If you don't like "evolving notions of right and wrong", then what's wrong with keeping a law on the books that combats those very notions? If you want to rewrite it to include hetersexual sodomy, fine. If you don't want to enforce it, fine. But such a law is the people's way of saying, "We don't like this behavior, and we never will." I have yet to see a convincing argument explaining why this is a bad thing.
Your "degreed degenerates" is not overboard. (The article you link to is quite good, by the way.) All you have to do is type "adult-child sexual relationships" into your search window and watch all the academic apologists spring into view.
Okay, here's a stupid question. What exactly is stupid about the Texas law?
Pax Vobiscum,
Quick answer about the stupidity of the law:
It's morals legislation that criminalizes only a certain subset of the practitioners of the immorality (same sex pairs). Other practitioners (opposite sex pairs)doing the same thing are A-OK in the law's book.
Of course, that would have been a perfectly good reason for the court to strike it down - and a much more narrow reason (which the court used to favor). Maybe, in the future, we can just argue the court's opinion is all dicta?
That last post may not be clear to some nonlawyers:
Traditionally, if a court is striking down a law as unconstitutional, and there are two or more aspects of the law that appear to violate the constitution, the preferred ruling would be to strike it down on the most narrow ground. Fer instance, because the Tx sodomy law only criminalized the conduct if between people of the same sex, it discriminated based upon gender and therefore violated equal protection. The court also found that the state had no right to criminalize private conduct. While the first basis (discriminates based on gender) would toss out the law, it would leave essentially unanswered whether the state has the right to regulate such conduct in the first place, thus, the ruling would be much more narrow. But hey, can't let a thing like traditional jurisdprudential rules get in the way of social engineering.
What's wrong with only criminalizing a "subset of practioners" of immorality? We do that all the time, on the grounds that all subsets are not created equal.
The problem is arbitrariness. All of the acts are immoral, but you are only going after a minority of the actors. It means you really aren't serious about the morals you are purporting to uphold.
It also creates a certain contempt for the law, as would a law that banned marijuana possession by, say, NASCAR fans and only NASCAR fans. Again, the equal protection angle is far more compelling here.
Thanks for the answer, Dale, but I'm not sure if your answer is sufficient (even if your answer had not been short).
For instance, if there were an ordinance against women walking down the street topless, while allowing men to be topless, I don't think you'd be calling that law stupid because it conforms to our current social mores. It certainly seems possible that Texans view homosexual sex as more repugnant than the hetro sort. I'm not saying that's right, but we can allow for differing standards of morality (or prejudices) without calling it stupid. Most prejudices aren't reasonable, but I'm not sure they get an automatic "stupid" tag. People can prefer classical music to rock, and they may even decide that rock attracts the unruly sort (creating problems at concerts), who's to say that they are stupid for banning rock concerts while allowing the classics? I bet there are quite a few that would call that prejudice common sense.
I think if you think about it, many laws can be viewed through the arbitrary lens. Federal income tax laws (picking on the rich), or affirmative action for instance. We might call these things stupid, but I think for different reasons.
But perhaps more importantly, I see at NRO that Thomas quoted Justice Steward in Griswold, when Steward called the the anti-contraceptive law "uncommonly stupid." I get the feeling that "stupid" is just a replacement for "I disagree."
I'll shut up now, so I don't fill your comment box with all these "stupid" unlawyerly comments. 
Pax Vobiscum,
Robert LeBlanc,
I think Scalia said essentially that if he were in the Texas legislature, he would have voted to repeal the law, but that doesn't mean it's unconstitutional. Your point about differing standards of morality is one of the points of the Lawrence dissent. Just because a law is stupid doesn't make it unconstitutional. But, if it denies equal protection of the laws, it is unconstitutional.
In fact, if the SCOTUS had held the Texas law unconstitutional on equal protection grounds, I'm not sure the decision would have been as controversial. Problem is, the majority said that what consenting adults do sexually in private is a constitutionally protected liberty interest such that the State has no interest in interfering with those private behaviors.
Laws that criminalize bigamy and adult incest are unconstitutional now because they infringe on the liberty interest of consenting adults to do anything they want to each other in private.
Jeff Culbreath,
I'm not sure we actually criminalize acts for a subset of adult people based on morality. Can you think of an example?
Gene,
I guess the most relevent example that comes to mind is the subset of married adults: we don't criminalize serial polygamists who are divorced and remarried several times, but we do criminalize those polygamists who choose to have several wives at once. Furthermore, we criminalize only certain kinds of liars: those who lie to their buddies about how much money they make are undisturbed by the law; those who lie to the IRS might go to jail. Etc. Why do we do this? Because adulteries, lies, and other immoralities admit of *degrees* -- and that is what mindless egalitarianism is unable to process. There are important distinctions to be made between sins and sinners when it comes to the public order.
BTW, it occurs to me that you have restricted your question to "adults", but did not distinguish between enlisted and civilian, free and incarcerated, citizen and alien -- all subsets of adults that are treated differently under the law. And how is that "adult" is not just an arbitrary subset of "people"?
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