Once in a great while, the United States Supreme Court issues a decision that causes a good deal of public controversy. At the end of its 2002 – 2003 term in June, a six to three ruling was published having to do with sodomy. It ruled against a Texas statute barring sodomy.
This essay is not devoted to the intricacies of sodomy. Quite to the contrary, it intends to deal with the bleatings of Antonin Scalia, the Supreme Court jurist, with Pat Robertson, the television evangelist and a string of other characters who hold that miscreants violating the Texas law against sodomy ought to be severely punished.
This old essayist, a straight man with no deviances except glaucoma and baldness, believes that the ruling striking down the Texas statute was long overdue. The debate about that ruling is what this essay is all about. But the title of the essay posed a great problem.
In the Spring of this year, it seemed to me that the antics of Rick Santorum, the junior Senator from Pennsylvania, deserved some comment. Santorum is the third ranking Republican in the Senate, so some people actually listen to his words even though what passes for thought with Santorum is really an illusion. He has no original thought processes of his own, as far as I can see.
In the Spring the Supreme Court of the United States was considering Lawrence et al. v. Texas involving imposition of the Texas law barring sodomy. Santorum got into the act late in April, 2003 with the thought that he deplores homosexuality and he also deplores the privacy doctrine established by the Supreme Court in 1963, which struck down a ban on the use of contraceptives, even by married couples. Santorum wants everyone to play by his antediluvian rules which would not only do away with contraceptive devices but with Planned Parenthood and similar organizations as well. Because of Santorum’s quaint views on sexuality, it was first proposed to call this essay, “More Catholic Than The Pope.”
A little later in the Spring, on June 26, the Supreme Court issued its ruling on Lawrence et al. v. Texas which struck down the Texas laws on sodomy. This set off a monstrous firestorm by right wing conservatives. The ruling came out as a six to three vote. Conservatives had reckoned that the vote would be at least five to four to uphold the Texas law. The response of conservatives when the ruling came down was marked, as you might imagine, by excesses. A member of the Family Research Council said that the court would now not even bar sexual relations “between a mother and an adult son.” In other instances, the conservatives said that under the new Supreme Court ruling, people had the right, among other things, to be involved in bestiality. That struck me as silly in the extreme. Perhaps the right wing folks envisioned sexual relations between humans and bears or horses or between humans and ducks and dogs. Several commentators invoked bestially as one of the drawbacks to the new Supreme Court ruling striking down the Texas sodomy law. I still had no title for this essay. I really could not use the title of “Don’t Be Beastly” for the serious essays that I might attempt to write. I thought then that Pat Robertson might provide an appropriate title.
In the middle of July, 2003, we have a comment from Pat Robertson to which we must all pay close attention. Pat runs the Christian Broadcasting Networks 700 Club which is a device for calling attention to himself and for his own fundraising purposes. Less well known is Pat’s partnership with Charles Taylor, the dictator of Liberia, in mining operations for diamonds and gold. Pat has offered millions of words on the “700 Club” broadcasts, but he has yet to say a word about his partnership with Dictator Taylor. As you might imagine, Robertson is one Republican who is anxious for United States troops to impose order in Liberia which Bush seems reluctant to do.
This past week, Robertson started a 21 day “Prayer Offensive” directed at the Supreme Court because of its ruling on the Texas sodomy law. On one of his broadcasts, good old Pat said that the ruling “has opened the door to homosexual marriage, bigamy, legalized prostitution and even incest.” I’m lost. What does a law striking down sodomy in Texas have to do with bigamy, or homosexual marriage or legalized prostitution or incest? I’m afraid old Pat has involved a string of non-sequiturs here.
But that is beside the point. The object of the 21 day “Prayer Offensive” is to get three of the six Justices of the Supreme Court who had voted to ban the Texas law, to retire or to resign or perhaps to die. I suspect that Pat and his followers can pray as hard as they can for the next three weeks and the vote on the Supreme Court will not change. The Supreme Court Justices are in adjournment until October.
I couldn’t change the title to a “21 Day Prayer Offensive” because Robertson made no sense. And so, by default, it has been elected to call this essay SOD-O-MY. The hyphens are mine to make it easier for full fledged right wing conservatives to spit out the word sodomy. So SOD-O-MY it is.
