Grudginly accepting a law seems only slightly better than passively accepting it.
Loving v. Virginia. Decided in 1967. And you’re wrong.
What part of “working to change the law” don’t you understand?
I think you may be reaching a bridge too far with that “very great majority” language. While I doubt any particular jurisprudential philosophy will have all of its adherents sign on to every jot and tittle, the broad strokes of my position are hardly the realm of obscure hermits shunned by the rest of legal society. It is a minority position, yes, but certainly a respectable one among legal scholars and judges.
Would that all opponents of the Lawrence decision were as coherent as Dewey. I got quite a few giggles reading the WSJ editorial of last Tuesday blasting the Lawrence decision as an judicial usurpation of authority, then, in the very same editorial, blasting the Supremes for refusing to hear the Nike case.
The Nike case, you see, was dismissed because the Court decided it did not have the authority to hear the case at this point.
According to the viewpoint of the WSJ, judicial usurpation of authority is bad when they don’t like the decision, but mandatory when they do like the decision.
Sua
Oh, yeah? Pardon me if I don’t rely on your say-so, since it doesn’t seem so certain to me. Unlike the current opinion, Loving v. Virginia has as part of its foundation an equal protection issue, because the law in question prohibits inter-racial marriages only to whites. If that law had prohibited all inter-racial marriages, the court may well have had a different opinion; they could certainly not have used the same logic.
**I’ll ask yet again: if you feel equal protection is so unassailable in the current case, why do you suppose the majority opinion did not rely on it?
FTR, race-related matters are a “suspect class” for equal protection purposes, subject to “strict scrutiny” analysis. For that reason, it is much, much harder to have a law that makes any kind of distinction based on race pass constitutional muster. On those grounds, I strongly suspect even your race-neutral anti-miscegenation law would fail the court’s scrutiny.
To expand on what Dewey said. “Race” is impossible to define in the first place so it would be an unenforceable law. How do you prove what “race” somebody is when race has no biological meaning? Any attempt at a legal definition would be so arbitrary as to render it worthless.
Discrimination laws don’t have this problem because it’s not necessary to prove the race of the victim, only that the victim was discriminated against based on a perception of race.
Can? Sure.
Should? Definitely.
Do?
DO?..
Thus, the principle known as representation reinforcement*.
*"[A] process-based notion that the courts should use judicial review aggressively only when the electoral process has broken down or is tampered with or when litigants are deemed not to have a fair chance to achieve change at the ballot box, either because of hostile laws or because of prejudice against them." Peter Linzer, The Carolene Products Footnote and the Preferred Position of Individual Rights, 12 Const. Commentary 277, 278 (1995)
As to the whole hijack about the equivelance of homosexual sodomy versus heterosexual sodomy, that is answered by another principle. de minimis non curat lex The larger issue is the same. The state’s interest in consenting adult sexual behavior practiced in private. The details, like the presence of a prostate gland, are irrelevant. The law is not concerned with trifles.
Enjoy,
Steven
What part of “grudgingly accept” don’t you understand? Is accusing each other of not understanding our positions really going to accomplish anything? It’s quite possible to work to change a law, while at the same accepting it as a valid law.
I think “acceptance” implies that you have no recourse but to live under the law. Not so. Laws can be changed.
I still think arguing that the government is violating your right to privacy by arresting you for sodomy is stupid, if you have to go to the lengths of making false statements to the police to induce them to arrest you.
Regards,
Shodan
That isnt true in this case and many others. The reason we are a republic (not a democracy) is that there are too many ppl for a direct democracy and our “founding fathers” (and that darling mother Abby Adams) did not trust the masses to make a decision (a person is smart, people are not). Since we are a republic, decision making is delegated to our congresspeople, president/admin, judges and justices, etc. What the Supreme Court did was say that a) a law was unconstitutional (you remember the Constituion. Despite the Patriot Act, it exists) and that b) discrimination against a group of people was illegal in this case.
