Are Gays Winning the Culture Wars?

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Ken Connor, Family Research Council

"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."

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Tom Minnery, Focus on the Family

"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."

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Positive Reactions

Mel White, Soulforce

"This is a fantastic day for all people because the Supreme Court has recognized that our government has no place in our bedrooms, nor a right to selectively single out people of minority sexual orientation for criminal punishment.

"Maybe some churches that alienate and degrade us will see the light after today as well."

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Andrew Sullivan, conservative gay commentator

"It would be hard to find a more emphatic statement that gay men and women are a) human beings whose private lives deserve privacy and b) citizens who deserve the same treatment as everyone else under the law.

[...] "Once you acknowledge the dignity of gays as a social class, once you have conceded that their private sexual and emotional lives cannot be reduced to a single sexual act, once you have made the law equal with respect to the private sex lives of heteros and homos, the logic of same-sex marriage becomes hard to resist. ... Equality under the law means something. And now, it inescapably means the right to marry - for all citizens and not just those with power."

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Rabbi David Saperstein, Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism

"Today's Supreme Court decision represents a significant leap forward in the protection of the equal rights of gay and lesbian Americans and in the right to privacy for all. The ruling signifies how far the Court has progressed since its 1986 ruling in the Bowers v. Hardwick case, which found that gay and lesbian Americans did not share the right to privacy afforded to heterosexuals. We are gratified that a majority of the Court now recognizes that a law such as that in Texas "demeans the lives of homosexual persons." We applaud the Court's acknowledgment that gays and lesbians have "the full right to engage in private conduct without government intervention," and, beyond the specific issue of gay rights, the Court's affirmation of the fundamental nature of the right to privacy in American law."

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