Zathras' Great Machine

Friday morning

And a good day to everyone this morning, on the morning where we can celebrate the fact that the Supreme Court yesterday decided that sexual behavior between consenting adults in private could not be outlawed simply because some people might find it offensive. The vote was 6-3 on the Texas sodomy law... the three dissenters, predictably, were Rehnquist, Scalia, and Thomas.

Also predictably, the Washington Post lauded the ruling this morning, while the Washington Times condemned it; the Times' main argument was that the Supreme Court did not have the authority to invalidate the Texas law because of the Tenth Amendment. Sounds reasonable at first glance, except that the Tenth Amendment says that all non-federal powers are reserved to either the states or the people -- conservatives tend to focus on the "states" part (which is perfectly valid) and ignore the "people" part (which is a mistake). The Times doesn't understand that certain rights and powers rest only with the people... and if adult consensual sexual behavior in private isn't one of those rights, I don't know what is.

In a related area... Scalia fretted that this ruling would open the doorway to gay marriage rights. Not sure about that, but even if it does, so what? It's hard to take conservatives seriously when they say that gay marriage rights "threaten the rest of us". If two gays want to get married, it's certainly no skin off my nose. Besides which, legally recognized marriage confers certain rights and privileges that you just don't get otherwise, such as (for example) the right to refuse to testify against your spouse in a court of law, or the right to decide on medical treatment under certain circumstances (such as when the spouse is unable to give consent for him/herself), and inheritance rights.

Thomas said that he was opposed to the law, but could not vote to strike it down because he couldn't find a "right to privacy" anywhere in the Constitution (and he's right; it's a concept that isn't defined or protected anywhere in that document). I can have a certain amount of respect for this viewpoint, although I can't agree with it. The problem Thomas is overlooking is that the government has only those powers that are specifically granted to it in the Constitution, and whichever powers it isn't explicitly granted are powers it doesn't have (that's the Tenth Amendment again). Also, to take it a step further back: although the Declaration of Independence carries no force of law int his country, it is in many ways the foundation for the Constitution that followed some fifteen years later. In that document, the Founding Fathers held it as a "self-evident truth" that all human beings have certain inalienable rights, including liberty. Thomas doesn't understand that "freedom" and "privacy" are concepts that are inextricably intertwined. If you have no privacy, you have no freedom. (The reverse is also true, of course.)

OK, just had to get all that off my chest. Certain people have been puzzled as to my occasional claims to being essentially a liberal with certain conservative viewpoints, since many of my conservative opinions (e.g., gun control) are among the more visible. Perhaps this little meandering opinion will serve to inform that I really do adhere to a lot of leftist viewpoints. BTW, I also oppose the flag amendment, I opposed the war in Iraq (although only after Denise gave me a lot of information about it that I hadn't had before), and I think that our foreign policy in general just plain sucks, inasmuch as it's far too interventionist.