are the ties that bind families?
.
I used to fret about same-sex marriage. Maybe competition from responsible gays would revive opposite-sex marriage.
.
Last week (IHT, June 24) I misquoted Walt Whitman as writing "Very well then I am inconsistent." What he wrote, in "Song of Myself," was "Very well then I contradict myself." Best of a torrent of corrections came from Prof. James Bloom of Muhlenberg College: "Whitman knew that using an active-voice transitive verb always beats a copula-and-adjective-complement combo."
.
E-mail: safire@nytimes.com WASHINGTON The Supreme Court has just slammed America's bedroom door. Sodomy - defined in the new 11th edition of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate as "anal or oral copulation with a member of the same or opposite sex" - when practiced between consenting adults, straight or gay, is none of the government's business.
.
Libertarian conservatives like me who place a high value on personal freedom consider Lawrence v. Texas a victory in the war to defend everyone's privacy. Homosexuals hail the decision as the law's belated recognition of fairness, which it is, but some would escalate that to American society's acceptance of their lifestyle, which is at least premature.
.
Traditionalist conservatives put forward a concern that officially decriminalizing sodomy might undermine state laws against adult incest (as between grown-up siblings). But that universal taboo is driven as much by the genetic dangers of inbreeding as by morality or law.
.
Of more immediate concern to traditionalists is the dramatic warning issued from the Supreme Court bench by dissenting Justice Antonin Scalia. He predicted that this legal triumph for gays would lead to the next big antidiscrimination item on the homosexual agenda: legal sanction of the marriage of two people of the same sex.
.
Scalia is right about that. We can now expect this question to be asked of every candidate for political office. Because polls will show a majority of voters are uncomfortable with the notion, the issue of same-sex marriage will be evaded or fudged by those primary candidates with an eye on the general election campaign. But the s-s-m issue is now seriously in play.
.
Don't underestimate the depth of feeling about this on the religious right. Not just fundamentalists, but many churchgoers and congregants see this as a perversion of the institution of marriage and an assault on American standards of morality. Branding them as mindless bigots, or for daring to argue that a child's sexual orientation may be influenced by that of his or her parents, is unfair and divisive.
.
Believers in family values should take up the challenge and repair our own house.

__________________



R.I.P Tim Minnick

The KING of Cards

SirStefan32

The president appoints Supreme Court Justices, and there is really nothing to complain about. Whoever happens to be in the office appoints the judges.

I know that Rehnquist, O'Conner, Scalia, Thomas and Kennedy were appointed by republican presidents. Not Sure about the other four.

__________________
"Don't try to threaten me Mulder! I've watched presidents die."

"If people would know the things I know, we'd all fall apart."

"Once again, tonight, the course of human history will be set by two unknown men standing in the shadows."

Cigarette Smoking Man

Krangthebrain

I'm not saying that the Constitution or the Bill of Rights are bs. but state's rights largely don't exist much anymore. And it's a good thing.

But I think I'm done talking about this. A very circular argument, and very opinion-based. I just think people who oppose homosexuality are using state's rights as an argument, the same way racist southerners were using it to fight off civil rights, and before that slavery.

__________________
26-year-old Saermengsi last season rated average 25.1 minutes, with 7.5 hours, 2.7 times and 2.7 backboard secondary attack, he Yifusen general as the replacement came in March Yifusen injuries ever period of time, three matches in a row, his secondary attack will reach 10. By Sun team, he could strengthen outer lane line, but also as the replacement fullback scored his general customary activities in the stadium two wings. On the season Saermengsi-ball hit rate reached 30%. He was in flames and Jones made a three-year teammate, Jones said that the organizers he pitches, but he can also shooting. His shooting is deceptive.

SirStefan32

Wait a minute,

You are saying that states right are BS.
States rights are in the Bill of Rights.
Therefore, Bill of Rights is BS.

I am sorry, but that is exactly what you are saying.

__________________
"Don't try to threaten me Mulder! I've watched presidents die."

"If people would know the things I know, we'd all fall apart."

