The point I’m trying to make is that if the Republican platform is fully implemented, sodomy laws would remain on the books or be re-introduced. Any laws mentioning civil rights protections with “sexual orientation” in them would be repealed.
While I’ve only recently come out to the SDMB, I’ve been out in the real world since June 20th, 1980, my date of discharge from the Navy. I make no attempts to hide my homosexuality. I don’t have sex in public, but I live openly with my lover in quiet neighborhood on the NE side of Austin. I feel it would only be a matter of time before someone called the cops, they busted down my door and arrested me. And don’t laugh, that’s EXACTLY what happened in the case that brought the latest appeal to the sodomy law here in Texas.
The Dubya has gone on record, at least in Texas, of supporting and keeping the sodomy law. He’s even gone as far to say he’ll veto any attempts to overturn it because he sees it as “a symbolic gesture to maintaining the sanctity of the family” (where the hell that means). Currently the law is being appealed in courts, FOR THE THIRD TIME! I dunno, this is Texas and I’ve given up trying to make sense of it.
Not telling you how to vote, but I wouldn’t be too worried about it if I were you. These sodomy laws have been on the books for years, and there were no mass arrests during the Reagan-Bush years. I don’t see any movement to do this anytime soon.
People opposed to civil rights protection for sexual orientation are not attempting to have gays beaten up, or even discriminated against. But courts have had a tendency to stretch such legislation is unforseeable ways (as in the Americans with Disabilities Act). Thus people who want the freedom to bring up their families in their own way have a reasonable fear that this freedom will be limited by such legislation.
Not telling you how to vote, but I wouldn’t be too worried about it if I were you. These sodomy laws have been on the books for years, and there were no mass arrests during the Reagan-Bush years. I don’t see any movement to do this anytime soon.
Have you heard of the Bowers Vs Hardwick Decision of the US Supreme Court? Handed down in June of '86, it said (paraphrased) that homosexuals have no US Constitutional right of privacy. Individual states can make laws that criminalize their private behavior yet they have no recourse under the US constitution. I’m a 2nd class citizen in this country because of that. Here’s a cite:
Freyr: The Bowers of the cite is Michael Bowers, GOP, former attorney general of Georgia. In 1990 he rescinded a job offer to Robin Shahar after finding she had engaged in a religious commitment ceremony with her female partner, explaining her actions ‘implied’ she had broken Georgia’s anti-sodomy law. She sued and eventually the Supreme Court decided not to hear arguements on the case. For an overview see http://www.hrc.org/feature1/shahar.html.
The delicious irony is that Bowers in 1997 found his gubernatorial candidacy derailed when details of his 10 year adulterous affair became public. Adultery is a misdemeanor in Georgia. Bowers was one of the favorites but his candidacy crumpled.
Would that all hypocrites get such public comeuppance.
I am not denying any of this. I weas referring to your earlier statement that
I don’t think this is a realistic fear. The percentage of gays in this country who have been arrested for sodomy is minescule, and not likely to change. However, if you don’t want to vote for someone who would make you feel like a second class citizen, I do not propose to argue with you.
There is more irony in the wake of the Bowers court decision. Subsequent to the Supreme Court’s ruling (which held that the U.S. Constitution did not prevent the individual states from passing anti-sodomy laws), the Georgia Supreme Court ruled that the anti-sodomy law violated the Georgia State Constitution.
The irony is that the constitution of this presumptively conservative Southern state provides its citizens with greater protection of personal freedom and privacy than the U.S. Constitution.
I had a Poli-Sci class a few years ago in which we talked about this case. With nothing substantive to offer as opinion here, I just have to say that it was the easiest case to remember for the test. Being that the case was about sodomy, the name “Bowers (image of someone bending over at the waist) Vs Hardwick (which needs little explaining)” was one of the most humorous examples of coincidence I can remember!
I don’t think this is a realistic fear. The percentage of gays in this country who have been arrested for sodomy is minescule, and not likely to change. However, if you don’t want to vote for someone who would make you feel like a second class citizen, I do not propose to argue with you
sigh Tho this has gone far afield of the original post, I’ll try to swing this back to the concept of someone being a hypocrite.
It’s not that I feel like a 2nd class citizen, I AM a 2nd class citizen. The Supreme court ruling has made that a judicial fact. The highest court in the land has interpreted the law to say that I DO NOT have the same right of privacy that you enjoy.
The Supreme Court of Louisiana has even gone as far as to say that the legislature is perfectly within its right to criminalize certain behaviors (sodomy in particular) and people can’t hide behind a right of privacy to prevent that. The Dubya has gone on record to say that he supports the sodomy statute and will veto any attempts to overturn it via the legislature.
Now, as for the matter of being a hypocrite, do you remember the Pledge of Alliegence you swore by back in school? Do you remember the last phrase of that pledge? “With liberty and justice for all?”
Do I have equal justice in this country? Am I being treated equaly before the eyes of the law?
You have the same rights as anyone else. Different acts are treated differently. You have more of a desire than many other people do to perform certain acts that are considered illegal. So these laws have a disproportionate impact on you. But there are many laws that impact people disproportionately. This does not mean that all people are not being treated equally.
How about arbitrary laws designed to criminalize behavior that is practiced by an overwhelming percentage of the populace, which have no impact on the public health, which furthermore are used primarily as a way to target one small subset of the population out of the enormous pool of those practicing it? That certainly seems to be the case here. If I were to pass a law that said hats were illegal, and then only arrested Jews who wore yarmulkas, wouldn’t that be a little suspect in your eyes?
