Why We Need to Keep Sodomy Laws on the Books
Scripps Howard, December 6, 1998
By Cathie Adams, President of Texas Eagle Forum in Dallas
It is vitally important that laws protect the traditional family’s authority and
dignity because the dissolution of the family is at the root of nearly all the social
problems afflicting contemporary American society.
Since the American Revolution, the family has been defined according to the "laws
of nature and of nature’s God." Three years after the Revolution in his
"Bill for Proportioning Crimes and Punishments," Thomas Jefferson made sodomy a
felony subject to the same punishment as rape. Texas’ sodomy law meets the standard
that has protected the traditional family for centuries.
The distinction between a man and a woman is fundamental and confining sexual relations
to a man and wife is the very core of morality by which our civilization is constituted.
Civilized society has always regarded protection of the traditional family the best
defense against disorder and disease. The HIV virus, originally named GRID, the Gay
Related Immunodeficiency Disease, was first isolated as a disease of the homosexual
community. Denial of natural law and common sense by our modern society has permitted this
horrible disease (AIDS) to wreak havoc on every segment of society.
The Texas sodomy law also protects children in public school classrooms from distorted
teaching that homosexuality is natural or healthy. Textbook publishers must also adhere to
the law. The statute guards innocent children from adoption by same-sex couples and it
disallows deviant same-sex unions.
Opponents have systematically targeted the law allegedly because the statute violates
the "right to privacy" of active homosexuals. The U.S. Supreme Court, however,
decided in 1986 by a vote of 8-1 to uphold the law’s validity and constitutionality.
As recently as 1994 the Texas Supreme Court also upheld the law. When the Texas Penal Code
was rewritten by the legislature in 1993, attempts to remove it were denied.
Homosexuals already have the same constitutional rights as every other American
citizen. There is no evidence that the Texas sodomy law has been used to deny them jobs,
housing or insurance coverage. It would be unwise to put such guarantees in the state law
because they would require every person seeking a job, or housing or insurance to answer
privacy-invading questions. It could also lead to a mandate for every business, including
churches, to hire homosexuals. Furthermore, the recent California initiative showed that
people prefer being identified by their job qualifications rather than identifiable
quotas.
A Houston incident last November when two men were fined for homosexual conduct fits
the homosexual political agenda described in the book, "After the Ball: How America
Will Conquer Its Fear and Hatred of Gays in the ‘90s," by Marshall Kirk and
Hunter Madsen. "At least at the outset, we seek desensitization." Once the
public is no longer shocked and repelled by homosexual behavior, "the issue of gay
rights (must be) reduced, as far as possible, to an abstract social question."
"Desensitization" has now given way to the "social question" of
whether homosexuals will be given the special right to criminalize, prosecute and
persecute those who live by the "laws of nature and of nature’s God."
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