ochotseat wrote:jerickson314 wrote:
I also didn't say that this was entirely genetically determined, but it is certainly influenced by genetics.
Where'd you hear this?
There is also the question of whether SSB could be banned at all, when we don't ban consensual premarital sex or adultery.
Same sex behavior has never been entirely banned. Sodomy was forbidden in some Rocky Mountain, Midwestern, and southern states, but homosexuals were permitted to engage in other forms of intimacy.
Here's why the Supreme Court's invalidation of any state prohibitions on sodomy was a bad idea...
Texas sodomy and the marriage amendment
Armstrong Williams
July 11, 2003
Does the right to pursue one's individual morality transcend traditional social values? Is the state barred from enforcing the moral consensus? More to the point, is this a land where pornography, drugs and prostitution should be unregulated, where women should be allowed to have abortions at any time during their pregnancy, where same-sex couples can join together in marriage? If you accept that the state cannot enforce moral codes of conduct, then the answer to all of these questions is yes.
This point was not lost on Justice Antonin Scalia whose dissenting opinion accused the court of using judicial fiat to shape civil institutions - such as marriage - that have traditionally been regulated by the state. Scalia accused the majority of signing on to the homosexual agenda and effectively choosing sides in the culture war. He warned that the majority opinion could lay the legal framework for questioning all state laws that punish moral indiscretions, such as bigamy, incest and prostitution.
In short, Scalia made the profound observation that since state law creates our civil institutions, they ought to be managed by the state; excepting action that violates the Constitution. The founding fathers had very definite ideas on such matters. When they created this country, the founding fathers envisioned the state government as arbiters of much of our daily existence. The benefits of an extensive state government were straightforward: the state government would be more directly accountable to the concerns of the citizens and, therefore, better able to ensure the democratic process. This would provide a counterbalance to the federal government and help guard against the tyranny that our founding fathers so feared.
By stepping in and dictating how the state government regulates its civil institutions, the unelected, unaccountable Supreme Court justices have trampled on the democratic process. Rather than allowing the citizens of this country to carry out a debate on the morality of same-sex unions and to decide these issues for themselves, the Supreme Court has dictated the outcome.
We need not accept this rather tyrannical intrusion. There are, in fact, some very practical things our democratically-elected representatives can do to help ensure that the citizens of this country continue to have a voice in the culture war that is raging around them. For starters, they can lend public support to Rep. Musgrave's proposal to define marriage as a union between man and woman.
Senate Majority leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) has already done this, telling ABC's "This Week" program, "I very much feel that marriage is a sacrament and that sacrament should extend and can extend to that legal entity of a union between what (has) traditionally in our Western values been defined as between a man and a woman. So I would support the amendment."
For this very common sense statement Frist is being assaulted by the gay rights Cosa Nostra. They accuse Frist of gay bashing, but they miss the point. Frist's remarks were not about anger or spite. They were simply about recognizing the social and sacred function of marriage between man and woman. This is the bedrock of our society. On this point, we must maintain our resolve. Because it seems that those men - and woman - who are the most vigorous defenders of this country's Constitution, the Supreme Court justices, have no intention of defending the state's rights to manage civil institutions. The court remains hamstrung by the unwavering belief that the state cannot punish that which it deems immoral.
It is this same stance that may lead the court to revisit all state laws that punish acts such as bigamy, incest and prostitution. It would be nice if the Supreme Court could find some way to consider the democratic process they purport to defend. Instead, they have chosen a far more precarious position. They are, at once, the most visible protectors of our Constitution, and a passive destroyer of our society.
Cal Thomas
March 27, 2003
Law, liberty, and license
While the war overseas continues, so does another war at home.
The latest battle in the culture war was fought Wednesday (March 26) on Supreme Court turf. At issue is a Texas "homosexual conduct law" that forbids sodomy.
Before the Supreme Court rules that the Founders had the right to practice sodomy in mind when they wrote the Constitution, we should ask where the chipping away at law and morality is leading us.
Once sodomy is made legal, what's next? How about polygamy? As we have been reminded in the case of Utah's Elizabeth Smart and her abduction by a practicing polygamist, there are people who believe they have a right to that sexual and relational preference. If sodomy is legalized, can polygamists then ask the Supreme Court to end the prohibition against their "right" to engage in sex with and "marry" multiple partners? If not, on what legal grounds will they be refused? To listen to the attorneys for the Texas men seeking redress of their sexual grievances, a decision to strike down the Texas anti-sodomy law should be based on "changing times" and public opinion polls.
Pedophiles who wish to have sex with children assert they should not be prohibited from doing so as long as the child "consents." There is a movement within psychiatry to have pedophilia removed from the shrinking list of "deviant" behaviors, as was done with homosexual practice. What is to prohibit them from doing so if pedophiles testify their fulfillment is being denied, and they feel discriminated against for practicing what, to them, is normal? Since truth is now in the mind and genitalia of the beholder, how can anyone with a different mindset (or different genitalia) tell anyone else how and when to engage in any sexual act in which he or she might wish to indulge?
Former Republican Sen. Alan Simpson of Wyoming wrote a column for the Wall Street Journal on March 26 in which he argued in favor of the "gay rights" position opposing the Texas law. Simpson said "the proper Republican vision of equality" is "live and let live." Simpson thinks that laws against homosexual practice "are contrary to American values protecting personal liberty .."
What Simpson argues for is not liberty but license. There is a profound difference between the traditional understanding and definition of liberty and that of license. Liberty is presumed to depend on personal responsibility. I like one of the Webster definitions of liberty: "permission to go freely within specified limits." In contrast, "license" can mean "disregard for rules of personal conduct: licentiousness."
Several conservative groups filed amicus briefs supporting the law. The one by the Family Research Council sums up the major arguments in favor: "(1) The law has historically respected and protected the marital union and has distinguished it from acts outside that union, such as fornication, adultery and sodomy. To extend to homosexual sodomy the same protections given to the marital union would undermine the definition of marriage and could lead to homosexual marriage; (2) In order to recognize a non-textual constitutional right to sodomy, the Court must find sodomy to be deeply rooted in the nation's history and tradition. In fact, laws banning sodomy are deeply rooted in our nation's history and tradition; (3) Protecting marriage, upholding morality and seeking to ensure public health is more than enough for Texas to prove it has a 'rational basis' behind its law .."
The law is supposed to set parameters for a society. In the past, the law has been viewed as something that flowed from a Law-giver, outside of the reach of humankind to create or manipulate. But since humanity now sees itself as the law-maker (the breaking of that ancient Law is now celebrated in personal behavior and encouraged in film, in magazines and on TV), who is to say whose morality, if any morality, should prevail? Having made "choice" the ultimate determiner for abortion, it would not surprise me if the Supreme Court cites the so-called "right to privacy" in this case and replays its mistake in Roe vs. Wade, which struck down another Texas law.
Adoption laws in some states now give children to same-sex couples. If the Texas sodomy law falls, "marriage" will be redefined and the demise of the human family will be complete.
to that!