[lbo-talk] backlash?

budge budge at el-pleasant.org
Wed Jul 30 11:16:59 PDT 2003


On Wed, 30 Jul 2003 at 11:29am Nathan Newman wrote:
>
> The Lawrence gay rights decision was bad for gay rights.
> It delivered little of substance on its own, given the
> general lack of enforcement of such sodomy laws, but is
> undermining public support for gay rights on more
> important, immediate issues that could be won politically.

I am genuinely surprised to hear you make such an ignorant comment. As you should know, the existence of the anti-sodomy laws had a lot of real effects w/o actually being 'enforced' (please see Texas v. Morales, for a fairly well know example). Time after time in civil rulings against queers in employment, adoption, and custody rights courts have cited the criminal statutes to support their bigoted decisions.

I also fail to see what is 'activist' about this decision, it seems like a simple affirmation of people's "right to be left alone" barring some actual state interest.

I do agree, it is better if things can be done legislatively, but where do you think race relations would be (particularly in the very same states that still had sodomy laws) had the Court not been 'activist' on racial desegregation?

-- no Onan

"superior sound quality"



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