"Once again, tonight, the course of human history will be set by two unknown men standing in the shadows."

Cigarette Smoking Man

Dback Jon

Stevens was appointed by Ford.
Souter by Bush I.
Breyer and Ginsburg by Clinton.

__________________



R.I.P Tim Minnick

The KING of Cards

Krangthebrain

That's how you choose to intrepret that.

But history and righteousness are on my side Stefan. And there are no greater allies.

__________________
26-year-old Saermengsi last season rated average 25.1 minutes, with 7.5 hours, 2.7 times and 2.7 backboard secondary attack, he Yifusen general as the replacement came in March Yifusen injuries ever period of time, three matches in a row, his secondary attack will reach 10. By Sun team, he could strengthen outer lane line, but also as the replacement fullback scored his general customary activities in the stadium two wings. On the season Saermengsi-ball hit rate reached 30%. He was in flames and Jones made a three-year teammate, Jones said that the organizers he pitches, but he can also shooting. His shooting is deceptive.

Brian in Mesa

Wow...they sure have softened the definition (such is the way of the world...).

American Heritage Dictionary (from Dictionary.com): Sodomy - Any of various forms of sexual intercourse held to be unnatural or abnormal, especially anal intercourse or bestiality.

__________________
"If Chuck is Solo, Larkin is his Fett!" - Morgan

Krangthebrain

Bestiality????

Sounds like the religious right threw that in! Conspiracy theories abound!

__________________
26-year-old Saermengsi last season rated average 25.1 minutes, with 7.5 hours, 2.7 times and 2.7 backboard secondary attack, he Yifusen general as the replacement came in March Yifusen injuries ever period of time, three matches in a row, his secondary attack will reach 10. By Sun team, he could strengthen outer lane line, but also as the replacement fullback scored his general customary activities in the stadium two wings. On the season Saermengsi-ball hit rate reached 30%. He was in flames and Jones made a three-year teammate, Jones said that the organizers he pitches, but he can also shooting. His shooting is deceptive.

Brian in Mesa

ROTFL

Even Webster's had it defined differently in their Webster's Revised Unabridged Edition:

sodomy

\Sod"om*y\, n. [From Sodom. a country mentioned in the Bible: cf. F. sodomite.] Carnal copulation in a manner against nature; buggery. --Gen. xix. 5.


No religious right conspiracy...after all...the word does originate from a biblical city known for sexually immoral acts. Most definitions state (or used to state, in some cases) that it is abnormal or unnatural.

__________________
"If Chuck is Solo, Larkin is his Fett!" - Morgan

Dback Jon

Definitions change over time, BIM.

The real hoot is that the sin of Sodom had nothing to do with sex, but was inhospitibility towards others......

Which makes people like Falwell, Dobson, Frist SODOMITES!!!

__________________



R.I.P Tim Minnick

The KING of Cards

Krangthebrain

Exactly. That's what I was always taught.

__________________
26-year-old Saermengsi last season rated average 25.1 minutes, with 7.5 hours, 2.7 times and 2.7 backboard secondary attack, he Yifusen general as the replacement came in March Yifusen injuries ever period of time, three matches in a row, his secondary attack will reach 10. By Sun team, he could strengthen outer lane line, but also as the replacement fullback scored his general customary activities in the stadium two wings. On the season Saermengsi-ball hit rate reached 30%. He was in flames and Jones made a three-year teammate, Jones said that the organizers he pitches, but he can also shooting. His shooting is deceptive.

Brian in Mesa

That's why my first post said "such is the way of the world."

__________________
"If Chuck is Solo, Larkin is his Fett!" - Morgan

WaywardFan

Can we just have some more sodomy rhyming?

