Your condescending tone is unwarranted, as you have simply failed to understand him.
What he is saying there is that if you say that a law banning X amounts to discrimination because it primarily affects the class of “people who like X”, than any number of laws can be struck down on that basis (e.g. a law barring nudity). Very reasoned.
Um… I like nudity. I like flaunting about in the buff. I like seeing other people naked.
I do not consider myself a “nudist.” I do not partake in the nudist colonies, cruises, games, or culture. Nor would I consider nude sunbathers in the south of France to be the same as American Nudists.
I’m not arguing that homosexuality is the same. Or isn’t the same.
Its just a stupid fucking analogy. Homebrew is right. IzzyR is unintentionally ironic.
I haven’t read the decision yet (I did read the AFA’s gay agenda page, weeeeeeee), but the points touched on about focusing on the “act” rather than the “class” is very interesting.
Though, now that I’m not breaking as many laws when I participate in homosexual acts, will it be as fun? :eek: At least I’m still breaking the law that dictates no sex outside of marriage.
Your point? Considering the AFA is a blathering neo-Fascist organization, I have no clue what you’re getting at, as what you linked to is, essentially, 100% false.
Esprix
I think I spot your difficulty - the idea that homosexuality is just something some people “like”, not what they are. Is that it? Would that affect your view about discrimination?
Not “homosexuality”. Homosexual sodomy. Replace the term and you have it right.
The argument that Scalia is apparently responding to is that although the ban on homosexual sodomy applies to all, its primary impact is on people who enjoy this activity, who are predominantly homosexuals. He equated this to a ban on public nudity which would apply to all but primarily impact nudists.
(Note to Rysler: there are surely people who like “flaunting about in the buff” who are not nudists, as there are surely people who might enjoy homosexual sodomy who are not gay, e.g. people who are marginally bisexual. But the argument being made is that the law disproportionately impacts gays as compared to other groups, and the parallel argument (that a nudity law would disproportionately impact nudists as compared to other groups) is a valid analogy.)
The argument that seems to be driving your post is that homosexuality is an all-encompassing part of a person’s personality, and for this reason gays deserve to be defined as a “group”, against whom one cannot disproportionately impact. As compared to nudists, who you would define solely by their desire to go about nude - this would not constitute a “group” and one could disproportionately impact them without violating Equal Protection clauses. I think that is a pretty nebulous argument (if indeed this is your intention).
In any event, whether or not you have a rebuttal, Scalia is making a valid analogy. In general, Scalia is pretty highly thought of in legal circles for his intelligence and legal abilities, even by many who vehemently disagree with his ideology. It is semi-amusing to see relatively ignorant and unintelligent Dopers casually brush aside his arguments as nonsense without even a cursory attempt to understand what he is saying.
Fortunately Justice Kennedy, in the majority opinion, said basically that equal protection was irrelevant since Sodomy Laws (for both homo and hetero sex) are unconstitutional. So Scalia is ranting about an irrelevant point anyway.
By that standard, most dissents written in cases with concurring opinions are “irrelevant.”
The whole point of a dissent is to explain why you don’t join in the outcome voted upon by the other justices. In this case, there were two rationales for the outcome (striking down Texas’ sodomy law): the due process rationale favored by the majority, and the equal protection rationale favored by Justice O’Connor. Scalia’s dissent explains BOTH why he and his fellow dissenters elected not to join in the majority rationale AND why he elected not to join in O’Connor’s conncurrance.
Point taken, Dewey.
Wow. I’d never heard of Stephen Bennett before I followed this link. I’ve seen people do wierd things trying to make it in the music business, but this tops them all!
“Hey everybody! I was gay! Now I’m not! Jesus fixed me! Buy my album!” :rolleyes: :mad:
Brutus, what was your point?
Did you guys read the one about how homosexuality hurts the parents? What about the parents of homosexuals who throw their kids out and such?
Go sodomize yourself-it’s legal now!
Oh, and Stephen Bennett apparently stopped being fabulous as well.
I mean, the guy has a MULLET, for crying out loud!
