Supreme Court finally does something good

[chicken]

I know this is way after the fact, but kudos to the Supreme Court for finally doing something good and striking down those horrible sodomy laws.

After all they've done that has been backwards and disappointing, it is nice they finally did something good.

Comments

[keever.livejournal.com]

The way that article worded it made me realize something -- the ruling doesn't say that sodomy is no longer deviant, just that it's okay to be deviant in private places. I guess that doesn't really matter, but it's a distinction that I just picked up on.

Still, it's good news. It should be interesting to see if this will really open the floodgates for other legislative changes, as people pro and against seem to hope/fear.

[chicken-cem.livejournal.com]

Well, in order for the logic of the majority opinion to hold up, they feel they cannot say anything about the morality of acts, whether they are deviant or not. Because the far right-wing minority opinion (Scalia et al.) holds that the problem with the majority's decision is that it "takes the morality out of law". Thinking about how our legal system descends from English Common Law which in turns descends from Classical Roman Law, which says nothing about morality at all, but was concerned almost entirely with property law (and individual rights as an extension of property rights), morality does not and should not really enter into the question. The importance of the separation of church and state also enters into things, here, and since the religious right feels it can moralize and decide what is and is not "deviant", the majority opinion (Kennedy et al.) probably felt that addressing questions like this would be the wrong approach.

[keever.livejournal.com]

Aah, that makes perfect sense. Thanks.

The law makes my head hurt sometimes.