Conservative and liberal reactions, including Scalia and Family Research Council, react to Supreme Court decision on sodomy case - Beliefnet.com

Are Gays Winning the Culture Wars?

The Supreme Court sodomy decision is about much more than allowing private consensual sex acts.

BY: From the Editors of Beliefnet

Continued from page 2

Related Amicus Briefs


Brief of the Alliance of Baptists, the American Friends Service Committee, the Commission on Social Action of Reform Judaim, The Most Rev. Frank T. Griswold, III, Presiding Bishop, Episcopal Church, the Methoist Federation for Social Action, More Light Presbyterians, the General Synod of the United Church of Christ, the Unitarian Universalist Association, and 21 other religious organizations:



"The amici hold differing views concerning the religious and moral propriety of sexual intimacy between same-sex partners, but they are unanimous in their belief that private, consensual sexual conduct between same-sex adults should not be punished as a crime."

[.] "The religious traditions of some amici recognize the morality of consensual sexual intimacy between members of the same sex or hold that such conduct is not intrinsically immoral. The religious traditions of other amici teach that same-sex sexual conduct is to be discouraged by the family and faith community. Despite these differences, the amici are unanimous in the belief that criminalizing the private behavior of a particular minority, as Texas' Homosexual Conduct law does, intrudes upon individual liberty and violates the rights of gay, lesbian, and bisexual individuals."

Brief of Amicus Curiae American Family Assocation, and other groups:



"The religious traditions of some amici recognize the morality of consensual sexual intimacy between members of the same sex or hold that such conduct is not intrinsically immoral. The religious traditions of other amici teach that same-sex sexual conduct is to be discouraged by the family and faith community. Despite these differences, the amici are unanimous in the belief that criminalizing the private behavior of a particular minority, as Texas' Homosexual Conduct law does, intrudes upon individual liberty and violates the rights of gay, lesbian, and bisexual individuals."

[.] The religious traditions of some amici recognize the morality of consensual sexual intimacy between members of the same sex or hold that such conduct is not intrinsically immoral. The religious traditions of other amici teach that same-sex sexual conduct is to be discouraged by the family and faith community. Despite these differences, the amici are unanimous in the belief that criminalizing the private behavior of a particular minority, as Texas' Homosexual Conduct law does, intrudes upon individual liberty and violates the rights of gay, lesbian, and bisexual individuals.

Brief Amicus Curiae of the Family Research Councl and Focus on the Family, in support of the respondent:



"We are in early stages of an increasingly intense political debate about the central cultural institution of our society, of which the aspiration to same-sex marriage is more symptom than cause. It is not a debate about modestly increasing the number of people able to marry, or of incrementally adjusting our understanding of it. At stake is the intelligibility of marriage as we have, from time immemorial, understood it. It would be greatly inopportune, and bitterly divisive, for this Court to implicitly decide this great question by overturning the judgment below."

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