There has been no trade off. Queers don’t hurt anything (in fact, they may bring the population down so less spent resources yea) So check your government books, buddy, cause u r off
I’m gonna hit each point in order ok folks? Thanks
Paragraph 1: Despite your disclaimer, you are going into a common equivocation (mmm big word, im so smart, go me) and you are choosing to say that two adult men, in full mental capacity, choosing to engage in anal intercourse is the equivalent of one man, in full mental capacity, choosing to inflict anal intercourse on an animal, which, and im just gonna ignore the PETA flamers on this one, is not at our mental level or able to say no
Paragraph 2: so you can be a Christian, just not pray, worship in a church, witness, or any of the other beliefs. And CHRISTIANITY IS A RUDDY CHOICE! You can be black but just not look it? You can have cancer, just dont get treatment? Sorry, that argument fails, fully
No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor )deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws . (Amendment XIV, U.S. Constitution).
O’Conner was right: this was NOT equal protection… it was unequal comepletely. And btw: a domestic abuser is a threat to society and to health and well being
Reminder to all: privacy became part of the consitutional debate in Griswold v. Connecticut. Its a penumbra of the 4th amendment. Who else loves the word penumbra?
Again, this is fine in theory, but crap in practice. Remember the cite from Governor Bush that said he’d veto any attempt to repeal the Texas Sodomy law? Even if the representatives got off their asses and started cleaning it up, a single jerk can derail it. Well, there are safegaurds against that too right? Vetos can be overridden, governors can be voted out. Sure, a disenfranchised minority is going to be able to mobilize enough support in the legislature to override a veto or swing the next election. Sure thing. In the meantime they’re still being legally denied the same freedoms others enjoy daily(or nightly as the case may be).
These cries of “democracy works” should all have the qualifier “in theory” on them. Check out the dumb laws site sometime and see some of democracy in practice instead of hanging doggedly onto the theory. Because, you know, socialism works, in theory, too.
Shodan, what the heck are you talking about? Lawrence and Gardner were, one or both, closeted at the time of their arrest. They didn’t “stage” this. An activist group contacted them and offered free legal services if they would pursue the case. At THAT point it turned into a crusade, but it wasn’t “making false statements to the police to induce them to arrest [them]”.
Enjoy,
Steven
Shodan, my friend, I really have to call you on this one. It’s entirely plausible that sometime, somewhere, some person made a false statemnt in order to put him;'herself in a position to mount a test case. But in the cases under discussion, both Lawrence and *Bowers, this was not in fact the case.
What, in fact, caused you to bring this apparent deceased fish into the discussion?
Question: Would conservatives support a Constitutional amendment extending protection to gay relationships (assuming it was tailored to exclude polygamy, etc. and ignoring the burdens of the amendment process)?
Depends on who you call conservative.
The ones who are tearing their hair out over the Lawrence v. Texas decision are religious conservatives who abhor homosexuality, regard it as a sinful perversion, and who believe that homosexuals deserve our scorn and condemnation until they change their sinful ways by either shedding their sinful ways and entering into matrimonial monogamous heterosexual procreative relationships, or, at the least, abstain from intimate contact completely. These conservatives would stridently oppose anything that smacks of giving homosexuals equal rights or equal protection, or that would take away their right to discriminate against homosexuals (by, for example, refusing to hire them, refusing to rent to them, etc.) Tolerance for homosexuality, for them, is intolerance of their homophobia.
Small government isn’t the key issue for these conservatives; it’s that they believe the U.S. is a Christian nation that needs to be run according to Biblical teachings.
These people are also fairly reliable Republican voters, so Karl Rove needs to make sure they are fed enough red meat so that they will come to the polls and vote for Bush. The Bush 43 party line is that Bush 41 did not sufficiently respect his religiously conservative voting base, and they stayed home in 1992, ushering in eight years of darkness in which no one named “Bush” was running the country. So these people wield disproportionate clout.