“Once marriage is redefined for same-sex partners, it opens the Pandora’s box to be redefined for any assortment of individuals. After all, if two men or two women have the right to be married, why not two men and three women, or two men, one woman, and a dog and a chimpanzee?”
– Alliance Defense Fund Attorneys Allan Sears and Craig Osten in their book, The Homosexual Agenda.
When the U.S. Supreme Court narrowly ruled the Texas law against sodomy unconstitutional in the infamous Lawrence v. Texas case on June 26, 2003, Justice Antonin Scalia in leading the four dissenting judges, lamented that the decision “effectively decrees the end of all morals legislation.” The court, Scalia added in his scathing dissent, had “taken sides in the culture war, departing from its role of assuring, as neutral observer, that the democratic rules of engagement are observed.” If there are no morals, then there is no truth, and if there is no truth, then there is no God, and if there is no God, then, as Fyodor Dostoyevsky warned in The Brothers Karamazov, then anything is permissible.
Take for example the shocking case in New York of Columbia University Professor David Epstein. Stanford-educated and highly respected among his peers, Epstein stands charged with third-degree incest for having sexual relations with his 24-year-old daughter. What makes this disgusting case all the more repulsive is that by all accounts, it was consensual. The case exploded across the Internet and in print publications, prompting one reporter, William Saletan of Slate, to ask an inevitable question given Lawrence v. Texas: “If homosexuality is okay, why is incest wrong?”
Writing for the majority in Lawrence v. Texas, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, who was appointed by President Reagan as his third choice after liberal Democrats in the Senate would not approve his first two, asserted that morality could never be a basis for law. What is so disturbing about Kennedy’s opinion is that the ruling could have only applied to private consensual sodomy between consenting adults and its effect would have been minimal. Yet Kennedy and the four liberal justices went further, declaring a right of privacy entitling consenting adults to do as they choose in private.
“Most laws are based on notions of morality,” wrote Stephen Prescott, a Southern Baptist legal scholar, in his analysis of Lawrence v. Texas for Baptist Press. “Murder, theft, prostitution, bigamy, fraud, and most other laws are designed to proscribe what most Americans view as immoral conduct. It is difficult to conceive how prostitution, bigamy, bestiality, adultery, fornication or incest statutes are constitutional after Lawrence.”
Chuck Colson rightly observes that the same reasoning Kennedy used about two adults engaged in sexual practices common among the “homosexual lifestyle” would be just as true if you substituted “incestuous” for “homosexual.” Indeed Epstein’s attorney admitted as much in a television interview. “It’s OK for homosexuals to do whatever they want in their own home …,” he said. “How is this so different? We have to figure out why some behavior is tolerated and some is not.”
It will be interesting to see if Epstein’s attorney raises Lawrence v. Texas as a defense in court. The court will then face a predicament: endorse perversity by applying Lawrence v. Texas or offer an argument for which Kennedy seemed to leave no room. It would be a quandary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s making.
Meanwhile, public opinion seems to be shifting in favor of homosexual “marriage.” The Obama administration has said it will no longer defend the Defense of Marriage Act in court. In addition, the news media is aiding the well-bankrolled homosexual movement in creating a sense of inevitability when it comes to homosexual marriage.
The growing polygamist movement is doing the same. Television shows like “Big Love” and “Sister Wives” have brought polygamy into American homes like never before. Jonathan Turley, law professor at George Washington Law School, wrote a column in a 2004 edition of USA Today promoting the legalization of polygamy. The basis of his article was the case of Tom Green, a Utah polygamist who had been convicted in Utah, but has appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, citing Lawrence v. Texas. God help us.
DON HINKLE / editor
dhinkle@mobaptist.org