Naw, too easy. You need to pick a harder one. Polygamy involves production of kids, something entirely unlikely in homosexual acts. Kids left over from unhappy polygamous relationships create cost exposure to the government in the form of increased welfare payments, education expenses, juvenile facilities. Since polygamy reasonably costs the government money, there is a substantial government interest in prohibiting it.
(Apply the same logic to abortion--it reduces kids therefore it reduces government costs, therefore, OK.)
Cynical but true.
As to other poymorphous activty...check to see if there's any effect on goverment costs. That's the test. If not, then it will past muster.
Not so easy. Those renegade Mormon polygamists routinely point to the fact that they don't have such problems: the bonds are much more stable than monogamous marriages, and extended families help raise the kids, who actually tend to turn out quite well. The polygamists in this country cost the government much less money proportionally than the regular folks.
The Court's going to have to find a better way to dissemble than that.
But yes, I have faith.
Say. If this ruling paves the way for anything-goes-between-consenting-adults, then mightn't it pave the way for those gladatorial contests you've beedn predicting, Mark?
Additionally, the Court's reasoning (generously construed) is much broader than that.
After all, there are medical costs to sodomy (as practiced by gays or non-gays) that are a burden to the government, too.
Such does not enter into opinions floating in the "transcendent dimensions" where one "define[s] one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life."
Francois:
Of course.
Hey - what if you have yourself cloned?
Would you get to own the clone?
Could you legally murder the clone?
Sell the clone as a slave?
Force the clone to give you 50% of what ever money it makes?
You know - once they get this cloning thing down - they will probably outlaw procreative heterosexual sex - especially between married people.
The court has basically already said that there's a right to procreate. So you can't outlaw a pologamorous relationship just because it might produce a lot of kids. The Court has said that government attempts at forced sterilization (like of the insane) are unconstitutional, overturning a famous ruling which had the line "seven generations of idiots is enough."
Of course, given the recent ruling, there are hundreds of things which are currently banned that will soon be challenged. Glatadorial contests like "The Ultimate Fighting Champion," banned in most states already, will probably flourish. Drug laws, laws against prostitution, incest laws, and even sexual harassment laws, will probably all be overturned within the next 10 years. Same with laws against cloning, I suspect. Imagine - a federal right to create one's clone. It's all part of "defining one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life."
Every time a case like this happens, I'm reminded of those sci-fi movies where the future shows a world of extreme crime, open displays of hedonism, and extreme apathy towards suffering. And I think to myself, things will never really get like they are in Total Recall, Robocop, or a host of others. But then, I consider Court rulings like this and think - in 50 years, if this keeps happening on an increasing scale, it'll be a wonder if our society doesn't end up worse than science fiction ever thought it might.
Ever read the science fiction classic "The Forever War" (by Joe Haldeman), Paul? In the far future, homosexuality becomes the official norm, so that the one-world government can handle all human reproduction. Just as it is for a large portion of our present society, sexual intimacy is completely divorced from anything other than mutual stimulation.
Mike,
No I haven't heard of it. It just seems kind of obvious now.
Bobbert -- I like your comments, but you're a wild-eyed optimist if you think it'll take fifty years for our society to get worse than anything sci-fi has so far put on the screen.
Gregg, you're right. Consider how different society looked in 1980 verses 1990, or 1990 verses 2000. Ten years is a lifetime these days.
By 2010, there will be gay marriage, cloning, euthanasia and the harvesting of body parts, open acceptance of child porn (Britney Spears was only the precursor), widespread gay adoption, open nudiy and sexual displays on network television (much like cabal channels have now), the transformation of prostitution into a multinational industry, and the widespread refusal to entertain christians as servants of government (consider the Borking of all pro-life judges right now in the Senate as an example).
But, if we're lucky, we won't fall to Radical Islam. We'll only fall to radical athieism.
You folk aren't projecting the future big enough. In the future there will not only be total racial amalgamation but also only one sex. Reproduction will be only through government licensed cloning.
Actually, using the Court's reasoning I don't think you can argue against it. The costs to the individuals, communities and the government are already known and did not present the Court with a sufficiently compelling interest to allow communities to continue to make value judgements in their laws about sexual behavior - in private. But then what is private is shifting too....
David
Gads, I agree with Shakespeare: All lawyers should be deep fried in their own fat.
I'm actually a lawyer, Jerome. 
But I will never step foot in a courtroom if I can help it. I was explaining to my parents over the weekend that I actually have more respect for the Securities and Exchange Commission, which involves my clients, than a Court, because the SEC will not destroy the industry it's trying to regulate (there's a symbiotic relationship), but Courts have no problem wrecking society as they see fit.