You may be right. As I think about your hypothetical law, I can’t decide if I would think it was an odious law but one that treated everyone equally, or one that did not treat everyone equally. So, not being sure, I retract my earlier statement.
This applies to a law that was enforced equally. If it was enforced unequally, as you suggest, I am sure that I would think it was flat out discrimination. If the sodomy laws are only enforced for gays and not heterosexuals under equal circumstances than I totally agree with you. But is it possible that it is simply not practical to determine whether a heterosexual has engaged in this practice?
In any event, I again retract my earlier words.
(BTW, I’m surprised that the Supreme Court lets these laws stand, when things like abortion are covered under supposed rights to privacy. I think there was or is a similar case involving some form of sex toys down south. But I’m not sure what the ruling was on this, if any).
Well Izzy, I went and waded through the link provided earlier to the Justices’ decision, and I am fairly disgusted with what I saw there. The 4 dissenting opinions quite fairly point out a number of serious flaws with this decision. Basically, the Court stated that the Constitutional right of privacy did not extend to homosexual sodomy. It did not address whether or not the law would be deemed constitutional if there were a heterosexual defendant In fact there was a John and Jane Doe who were also suing to have the law overturned, but their case was dismissed because they had not been arrested, but were seeking to overturn the law “before” a violation occurred. The court avoided the issue of heterosexual sodomy even though the law merely mentions the mouth, genitalia, and anus, not the genders of participants. It also mentions “traditonal Judeo-Christian values,” and it so specifically singles out private, consensual homosexual conduct as something that is within the legislature’s purview that I have a difficult time believing it is of such recent origins.
The real problem I have here is that there is absolutely no public threat, no health issue, and no reasonable interpretation of compelling public interest on which to base such a law. It is wholly arbitrary, and seems to be nothing other than a way to tell consenting adults who are causing no harm how they can behave in the bedroom. I am not gay, know nobody who is (openly at least) gay, and am not affected by this law. (Thankfully, one of the footnotes informed me that Illinois decriminalized private sexual behavior among consenting adults years ago.) However, it infuriates me to see the Supreme Court uphold such unwarranted government intrusion and unabashed bigotry as recently as this.
When this decision was mentioned in my Poli-Sci class, it was just one among many cases that we talked briefly about. But I never read the actual opinions until today. Upon reading this, I can only imagine that if I were gay I couldn’t feel other than Freyr does. It certainly reads like government-approved discrimination to me, and I think it’s appalling.
So I went and skimmed through the link a bit myself. I think the issue is part of a larger one. Which concerns the freedom that judges have, and should have, to set limits on laws. Suppose you believe that no government has the authority to make such laws, for the reasons that you outlined. Suppose the Supreme court justices personally agree with you. But at the same time, governments have been passing laws of this sort for thousands of years. Our own democracy, for hundreds. Do the judges have the authority to unilaterally declare that due to their own personal philosophies they will strike down any such law? I’d like to think that not. Let the relevent legislative bodies become influenced by this sort of thinking and amend the Constitution, or at least establish a pattern of not passing laws of this sort.
It is this sort of reasoning that appears to have led the majority to uphold the law.
Having said that, it does not appear consistent with the Roe vs. Wade reasoning. I noticed that the minority referenced this reasoning in their dissent.
This is true. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe slavery was not abolished by judicial fiat. Instead, an amendment to the constitution was passed which specifically banned it.
Izzy, thanks for taking the time to read and understand what I was getting at regarding discrimination and 2nd class citizenship. Unfortunately, the particular statute in Texas applies specifically for homosexuals. And, if the whole Republican platform were to be implemented, legal protection from discrimination based on sexual orientation would struck from the books.
You wrote:
I think the issue is part of a larger one. Which concerns the freedom that judges have, and should have, to set limits on laws.
But isn’t this EXACTLY what the Judiciary is suppose to do, decide which laws are valid and invalid, applying them to the cases that come before the court? The Judiciary doesn’t suddenly decide which laws are wrong or right, they wait 'til cases come before them, then (under our system of government, study the decisions of similar cases for precedent) and THEN make a decision.
OldScratch wrote:
IzzyR. The same argument you used could be used to uphold slavery. What judge has the right to overturn thousands of years of tradition?
IzzyR responded:
This is true. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe slavery was not abolished by judicial fiat. Instead, an amendment to the constitution was passed which specifically banned it.
True enough, but then look at Brown v The Board of Education or the other rulings that struck down the miscongeation laws. Such rulings didn’t create new rights, but instead expanded the old rights to cover new groups. Or told the government and society in general “play fair!”
The question regards what basis they must have for striking down a law. The fact that a certain law is not in accord with their particular philosophy is necessarily grounds for overturning it, if that type of law has a history of being accepted by the people and government. It is for this reason (among others) that they search for precendent. In the case of the sodomy law, the majority ruling pointed to the fact that such laws had a lengthy history. As a result they declared that they could not simply decide that such laws had no basis, however odious they may have personally felt it was.
I am not familiar with the nuances of the desegregation ruling. But I would not be surprised if it was indeed inconsistent with the logic that guided the Bowers ruling. I’ve already mentioned that it would seem that the Roe vs. Wade was inconsistent with the logic of the Bowers ruling. I think it’s more likely that the correct and most commonly followed reasoning is the Bowers reasoning. In cases where the Old Guys on the Supreme court really want to rule a certain way on an issue they will sometimes, being human after all, contort their logic to bring about a desired ruling. It’s more likely that this was the case in the desegregation and abortion rulings, which were ideas whose time had come, in terms of cutting edge public opinion. I don’t think the Supreme court is filled with gay haters twisting things to outlaw sodomy, and the language that they employed does not seem to indicate this.