I’ve been puzzling too. The only conclusions I’ve been able to imagine are:
[list=1]
[li]It’s a malformed redundancy, making sure everyone knows what homosexual activists do advocate.[/li][li]The other homosexual activists don’t care about opprobium, and have Judy Garland and sodomy only on their agendae.[/li][li]‘Some’ means there aren’t veyr many homosexual activists[/li][li]He’s a raving nutcase who’s trying to make “Enough bigotry already” sound a rediculous partisan viewpoint (and does amazingly well, considering the rediculousness of trying)[/li][/list=1]
Please. You might as well argue that it’s legally acceptable to legislate against living with black skin because it only affects black people. Scalia’s “point”, if that’s what you call it, may be strictly the letter of the law, but it does violence to its spirit.
It is indeed my argument, and hardly mine alone, that sexuality is a basic part of a person’s identity and not simply a hobby, as you imply. There’s nothing “nebulous” about your preference for women, is there? That has a great effect on your life, doesn’t it? And you can’t change it, can you?. Perhaps I’d better let the gays here, with personal experience to report, continue from here, but this is still the nub of the discussion, isn’t it? Surely this isn’t new territory for you, is it?
The Devil can quote Scripture to serve his purposes, too. It is not “semi-amusing”, it’s downright sad, to see certain Dopers or anyone else, overlook the concept of using articulateness to rationalize a position taken for unbecoming reasons. A good lawyer, hell, a good Great Debater, can convincingly argue any side of a case, but choosing only one side to argue in no way demonstrates the superiority of that side. If there is anything Scalia (and he’s not the only current Justice) is known for, it’s his predilection for legal rationalizations - he decides a case based on his personal prejudices, then comes up with an argument to support it. Your implicit applause for that does not reflect well on you.
Well, I’ve never been known to kick a guy out of bed before, but he might be just a little too much.
Bob
Here is a phrase well known in the law racket: Out Come Based Decision. I trust that others in this business will support me on this.
All too often when an appellate court is faced with a controversial case which it can’t dodge, the judge will know how he wants the case to come out and will then enter into a tortured chain of reasoning to get the desired result. It is like solving a maze by starting at the end and working toward the beginning. It happens more often than most of the uninitiated can imagine. When a case, like Texas v. Lawrence and Garner, which has serious political and social ramifications comes up you can almost see the judges’ brains cranking to find a way to get to the appropriate out come. Often the result is a nightmare that plagues the courts for years until someone finally takes the problem in hand and sorts things out. When there is public interest and controversy it is the rare law suit that is decided on a straight logic of precedent and legal authority basis.
I submit that Justice Scalia‘s dissent, and especially Justice Thomas’s dissent, are examples of this sort of thinking. Neither was prepared to give in to the logic of the facts and cases and chose instead to go searching for a theory that gave them the result they wanted.
I must agree that Justice Scalia’s “homosexual agenda” outburst was unfortunate simply because it reveals the reactionary basis of the legal reasoning in the rest of his opinion. Justice Thomas’s opinion is self defeating since his “uncommonly silly” comment goes a long way toward establishing the substantive due process basis of the majority decision.
What about heterosexual sodomy? If Susan fucking Steve up the ass is legal, but Adam fucking Steve up the ass is illegal, isn’t that discriminatory against Adam? He is being denied the right to engage in a behavior solely because of his gender.
Not to mention that in some of the states that had an anti-sodomy law, it was only for homosexual sodomy where in a few states, it was for any type of sodomy.
On top of that, enforcement was only generally seen for homosexual sodomy.
Unless a lot of men and women were going to trial for oral sex and I missed the news stories.
“There is a gay agenda, okay?! There’s just two items on it: 1) don’t get killed; 2) a decent brunch. That’s it!” - Elvira Kurt
Re the “chosen action” argument: As I’ve said before, “That’s nice. I guess we can go to church, too, as long as we don’t pray.”
You appear to be confused here. No one is saying that the fact that something only affects a certain group is a reason to make it legal. The opposite is normally the case - disproportionately affecting a group is a reason to make it illegal. Scalia is saying that this would not extend to cases such as here.
Living with black skin is a facetious example, as it is indistinguishable from being black.
Again, you are confused. I did not say that a preference for same sex was nebulous - rather that the argument that relied on the all-encompassing aspect of homosexuality was a nebulous argument.
Please try to pay attention.
Now here’s a strange concept - I think the exact same thing about you and yours. I don’t think it is productive to argue about this.
Oh.
I guess this makes sense, but only if one considers heterosexual sodomy and homosexual sodomy to be qualitatively the identical act. If one considers them as two distinct acts, the comparison doesn’t hold.
What?! You might as well say that a woman voting and a man voting are two different acts, so that prohibiting women from voting is not discrimination.