My Merriam-Webster dictionary gives a very chaste definition of sodomy. It says, “Copulation with a member of the same sex or with an animal: unnatural copulation with a member of the opposite sex.”
As I said, this is a very chaste definition of sodomy. It is one that could be used in monasteries or in a nunnery or possibly in a home for retired Protestant preachers. Without arguing the point, I suspect that millions, or perhaps billions, of happily married people and lovers throughout the world may practice “unnatural copulation” and do so with innocence and great joy. So much for the Merriam-Webster Company which publishes dictionaries in Massachusetts, the home of the Red Sox, book banning and Cardinal Law.
What we have here are two gay men named Tyron Garner and John Geddes Lawrence. These two men lived together in Houston in an apartment. There is no evidence whatsoever that these two men engaged in blatantly homosexual behavior in public. All things considered, they went to work every day and shopped for groceries the way everyone else does. Their main offense was that they were gay and the Texas authorities set out to punish them. Being gay in Texas is an occasion for calling the cops.
In 1998, the cops broke into the Garner-Lawrence apartment and arrested the men in their bedroom because they were allegedly “performing a homosexual act.” Obviously, the arrests happened in Texas so they were convicted. They elected to appeal the convictions to higher Texas courts which, as you might expect, upheld the law. In 2003, some five years later, it wound up in the Supreme Court.
In spite of all the fuss made by Texas legal authorities, Garner and Lawrence were only fined $200 with no jail time. It might be argued that their case was a matter of much adieu about nothing.
Newsweek Magazine in its July 7th issue, says the Supreme Court decision was really just catching up to public opinion. In 1986, only 17 years ago, the Court in Bowers v. Hartwick, had upheld a Georgia anti-sodomy law. At that time, 25 states had such laws. Some 17 years later in 2003, only four states banned sodomy between homosexuals. Curiously, there are nine other states with laws that are rarely enforced, barring sodomy between any sexual partners, whether married or not.
Now we return to our hero Senator Rick Santorum who was active in the run-up to the June decision. He was the subject of an article by Cathy Young in the April 28, 2003 edition of the Boston Globe. Cathy Young quotes Santorum as follows: “If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery.”
Among other similar statements, Santorum goes on to say that he has “nothing against anyone who is homosexual,” but he has a great problem with gays acting on their sexual orientation. In short, Santorum says homosexuality is alright provided it is kept invisible. In the same interview with Ms. Young, Santorum believes the state should be able to jail people for having the “wrong kind of sex” in their bedrooms. Santorum has not told us what is the right kind of sex. Would it have to do, for example, with priests taking advantage of altar boys?
Finally, he tells Ms. Young that he sees nothing wrong if states should ban birth control. He explicitly believes that it is the proper role of government to curb “individual wants and passions.” Remember, we abandoned the title for this essay called, “More Catholic than the Pope.”
And of course, Santorum deplores the right-to-privacy doctrine established by the Supreme Court in the 1963 Griswold v. Connecticut ruling, striking down a ban on the use of contraceptives even by married couples.
That’s what Rick Santorum thinks, and remember, he is the #3 Senator among Republicans in the Senate. While he may be the third ranking Republican in the Senate, most observers consider Santorum as something lighter than a light weight.
In the history of the English language there is a perfect term to fit Santorum and his light-weightedness. It refers to an insect, an ant, who flits from one object to another and never ever makes an impact. According to the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, the proper term in this case is pissant or piss ant or piss-ant. They say such an insect or person contributes nothing of importance, an insignificant person.
My mother, who was born in 1882, used pissant regularly. And she was a genuinely religious person. She used it to describe someone who today would be called a complete jerk. I believe pissant and jerk accurately describe the junior senator from Pennsylvania, the Honorable Rick Santorum.
