Religion & Law

Someone named Michael Sean Winters says he's not happy with Judge Walker's decision and (more particularly) opinion overturning Proposition 8.  In developing his disagreement, Winters distinguishes Lawrence v. Texas: "I understood why the majority of the Court ruled in Lawrence v. Texas that privacy concerns demanded that they overturn a sodomy law."  It's hard to know where to start, so I'll be brief.  First, was "privacy" the stated right in Lawrence?  Second, are "concerns" sufficient reason to overrule the legislation of a "sovereign" state?  Does Winters really mean that?  I am reminded of what I once heard a young and guileless intern tell a group of us she was leading on a tour of the Supreme Court: "The dissent is where some Justices tell the majority they were in bad taste."  It's not surprising that Winters admits not understanding "Justice Scalia's concern, voiced in his dissent, that the Lawrence ruling would expedite gay marriage."

Once there is a judicially enforceable constitutional right to be free from the impositions of a normative anthropology, little that follows can be surprising.  Winters elides this by transmuting Lawrence into a privacy decision.