__________________
Fell deeds awake... Now for Wrath... Now for Ruin... and the Red Dawn...

Dback Jon

Grand Old Gay Bashers
by Harold Meyerson

Antonin Scalia is raging against the coming of the light.
Scalia's dissent from last week's epochal Supreme Court decision striking down Texas's anti-sodomy statute confirms Ayatollah Antonin's standing as the intellectual leader of the forces arrayed against equality and modernity in the United States. In establishing the deep historical roots of anti-gay sentiment in America, for instance, Scalia took pains to note the 20 prosecutions and four executions for consensual gay sex conducted in colonial times. He noted, approvingly, that even today, "many Americans do not want persons who openly engage in homosexual conduct as partners in their business, as scoutmasters for their children, as teachers in their children's schools or as boarders in their home."

Actually, back in 1978, a California electorate far more conservative than today's massively repudiated an initiative seeking to ban gays from teaching school, but this inconvenient fact -- and other evidence of a massive shift in public sentiment on gay rights -- doesn't have quite the legal majesty of those four colonial executions. (Scalia is uncharacteristically short on detail here. Were they hangings or burnings?) Scalia's justifications for discriminatory conduct sound terribly familiar. Change "homosexual" to "Negro" and Scalia is at one with the authors of Plessy v. Ferguson's mandate for "separate but equal" schools, and the judges who upheld anti-miscegenation statutes. Indeed, of the 13 states whose anti-sodomy statutes were struck down last Thursday, 10 were once slave states of the South. In what has always been the main event in American history -- the battle to expand the definition of "men" in Jefferson's mighty line on who's created equal -- these are the states that have had to be dragged along kicking and screaming.

More immediately, 12 of the 13 states with sodomy laws on the books were states that George W. Bush carried in the 2000 election, and the 13th -- Florida -- was the one that Scalia and company handed to him. The culture wars over legal equality for gays -- save on the question of gay marriage -- are pretty much settled within the Democratic Party. It's the Republicans who are split on the question of equal rights for gays.

And in this battle, Scalia has no shortage of allies -- the recent and current Republican congressional leadership first and foremost. From Dick Armey, who referred to gay Democratic Rep. Barney Frank as "Barney Fag," to Rick Santorum, who equated consensual gay sex to "man-on-dog" fornication, to Tom DeLay, who's declared that the United States is and ought to remain a "Christian nation," to Trent Lott, who pined for segregation, the recent and current leaders of the Republican Party in Congress have compiled an impressive record of industrial-strength prejudice.

So where's the outrage? Lott, to be sure, had to step down, but for the rest, it looks as if gay-bashing is not only accepted in the highest Republican circles but actually a prerequisite for leadership. Just this Sunday, Bill Frist took to the airwaves to tout a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. Frist looked mighty uncomfortable in the part; his statements were almost incoherent, and he conveyed the sense that he was speaking less from personal passion than from partisan duty.

Of course, plenty of Republicans welcomed last week's decision (beginning, I suspect, with Vice President Cheney). Plenty of Republicans are appalled when the United States votes in international bodies with Saudi Arabia and a handful of fundamentalist states against women's rights, reproductive freedoms and contraception distribution programs. Plenty of Republicans sicken at the hatreds expressed by their legislative leaders. But plenty or not, try to find a national Republican who speaks out for equality of sexual orientation or condemns the expressions of bias.

It's way past time for a prominent Republican to give a Sister Souljah speech. In a period when the United States finds itself threatened by an international network of religious intolerants fuming at modernity and equality, you'd think some GOP notables might step up to condemn the like-minded intolerants in their own ranks -- indeed, atop them. Is there no decent Republican with the guts to note that his party could do better than be led by a rats' nest of bigots?

The writer is editor at large of the American Prospect.

© 2003 The Washington Post Company

__________________



R.I.P Tim Minnick

The KING of Cards

Dback Jon

Scalia:

"many Americans do not want persons who openly engage in homosexual conduct as partners in their business, as scoutmasters for their children, as teachers in their children's schools or as boarders in their home."

Can anyone on this board agree 100% with this statement from "The Best Conservative Mind"?
If so, tell me why I should be banned from teaching........

__________________



R.I.P Tim Minnick

The KING of Cards