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CWA Says Attempt to Make Sodomy a ‘Right’ Is a Stealth Attack on Marriage 3/26/2003 “For homosexual activists, this case is about firing scud missiles at the institution of marriage,” said Jan LaRue. Washington, D.C. - Concerned Women for America (CWA) warns the American public today that homosexual activists - by seeking through the courts to make sodomy a “right” - are corrupting the meaning of human rights and marriage.
The Supreme Court will hear oral argument Wednesday, March 26, at 11 a.m., in a case in which two homosexual men are challenging the constitutionality of a Texas same-sex sodomy statute. The case is Lawrence v. Texas, case No. 02-102.
“For homosexual activists, this case is about firing scud missiles at the institution of marriage,” said Jan LaRue, chief counsel for CWA, who will attend the hearing and be available for media interviews. LaRue filed an amicus (friend-of-the-court) brief on behalf of CWA in support of Texas.
“The petitioners are claiming that states have no right to enact moral laws and they want the Court to reverse its 1986 ruling in Bowers v. Hardwick, which held that there is no constitutional right to engage in homosexual sodomy. What Justice White said then is still true: To claim that homosexual sodomy is a fundamental constitutional right, ‘implicit in the concept of ordered liberty,’ is ‘at best facetious,’” LaRue said.
In addition, homosexual litigants are asking the Court to hold that the Texas law violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
“It doesn’t take a genius in legal warfare to understand how an adverse ruling on either of those issues impacts the defense of marriage,” LaRue concluded.
“Marriage transcends even civil law. It was instituted by God, and the law has recognized its uniqueness and protected marital intimacy as sacred,” said Robert Knight, director of the Culture and Family Institute, an affiliate of Concerned Women for America. “Such attempts to steal the moral capital of marriage and apply it to other sexual relationships cheapen marriage and undermine societal protection for this irreplaceable institution.”
Knight, one of the draftsmen of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, continued, “Ruling for sodomy would encourage a highly dangerous act that is linked to the spread of HIV and other diseases. It could also remove another roadblock to homosexual activism in schools and radically undermine the morale of our armed forces, where sodomy is currently banned.”
CWA’s brief makes the following arguments, among others:
- The statutes are directed at conduct and do not discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, sex or “gender.”
- The statutes do not violate a fundamental right of privacy or discriminate against a suspect class with an immutable characteristic such as race, alienage or ancestry.
- Homosexuals who have tremendous political, cultural and economic power do not meet the criteria of a suspect class.
- If the Court were to grant suspect status on the basis of sexual conduct or orientation, it would open the door to other groups making the same claim based on their sexual “orientation,” such as pedophilia.
- Protecting public health, safety and morals is a rational, if not compelling, reason to prohibit same-sex deviant sexual intercourse.
Concerned Women for America is the nation’s largest public policy women’s organization.
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