October 2003

ARTICLE TOOLS

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THE NEWSPAPER PHOTO showed two men kissing as their friends joyously threw rice. Unbelievably, it was their wedding day—and their "marriage" was, thanks to a Canadian court, as legal as any heterosexual marriage.

If we don't act fast, we may soon see many more "weddings" like these—not only in Canada, but also in the United States.

Consider: On June 11, a Canadian appeals court ruled unconstitutional Canada's ban on homosexual marriage. Within hours, the first same-sex Canadian couple rushed into matrimony. Three weeks later, in Lawrence v. Texas, the U.S. Supreme Court declared (6-3) that sodomy is protected behavior under the Constitution's so-called "right to privacy" provision.

Gays hailed the decision as the prelude to homosexual "marriage" in America—and they're right. It's the prelude, as well, to legally sanctioned polygamy, incest, pedophilia, and bestiality. As Justice Antonin Scalia angrily roared in dissent, the decision "effectively decrees the end of all morals legislation."

This is precisely the point Senator Rick Santorum and Alabama Attorney General Bill Pryor (nominated for the Circuit Court) were vilified for making. Radical gays and the media falsely claimed he equated homosexual behavior with bestiality and incest. Nonsense. Santorum was simply stating the obvious: If the Court sanctioned sodomy on privacy grounds, it would then have no rationale for outlawing other private, consensual sexual acts.

How, for example, can we continue to uphold laws against polygamy? After all, the polygamist and his wives engage in private, consensual sex. So does a father who wants to sleep with his consenting teenage daughter—or son. Ditto the man who engages in bestiality, for, according to ethicist Peter Singer, animals ...