<% IssueDate = "7/02/03" IssueCategory = "Events" %> GayToday.com - Top Story
Top Story
The Supreme Court Causes
'The Great Fundamentalist FreakOut'


An End to U.S. Constitution Foreseen by 'Religious' Republicans

Defeated Fanatics to Appeal to Bush to Ensure 'Corrective' Action

Compiled by GayToday

Lynchburg, Virginia-Rev. Jerry Falwell, admitting that he's stunned, is calling Thursday's U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing the consensual private relations of same-sex adults "a great tragedy." Falwell says he agrees with dissenting Justice Antonin Scalia who, in his bitterness, preached from the bench to his fellow justices, specifically accusing them of largely signing on "to the so-called homosexual agenda."

Falwell also agrees with Justice Scalia when he says that "The court has taken sides in the culture war," and like Justice Scalia, Falwell is expressing concern that "this reasoning leaves on shaky, pretty shaky grounds, state laws limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples."

Cal Thomas, whose syndicated religiously-tinged column appears in over 500 mainstream newspapers, has taken the matter a step farther in his July 1st screed. He asks: "Has the end of the world arrived because the Supreme Court ruled no state may prohibit private, consensual homosexual conduct? No, the end of the world is being handled by the Supreme Judge. But the end of the Constitution has arrived, and that is something about which everyone in this temporal world should be concerned."

Attacking the majority opinion penned by Justice Anthony Kennedy, Thomas bristles over the fact that a restrictive 'religious' moral code has been made irrelevant for those who don't subscribe to it. Justice Kennedy, Thomas writes:

"asserts that religious beliefs, history, tradition and even the desires of the majority to set parameters for the moral climate in which they wish to live are irrelevant. 'Our obligation is to define the liberty of all, not to mandate our own moral code,' said Kennedy. That can lead to anarchy."

Kennedy, Thomas complains, is dismissing "thousands of years of law, history and theology, choosing to rely solely on modern times." He accuses Kennedy and, by extension, the Court's majority of six, of deleting "the wisdom of the ages, preferring to download the squishy morality of post-modernism."

Gary Bauer, a former Republican presidential candidate, sees the Supreme Court decision as "case study for the President, illustrating how blatant judicial activism is attacking the moral and legal foundations built throughout thousands of years of human history…"

Bauer, who is now president of American Values, made the following statement: "Once again, an activist Supreme Court has substituted its judgment over the decisions of the citizens of Texas who, through their elected representatives, had made a moral and legal judgment about behavior. The decisions that the citizens made were well within the traditions of Western Civilization and are now overtaken by an activist judgment of the Supreme Court.

"This is a sad day for federalism and representative democracy…And it is a most significant case for the President to consider as he ponders who to appoint to fill a future Supreme Court vacancy."

"The White House should take note of the fact that four of the six justices making this decision were appointed by Republican Presidents. A conservative, pro-family President must be extremely careful to make sure that any appointments he makes will defend traditional values and not aid in the assault against the family and reliable standards of right and wrong."

Joseph R. Murray, Esq., writing on the website of The American Family Association, has announced that "American democracy has been replaced by judicial activism." He says: "The mandate of the Court, though, has been betrayed by ideological justices whose allegiance is not to the Constitution, but to a set of beliefs that runs counter to the will of the people. Thus, in order to stifle and mute that ever present will, the Supreme Court has hijacked the rule of law, transformed it into a politically correct billy club, and effectively uses it to suppress dissent…The Court that is in power today, is not the Court that was envisioned by our Founders. This Court has exceeded its constitutional mandate, violated the rule of law, and molested the will of the people."

Jan LaRue, Chief Counsel, Concerned Women for America, expressed her extreme displeasure:

"If there's no rational basis for prohibiting same-sex sodomy by consenting adults, then state laws prohibiting prostitution, adultery, bigamy, and incest are at risk…Six lawyers robed in black have magically discovered a right of privacy that includes sexual perversion."

"The Supreme Court," says a Concerned Women for America press release, "Declares Perversion a Right." Praising Texas' deposed sodomy law as having been "reasonable," the group announced:

"The Supreme Court today issued a radical ruling knocking down 3000 years of Judeo-Christian-based law. The Court overturned a Texas sodomy law and defied its own precedent to discover a newfangled constitutional right to sodomy."

Ken Connor , Family Research Council President, accused the Supreme Court of undermining the democratic process. He said:

"Once again judicial activists have used their fertile imagination to create rights that simply don't exist in the Constitution. In doing so, they have imposed their own moral judgments in place of state legislatures and have thereby undermined the democratic process. Unelected warriors wearing black robes become the chief architects of public policy.

"If the hallmarks of the test are consent and privacy, then that throws the door open to any sexual behavior. The radical homosexual lobby will seek to apply the logic, extending a blanket privacy protection over one's choice of sexual partner to one's choice of marital partner as well--regardless of sex.

"Private sexual acts have public consequences. The Court has ignored that fact and the right of states to enact laws in defense of public morals and public health."

The Rev. Louis P. Sheldon, Chairman of the Traditional Values Coalition called the Supreme Court decision " a defeat for public morality and America's families…This ill-conceived decision will have serious repercussions upon public health and welfare in Texas and other states that still criminalize sodomy."

Dr. James Dobson's Focus on the Family expressed its outrage, making dire prophecies about future chaos:

"With today's decision the court continues pillaging its way through the moral norms of our country. If the people have no right to regulate sexuality then ultimately the institution of marriage is in peril, and with it, the welfare of the coming generations of children.

"While it may feel good to some that a stigma is lifted from a particular group, something else has been lifted-the boundaries that prevent sexual chaos in our culture. In recent years we have seen a sharp rise in unwanted pregnancies, sexually transmitted diseases, and heartbreak of every kind. By unlocking one of society's last social seatbelts, the court has guaranteed only one thing-more fatal collisions lie just down the road."
For More ...
Related Stories
Divine Missions and Revelations from God (by Thomas Paine)

A Critique of Fundamentalist Dogmas (Jack Nichols)

A Call to Arms or Treating the Disease (Fundamentalism)

GOP Senate Majority Leader Blasts Supreme Court Decision

Related Sites Jerry Falwell

Cal Thomas

Concerned Women for America

Institute for American Values

Traditional Values Coalition

Focus on the Family