http://web.morons.org/article.jsp?sectionid=2&id=3490
Extremist Thugs Respond to Supreme Court Ruling Posted by spatula on Jun. 27, 2003 The arrival of the stupidity is at hand. Here's what the country's extremist thugs are saying about today's Supreme Court ruling kicking the state out of the bedroom... Earlier in the week, this site predicted that no matter the outcome of Lawrence and Garner v Texas, there would be no shortage of stupidity to follow. That prediction has come true. (Though, really, that wasn't really much of a prediction, was it?) The sky is falling and traditional families find themselves falling apart at a molecular level, reverting to ions and random subatomic particles, quarks and mesons. Society has plunged into chaos, complete with wailing and gnashing of teeth. Giant winged monkies are looting the villages. Or at least, that's the picture painted by the religious extremist thug organizations, now acting like their anthill has been stomped upon. On my way home this afternoon, I was treated to Lou Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition actually screaming about the ruling. Of course, had the ruling gone the other way, I'd probably have been screaming. It was amusing no less. In their press release, the TVC claims the ruling is "a defeat for public morality and America's families" because you know that the state's presense in our bedrooms is important American Family business! Sheldon complains that "Millions of dollars are spent each year to deal with AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases contracted through homosexual sodomy" and thinks this is justification for a discriminatory law. Lou Sheldon, this is your wakeup call: AIDS DOESN'T CARE . This excuse for discriminatory laws is invalid, since "homosexual sodomy" is not now nor ever was the exclusive transmission vector of HIV. Further, the law does not distinguish between "homosexual sodomy" between consenting STD-free adults and between adults where one or both partners has a disease. This argument holds no water, and the courts agreed. The "Family" "Research" Council had this to say in their press release: "Once again judicial activists have used their fertile imagination to create rights that simply don't exist in the Constitution." Never mind those decades of caselaw affirming the right to privacy in sexual matters. Never mind the Fourteenth Amendment. Clearly nobody at the "Family" "Research" Council is doing anything one might call "Research" or they'd know about things like Roe v Wade, Griswold v Connecticut, Romer v Evans, and others. "In doing so, they have imposed their own moral judgments in place of state legislatures and have thereby undermined the democratic process." No, they've done their duty as required by the Constitution. Why have a Supreme Court at all if all laws are not to be subject to review and striking down if they're bad laws? "Unelected warriors wearing black robes become the chief architects of public policy." Perhaps the FRC would rather they were elected, so the FRC could attempt to lobby them with money, gifts, and promises of power? That is, after all, why the justices are not elected; the framers wanted the Supreme Court to be impartial, not owing anybody any favors. The only policy they've acted on here is sound Constitutional policy. Focus on the "Family," which claims it isn't a political organization, had this to say about the decision: "With today's decision the court continues pillaging its way through the moral norms of our country. If the people have no right to regulate sexuality then ultimately the institution of marriage is in peril, and with it, the welfare of the coming generations of children." Oh what a world, what a world! For the children and marriage UNDER GOD! They continue, "While it may feel good to some that a stigma is lifted from a particular group, something else has been lifted the boundaries that prevent sexual chaos in our culture. In recent years we have seen a sharp rise in unwanted pregnancies, sexually transmitted diseases, and heartbreak of every kind." Sexual chaos? Sexual chaos? Do they mean that scene in Lukas' Story II? Can someone tell me when gay sex or "sodomy" in general started causing unwanted pregnancies? The Concerned "Women" for America really took the gloves off with their raging gay hate press release with spokeswoman (?) Jan LaRue saying, "If there's no rational basis for prohibiting same-sex sodomy by consenting adults, then state laws prohibiting prostitution, adultery, bigamy, and incest are at risk." What's your point, Jan? She went on, apparently intent upon showing us how out of touch with reality she is saying, "Six lawyers robed in black have magically discovered a right of privacy that includes sexual perversion." Robed in BLACK! They're a COVEN I tell you! And worse, they're LAWYERS! Lawyers who used MAGIC to discover the CONSTITUTION. OH, what a world! Concerned Woman Robert Knight added, "This ruling means that schoolchildren will be taught that homosexual sodomy is normal, healthy and the equivalent of marital sex. And, it will intensify efforts to attack the next barrier to total sexual 'liberation,' the laws regarding the age of consent." Gee, that part must have been in the footnotes to Kennedy's opinion somewhere. I must have missed the part where he said, "the court ordes that schoolchildren be trained in the art of gay sex so they're primed and ready for predatory homosexuals." Must've missed that. I'll have to go read it again. Naturally they accused the court of "judicial activism" which is right-wing conservative code for "ruled in a way I didn't like." They also accuse the Supreme Court of "creating law" though what's actually happened is that a bad law has been destroyed. The Christian Colation "reasoned" that because the 14th Amendment was originally put in place to secure the liberties of former slaves, it can have no modern application. They also accuse the Supreme Court of "legislating from the bench" when nothing could be further from the truth... it's just a meme the radical right enjoys. I'll say it again: the sole purpose the Supreme Court exists is to interpret the Constitution and strike down bad laws. If groups like the Christian Coalition had their way and the court was no longer permitted to strike down bad law, what, then, is the point of the court? The American Family Association also accuses the Supreme Court of making law. Stephen Crampton of the AFA said, "Under our constitutional republic, it is the place of the state legislature, acting through its duly elected representatives, to decide what is moral. For a handful of unelected judges to impose their views of morality is not law, it is tyranny." Wrong and misleading, respectively. I could as easily say "for a handful of elected officials to impose their views of morality is tyrrany" only I'd be right, and the court would agree (just as they did). Again, the justices are appointed, not elected, for a specific reason-- so that groups like the American Family Association (or, for that matter, the Human Rights Campaign or the ACLU) can't buy them off. I'm sorry that the AFA has such a hard time accepting the Constitution and its explicit instruction as to how Supreme Court justices find their way into office. It seems like the AFA is happy to take a very narrow, restrictive view of the Constitution when it suits them, and completely throw the whole document out the window when they don't happen to like what it says. Finally, the "Liberty" Council predicts a massive shoving of homosexuals back into the closet, claiming "Today's decision has awakened a sleeping giant and will galvanize and reinvigorate the majority of Americans who believe in traditional marriage but have ignored the radical agenda of the same-sex marriage movement. The goal of the radical homosexual agenda is to eliminate any and all laws regulating consensual sexual conduct." Huh? There must have been something about marriage in those footnotes too. It's nice that they're spelling out that mysterious "homosexual agenda" for us though, considering that nobody's ever seen it. Strangely, the "Liberty" Council also claims "This case also illustrates the problem with an active judiciary which takes away the rights of the people." Which case were they reading? From here, it looks like the only outcome of this case is that a right of the people was restored, not taken away. I find the name of this organization a disturbing contradiction to their obvious intention. What all of these various organizations in their rants and rages about "liberals" and "homosexual agenda" and "judicial activism" have exclusively ignored is the fact that this was a 6-3 decision, with even one of the dissenting votes- that of Clarence Thomas- showing sympathy to the majority but hesitation to use the court to toss out the law. There are 4 judges on the court considered to be "liberal". You do the math. This was a bipartisan decision coming from justices of a variety of backgrounds and ideologies who collectively said "enough is enough" and cast aside an improper class of laws related to something that's none of the government's business. And the sky is not falling. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
