If logic is not on your side, try hysteria.
It never ceases to amaze me how the right continues to rely on obfuscation and misdirection in their pathetic fight against the "homosexual agenda." Men of supposed intelligence make remarks that have little or nothing to do with reality and rely instead on misinformation and stirring fear and hysteria in their listeners. The latest to voice the same tired rhetoric is Pennsylvania's Senator Rick Santorum.
If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything.
All of those things are antithetical to a healthy, stable, traditional family. And that's sort of where we are in today's world, unfortunately. It all comes from, I would argue, this right to privacy that doesn't exist, in my opinion, in the United States Constitution.
Where to start? First of all Lawrence v. Texas is not about privacy. It's about equal protection under the law, which is the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution. In fact, in Bowers v. Hardwick, the last time sodomy laws came before that Supreme Court, the Court decided that there is no right to privacy that protects such acts. Does Sen. Santorum know what he's talking about? I'm sure he is aware of the case law here, but it suits his purposes to make inflamatory statements regardless of the facts.
The arguments before the Supreme Court in Lawrence v. Texas are whether or not the state has a compelling reason to regulate acts of sodomy between consenting adults. There are fourteen states with sodomy laws on the books. Only four, Texas among them, criminalize acts of sodomy between homosexuals but not heterosexuals. Even if that distinction were not made, I can pretty much guarantee that had the policeman had walked in on a man and woman engaged in sodomy, married or not, there would have been no arrest. Sen. Santorum tries to tell us striking sodomy laws would also give people the "right to adultery." While I imagine there are some places where adultery may still be on the books as a criminal offense, when was the last time any one was arrested for adultery? Santorum is just digging his own grave by showing just how inequitable the laws really are. That or he's trying to suggest that all people should have their sex lives regulated by that state. I'm not sure which is more disturbing.
The right seems to have learned that citing religious convictions as proof of "the inherent evil" of homosexuality doesn't get them very far. Instead they now rely on equating homosexuality with pedophilia and incest, relying on the combination of sex and children to stir negative emotional responses in their listeners. Sodomy laws have absolutely nothing to do with sex crimes committed against children. Neither does homosexuality. It is a well documented fact that acknowledged homosexuality does not imply a greater tendency to commit sex crimes of any kind, much less those against children. To continue to raise the issue in this manner is manifest deliberate ignorance, ignoring the findings of the scientific community and the testimony of homosexuals, their friends and families.
That the right cannot come up with a solid argument based in fact and reality ought to be proof enough that their position is untenable and irrational. Everyone is entitled to their religious convictions. However, your religious convictions do not give you the right to discriminate against or oppress those who do not conform to your ideals. Many of these so called Christians would do well to take a closer look at the life of Christ. Even if you believe that homosexuals are sinners, it was never the sinners who raised Christ's ire. Indeed, he often sat at dinner with them. Those for whom Christ reserved his harshest condemnation were the leaders of the community who claimed compassion and charity as their own, but in reality had neither.