LA Times op-ed against state sex laws

Great LA Times op-ed piece (free registration required) by Jonathan Turley calling for the repeal of intrusive state sex laws. The US Supreme Court may soon hear the case of two Texas men convicted of sodomy when police broke into one's apartment and found the couple having sex.

The case could reverse a controversial 1986 Supreme Court decision that upheld the right of states to dictate the way citizens engage in consensual sex. Since then, 13 states have tried to regulate conduct in the bedroom, creating a type of morals police now found in those states and such like-minded jurisdictions as Iran. [...]

There may be no greater intrusion of Big Brother into private lives than the regulation of the way that adults make love. Yet the local morals police can rely on the U.S. Supreme Court's infamous 1986 decision upholding a Georgia law that prohibits a variety of sexual acts between any adults. Despite the fact that one study found that more than 75% of adult Americans reported that they engaged in such criminalized acts as oral sex, former Chief Justice Warren Burger cited "Judeo-Christian moral and ethical standards" and "millennia of moral teachings" in his concurring opinion.

Posted on Tue, Oct 22, 2002 at 10:48 AM