|
slvemike4u -> RE: The Bigot`s Case Against Homosexuality (12/12/2012 5:47:46 PM)
|
quote:
ORIGINAL: tazzygirl
~FR
2 different cases...
1 - In the 2003 decision, Scalia harshly criticized the court’s decision that struck down a Texas anti-sodomy law that had been used to convict a gay man of having sex with another man in his own apartment. The opinion by Justice Anthony Kennedy overturned a 1986 ruling in Bowers v. Hardwick that had upheld state sodomy laws.
Scalia wrote in his dissent:
“The Texas statute undeniably seeks to further the belief of its citizens that certain forms of sexual behavior are ‘immoral and unacceptable,’ . . . the same interest furthered by criminal laws against fornication, bigamy, adultery, adult incest, bestiality, and obscenity. Bowers held that this was a legitimate state interest. The Court today reaches the opposite conclusion. The Texas statute, it says, ‘furthers no legitimate state interest which can justify its intrusion into the personal and private life of the individual,’ …The Court embraces instead Justice [John Paul] Stevens’ declaration in his Bowers dissent, that 'the fact that the governing majority in a State has traditionally viewed a particular practice as immoral is not a sufficient reason for upholding a law prohibiting the practice,' . . . This effectively decrees the end of all morals legislation. “
He also questioned whether the laws against same-sex marriage can survive if “moral disapproval” is not a reasonable basis for upholding them, in effect predicting the cases the court agreed to hear Friday.
“Today’s opinion dismantles the structure of constitutional law that has permitted a distinction to be made between heterosexual and homosexual unions, insofar as formal recognition in marriage is concerned. If moral disapprobation of homosexual conduct is ‘no legitimate state interest’ for purposes of proscribing that conduct . . . and if, as the Court coos (casting aside all pretense of neutrality), ‘[w]hen sexuality finds overt expression in intimate conduct with another person, the conduct can be but one element in a personal bond that is more enduring,’ what justification could there possibly be for denying the benefits of marriage to homosexual couples exercising ‘[t]he liberty protected by the Constitution.’”
2 - In 1996, Scalia dissented when the court struck down an anti-gay initiative from Colorado. There, he made a reference to murder:
“The Court's opinion contains grim, disapproving hints that Coloradans have been guilty of ‘animus’ or ‘animosity’ toward homosexuality, as though that has been established as Unamerican. Of course it is our moral heritage that one should not hate any human being or class of human beings. But I had thought that one could consider certain conduct reprehensible -- murder, for example, or polygamy, or cruelty to animals -- and could exhibit even ‘animus’ toward such conduct. Surely that is the only sort of ‘animus’ at issue here: moral disapproval of homosexual conduct.”
http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-scalia-laws-homosexuality-murder-20121211,0,2870681.story
He is more worried about the morality of such issues.
The colored sentence is where,in my opinion,he goes off the rails.
Where is the legitimate state interest in what goes on in a bedroom between two(or more) consenting adults ?
Why is,or why should,the state lose any sleep over what is being stuck where ?
How is the states interest harmed in any way over such a matter ?
Surely only the most prurient amongst us even cares what goes on in a neighbors bedroom....and the state should have no interest at all in satisfying that particular interest
|
|
|
|