The decision in June when the Supreme Court ended its session for this year, has stirred up impassioned protests from the right wing. The New Yorker Magazine in its July 7, 2003 issue commented on the fuss as follows:

With surprising firmness, the Court struck down the remaining laws against sodomy thus bringing the United States to where Canada was a generation ago. Those laws in Texas and other states, had rendered it a crime, until last Thursday, to make love in the way that, for anatomical reasons, are gay folks’ sole option. It was a strong, solid decision, six to three, with only the hard core right – Antonin Scalia, joined by William Rehnquist and Clarence Thomas – dissenting. In his dissent, Justice Scalia accused his colleagues of having ‘signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda.’ And what is that so-called agenda? Daisy chains on the church steps? Compulsory drag shows at school assemblies? ‘Eliminating the opprobrium that has traditionally attached to homosexual conduct’ seems to be Scalia’s own definition? No, it is worse than that. Just like in Canada, some of these people want to get married.”

So gay marriage is somewhere at the root of right wing objections to the Court’s ruling? Hard to believe, but that is one of the main objections causing all the agony.
So let’s see what Scalia had to say in his impassioned dissent. On Page 21 of Scalia’s dissent, Scalia says, “State laws against bigamy, same sex marriage, adult incest, prostitution, masturbation, adultery, fornication, bestiality and obscenity are likewise sustainable only in light of Bowers’ validation of laws based on moral choices.” Bowers was the case in 1986 when the Court upheld Georgia’s anti-sodomy law.
Notice that Scalia said “adult incest” and “bestiality.” And now do the conservatives wish to outlaw fornication, masturbation and adultery? And Nevada, a Bush stronghold, has legalized prostitution in several cities. Does that have to go as well?
On page 25, Scalia adds to the list of crimes by saying, “States continue to prosecute all sorts of crimes such as prostitution, adult incest, adultery, obscenity and child pornography.” I am a careful reader of the New York Times and the Newark Star Ledger and the Boston Globe when I can get it. I can’t ever recall someone being charged with adult incest, adultery and obscenity. Maybe in the New York–New Jersey area, we must live in a virtual snake pit and we have to thank Scalia for bringing these matters to our attention. And once more, I am troubled by Scalia’s pointing to “adult incest.” If two 15 year olds are involved in an incestuous relationship, does that mean they are not involved in Scalia’s prohibition against “adult incest”? What is adult incest? Is it the sainted Rudy Giuliani being married to his cousin?
On page 26, Scalia throws a blanket over all sin by preaching against, “fornication, bigamy, adultery, adult incest, bestiality and obscenity.”
On page 27, Scalia again rails against, “adultery, fornication, adult incest” and laws permitting homosexual marriage.
A CONFESSION BY THE ESSAYIST
Scalia is absolutely right. Now that he was on the losing end of the Lawrence decision, I must say that I now have an urgent desire to fornicate with a beast, such as a New Jersey bear. If the bear wishes to marry me, that would cause me to be guilty also of the crime of bigamy and polygamy. Scalia is right again. But if the bear were a male, perhaps that would be the first same sex marriage to take place in New Jersey. Just like Scalia said. I hesitate to make this confession, but I am quite certain that Scalia will feel better knowing that a New Jersey liberal has capitulated to his dire warnings. And once the bear and I are married, we probably will indulge in adult incest. Scalia was right on every count.
Now that I have made my abject confession, my spirits are greatly improved and I can tell you what other right wing critics have had to say.
Neil Lewis of the New York Times did a round-up of responses by some outspoken right wingers. Jay Sekulow (Chief Counsel to the American Center for Law and Justice), a group founded by Pat Robertson, says that the affirmative action and the anti-sodomy decision by the Court “reflect a political approach to the law that we deplore. It was a grand slam homer for the other side”. When the right wingers complain about a “political approach to the law”, they have it backwards. Don’t they remember the Supreme Court ruling that gave George Bush the Presidency by a 5 – 4 vote and some mystical justification by their hero, Justice Scalia?
Neil Lewis quotes the affable Jerry Falwell as saying that, “This is probably as bad a day as the court has had on social issues since Roe v. Wade. They put the right to privacy ahead of respect for community standards for morality that have prevailed for many years.”
At least Falwell did not immediately complain about bestiality, fornication and adult incest. Is he a closet liberal now?
Then Neil Lewis quotes Ken Connor, President of the Family Research Council as saying the decision was “a classic judicial activism arrogance.” He quotes Connor as saying that the decision, “Opens the door to bigamy, adult incest, polygamy and prostitution.” Sound familiar? And then he quotes Connor as saying that the decision opened the door to sexual relations “between a mother and an adult son.” That’s what Connor said. On one hand Connor railed against bigamy, polygamy and prostitution, and then he turned to a mother having relations with an adult son. What about a teenager? And what about an illicit relationship by a father and a daughter? Is Connor unconcerned about juvenile incest?
