Supreme Court Sex Decision

The court has given its imprimatur to laws proscribing sexual activity between consenting adults in the privacy of their own homes. The court arrives at this decision because there purportedly exists “no fundamental right to engage in homosexual sodomy.” Yet this very characterization of the issues reveals that the real force driving the majority is its contempt for a segment of the population.

For the issue is not a fundamental right to engage in sodomy but whether the state can invade the hearts and minds of its citizens. As Justice Harry A. Blackmun observed in his dissent, “this case is about . . . the right to be let alone.”

The majority, however, chooses to ratify prejudice against gays on the shaky ground that such prejudice has existed, as White writes, “for a very long time.” One would have thought that, after 20 years of desegregation cases, the majority of the court would have accepted the simple proposition that invidious discrimination against an unpopular minority does not become right because it is ancient. The majority--White, William H. Rehnquist, Sandra Day O’Connor, Lewis F. Powell and Warren E. Burger--has acted contemptibly to produce a decision that will be a source of national shame for generations.

But it will also have immediate effects. This decision will give the AIDS hysteria, typified by the LaRouche initiative, a measure of credibility. Further, I do not doubt that violence against gay people will rise. What the majority has actually done is give every bigot in this country a license to kill. Our blood is on the majority’s hands.

MICHAEL NAVA

Los Angeles