Anti-Sodomy Laws
Arlington
Catholic Herald, March 13, 2003
200 N. Glebe Rd., Suite 600, Arlington, VA 22203
Fax: 703-524-2782, Email: letters@catholicherald.com
By Russell Shaw, Herald Columnist
When the Supreme Court hears oral arguments March 26 in a
case challenging Texas’s anti-sodomy law, more will be at stake than may
appear at first.
If the question were only whether to uphold or strike
down anti-sodomy statutes in Texas and a dozen other states, most people
probably wouldn’t lose too much sleep. Even those who deplore the behavior
tend to agree that the private sexual conduct of consenting adults is not
government’s business.
But what’s involved here is not really that simple.
Overturning laws against sodomy could be a significant step toward the
homosexual activists’ goal of legalizing same-sex marriage.
Note that the Texas case (Lawrence v. Texas) is being
pressed by the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund. This gay organization
also represents homosexual couples in New Jersey in a case seeking to legalize
same-sex marriage; it is committed, in its own words, to working on behalf of
gays “to win and keep the freedom to marry nationwide.” (A similar case
argued earlier this month before the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court is
even farther along.)
Although the U.S. Supreme Court upheld anti-sodomy laws
as recently as 1986, the fact that it is considering the Texas case means at
least four justices wanted to take another look. Justices Stevens, Souter,
Ginsburg, and Breyer seem the most likely candidates, and there could be
others.
It would be interesting, in passing, to know the views on
the larger question—gay marriage—held by some of those Lambda has lined up
to submit friend-of-court briefs.
Together with a predictable collection of gay rights
organizations and groups like the ACLU, the NOW Legal Defense and Education
Fund, and the People for the American Way Foundation, these include such
worthies as the Most Rev. Frank T. Griswold, III, Presiding Bishop of the
Episcopal Church, the American Friends Service Committee, Amnesty
International U.S.A., and, strange to say, the AFL-CIO. May one ask what
freedom of sodomy has to do with workers’ rights?
There is, in any event, nothing far-fetched in seeing a
link between overturning laws against sodomy and securing legal recognition of
gay marriage. A bit of history illustrates that.
Back in 1965, in a case from Connecticut (Griswold v.
Connecticut), the Supreme Court overturned a state law against contraception.
Justice William O. Douglas wrote that it violated an implicit constitutional
right to privacy.
Arguments now being made against anti-sodomy laws also
were made then. Some Catholics said striking down the anti-contraception
statute was in line with the Church’s moral tradition. “Little did
Catholics realize,” writes Donald Critchlow in his history of the birth
control and abortion movements, Intended Consequences, “that the Griswold
decision, with its privacy doctrine, would become the basis for legalizing
abortion.”
That happened eight years later. In Roe v. Wade Justice
Harry Blackmun used the privacy principle to rationalize legalization of
abortion on demand. Justice William Brennan, a Catholic, tutored Blackmun, as
earlier he had Douglas, to lean on privacy to get the desired result.
In the weeks ahead, look for media coverage and
commentary concerning the Texas case to denounce the absurd and unfair
violation of consenting adults’ rights involved in laws against sodomy.
Expect to hear much about the desirability of keeping government out of
bedrooms and the wickedness of gender-based discrimination.
Don’t expect to hear a lot about how short a leap it
might be from striking down anti-sodomy laws to legalizing gay marriage. But
be sure of this: The Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund and other gay
groups are thinking about that.
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