Then there is a final word from Jerry Falwell. He says that the courts may now approve bestiality, prostitution and the use of narcotics. When I made my confession about messing around with beasts, I forgot to mention that since the Texas law on sodomy was struck down, I had smoked dozens of marijuana cigarettes and had popped about 150 narcotic painkillers. All because of striking down the Texas law. That is what did it.
Before we close up shop, we must hear from the Attorney General of the Great State of Alabama, William H. Pryor. His nomination to the Federal Appeals Court has set off a storm of editorials about his views on religion and the law. In a recent brief, Pryor argued that sex between homosexuals would open the door for legalized, “necrophilia, bestiality and even incest and pedophilia.” I am greatly pleased that he opened up a new front with his assertion that necrophilia and pedophilia and bestiality would result if homosexuals made love. (Small note. My chaste dictionary says that necrophilia is, “obsession with and usually erotic interest in or stimulation by corpses.” Remember, you heard the warning here first.)
All of the right wingers cite bestiality as one of the outcomes of the Court’s June decision. As a practical matter, if the beasts were bears or buffaloes, how would an ordinary low life reprobate like me tell the difference between male and female beasts? Or are the conservatives saying that liberals like me would take a unisex approach? I will have to do some more research before I am able to take full advantage of the freedom now found under the Supreme Court’s decision.
Finally, we come to Bill Frist, the Republican leader in the Senate. He is so aroused about the Supreme Court decision that he wants to see a Constitutional Amendment against gay marriage. Very few people have responded to Frist’s efforts, but he thinks it of great import to guard against gay marriage such as obtains in that suburb of Hell, Canada.
In the final analysis, Frist ought to know that this country was founded on the principals of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Being married to an amiable spouse would seem to fit under what our founding fathers had in mind. Frist should read the Declaration of Independence. If homosexual couples wish to avail themselves of those rights, who is Bill Frist to tell them nay. My hope is that his constitutional amendment dies a sudden natural death.
My feelings on this whole question of sodomy agrees with that of the New Yorker Magazine where they say that the law in the United States is now similar to Canada after the lapse of a generation. It is about time. And on the greatly feared issue of gay marriage, it will have absolutely no effect on anyone except the gay couple. If gays and lesbians want to establish their relationships through marriage, they have my best wishes.
Now before we close up the SOD-O-MY essay, there is one other urgent matter to deal with. On July 14, 2003, Pat Robertson appeared on his 700 Club broadcast with eyes tightly closed and with his fists clenched to announce his 21 Day Prayer Offensive. While you have been reading SOD-O-MY, time is slipping away from us. The 21 day Prayer Offensive will soon run out of time.
I believe there must be some divine inspiration to Robertson’s Prayer Offensive because it expires on August 4th, which happens to be my birthday. Robertson’s people tell me the August 4th termination date was not an accident. Pat himself found a citation in the Book of Ezra which requires the prayer offensive to reach its climax within the first four days of harvest time, which is, of course, August. My first name is that of the Old Hebrew scribe of Jerusalem. Obviously, this is a matter of Biblical prophesy. I find that inspirational just as Scalia’s reading of the law now permits me to engage in previously forbidden conduct with bears or orangutans. We all have Texas to thank for giving us the Lawrence case.
E. E. CARR
July 24, 2003
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It never ceases to amaze me how Republicans can be simultaneously so in favor of “small government” but also so tenacious at trying to regulate people’s bedrooms. Also, the sexual slippery slope arguments are always just so excellent — all roads lead to gay sex with animals.
It’s been pretty soundly established that some of the loudest anti-gay-rights voices over the years have come from deeply closeted people. I wonder if the dudes who somehow find excuses to shoehorn bestiality into all these discussions are similarly closeted? I can honestly say I don’t think nearly, nearly as much about sex with animals as all these legislators seem to.
These are the same guys and gals currently freaking out about transgender people and bathrooms. Are they all just horribly repressed? It would be sad, except they have power, so it’s scary.