I have a question:
In the sci-fi classic, "A Canticle for Lebowitz", asexual reproduction (which occurred involuntarily as the result of the widespread use of nuclear weapons, in the book)led to the arrival of beings who were not "born of woman" (or man) and so were free of mortal sin.
Could the creation of a sinless "race" be one (accidental) result of current reproductive trends?
Just asking...
In the sci-fi classic, "A Canticle for Lebowitz", asexual reproduction (which occurred involuntarily as the result of the widespread use of nuclear weapons, in the book)led to the arrival of beings who were not "born of woman" (or man) and so were free of mortal sin.
!?!
I don't remember that from ACFL!
"Could the creation of a sinless "race" be one (accidental) result of current reproductive trends?"
Um... No.
A/C -- pretty sure you're thinking of a different book. Liebowitz was about the world after a nuclear war. The Liebowitzers were a new Catholic monastic order that kept the blueprints for nuclear weapons in hope of preventing their future use.
Actually, A/C is correct: at the end of ACFL, the priest tries to baptize the Rachel head of the two-headed woman. Rachel recoils and instead gives him Viaticum. The priest realizes she didn't need baptism and starts chanting the Magnificat.
Great book, worth reading multiple times.
A wonderful, wonderful book. Interesting, though, the way vernacular liturgy was completely below Miller's radar.
The illuminated diagram in CANTICLE was a simple circuit board although the monks revered it as something profound. The Albertian Order of St. Leibowitz were "bookleggers" reproducing and distributing books to bring mankind out of a new postatomic Dark Age.
Rachel, the second head of the bicephalous old apple woman (get it?), wakes up and is supposed to be taken as sinless. (Remember Jesus was the descendant of Leah, not Rachel.)It's a new world, one the surviving sons of Adam have left.
The vernacular was, mercifully, not on anybody's screen in the mid-50s (except for those few "progressives plotting in the wainscotting).
Polygamy and Same Sex Marriage (hereinafter SSM) are not Constitutional based upon Lawrence (yet). Lawrence held that the State cannot criminalize the private conduct of two consenting adults. It did not hold that the state must publicly recognize such acts or a union of two SS adults. Such recognition is a public act, not a private one. Anti-Polygamy laws do not criminalize private conduct (if by polygamy, you mean marriage of three or more persons). These laws only prohibit public recognition of polyamorous unions. Whether that legal difference is sufficient to stop the SCOTUS from doing whatever the hell it wants to do is a completely different issue.
C Matt,
I agree with you that it is not a necessary conclusion from Lawrence that the state be required to grant public recognition of certain private
conduct, but ...
I thought bigamy and incest were crimes in most states. I think Lawrence does decriminalize bigamy and incest (at least between adults). It also decriminalizes prostitution, notwithstanding the majority opinion's feeble attempt to distinguish it. As long as it occurs in private between (and among?) consenting adults, the State no longer has an interest in prohibiting the conduct.
Gene:
You are correct as to incest and prostitution, but I thought Dale's challenge was directed to polygamy (of which bigamy is a subset). I suppose under some tortured commerce clause reading, perhaps prostitution could still be outlawed, but not under a state's right to "protect" the morals of its citizens, a venerable and long held exercise of its inherent police powers.
I don't think Lawrence decriminalizes prostitution at all. Nor does it decriminalize bigamy or polygamy. I recognize the slippery slope arguments and the case is bad, but it's just one case and there are many principled reasons to distinguish between prostitution, already legal in several counties in Nevada, polygamy (nothing more than bigamy, outlawed in all 50 states) and incest, also banned.
Lawrence addressed a law not widely adopted and universally ignored, and only selectively enforced. There are many good reasons to invalidate such a law.
What do you call a marriage between three gay guys?
Would it be legal?
Joseph:
Did you read the opinion? Normal judges are very circumspect and narrow in their rulings precisely because their opinions state principles that can be applied to other contexts that are analogous. That's what I do for a living every day, and have been successful in convincing courts to apply principles from one opinion to analogous, but not identical, situations. The problem with Lawrence is that its reasoning (if you can call it that) is so sweeping creating a very broad "right to privacy" that logically, prostitution, incest and other private actions between consenting adults cannot be outlawed without running afoul of the priciples decreed in Lawrence.
Yes, I did read the opinion. I also read these opinions daily and use them as presuasive authority in court. I also agree that some of the langauge is sweeping, I just don't think the opinion will be given the broad effect that many people (including the dissent and gay rights activists) suggest.
I don't have to tell you that opinions are often narrowed by later decisions for various reasons despite their very broad language. I think that is the case here.
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