Michael Ventura on the Constitution, Lawrence v. Texas, etc.

[villager]

Letters at 3AM
BY MICHAEL VENTURA




July 11, 2003:


In all the hubbub about Lawrence v. Texas -- editorials, op-eds, talking heads, Net reports -- there were two words I didn't come across. So, just for the record: As a straight man I want to say to my gay brothers and sisters, thank you.

Like the blacks (and whites) of the civil rights movement, in fighting for your liberty you fought for mine. Thanks is hardly enough, but it's all I've got. It's only been 34 years since Stonewall (for those who don't know what that is, do a Net search; it ain't Stonewall Jackson). In that brief time you have achieved what many struggle for and few manage: a substantial strengthening of our Constitution.

To read Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy's majority (6-3) opinion is to believe again that America can be America ... sometimes, on some days, in some crucial ways.

Justice Kennedy wrote: "Liberty presumes an autonomy of self that includes freedom of thought, belief, expression, and certain intimate conduct ." That last phrase is enormous. You will not find that thought in the Bible (written 2,000 to 5,000 years ago) or the Quran (written 1,500 years ago). You will not find it in the Magna Carta (written 900 years ago) or in the thousands of governmental documents or declarations since. It was implied in Thomas Jefferson's 1776 founding thought that "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness" (Jefferson's capital letters) are "unalienable Rights" (not inalienable -- un-alienable, not subject to being alienated) ... but only implied. It took another 224 years for American homosexuals to agitate us into accepting that "certain intimate conduct" is a right that the expression of collective will that we call "government" is bound not only to protect but to value.

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Justice Kennedy cites Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey: "At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life. Beliefs about these matters could not define the attributes of personhood were they formed under compulsion of the State."

Justice Antonin Scalia, in his rabid (and often incoherent) dissent from Lawrence v. Texas, scoffed at those words as Casey's "famed sweet-mystery-of-life passage." But the sweet mysteries are exactly what Lawrence v. Texas demands the law recognize as the right of consensual adults, to explore sex free from the "compulsion of the State."

Those who say, as Scalia does, that the Constitution cites no specific "right" to be homosexual, or to explore sex in any way one chooses, or to choose an abortion, pointedly ignore both the Ninth and 10th amendments. They bear re-reading:

Amendment Nine: "The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." Amendment 10: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people (my italics)."

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Justice Anthony Kennedy's decision includes this quote (the source of which I could not pin down): "It is a promise of the Constitution that there is a realm of personal liberty which the government may not enter."

And that says it all. That's America. The rest is a shopping mall.

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http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2003-07-...