I have read through the résumés of several judges Donald Trump and his team have proposed for possible nomination to the Supreme Court.
There is an ugly overload here. And I’m not talking looks either.
Let’s look at just one: William H. Pryor Jr.
From Bethania Palma Markus’s article at theadvocate.com:
In a 2003 legal brief arguing to uphold a Texas law criminalizing consensual LGBT sex, Pryor compared it to “polygamy, incest, pedophilia, prostitution, and adultery” and argued that states should be free to prosecute gay people as criminals. He said the rights of LGBT people as a group are not protected by the Constitution.
“This Court [the Supreme Court] has never recognized a fundamental right to engage in sexual activity outside of monogamous heterosexual marriage, let alone to engage in homosexual sodomy,” Pryor wrote. “Such a right would be antithetical to the ‘traditional relation of the family’ that is ‘as old and as fundamental as our entire civilization.”
He also said homosexuality was harmful and that Texans needed protection from it.
“Texas is hardly alone in concluding that homosexual sodomy may have severe physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual consequences, which do not necessarily attend heterosexual sodomy, and from which Texas’s citizens need to be protected.”
He also argued there was “no fundamental right to engage in homosexual sodomy just because it is done behind closed doors… Because homosexual sodomy has not historically been recognized in this country as a right — to the contrary, it has historically been recognized as a wrong — it is not a fundamental right.”
Who is this judge to tell consenting people what they can do in their own bedrooms?
What is he going to do? Order that all bedrooms have surveillance cameras to make sure it doesn’t happen? That everyone sign a same-gender chastity pledge
Does this man know anything about personal freedom? Does he even care?
If this is the kind of judge that Donald Trump thinks should sit on the Supreme Court….or (as is more likely) the kind of judge people around him proposed and he just signed off on without bothering to personally check….he better wake up, and fast.
If you’re the President, sweating the details is part of your job description. And if you’re not going to do so yourself, you damn well need better people to do it for you.
Ken, Take 10 minutes and read the pdf document you linked, like I just did. It is a far cry from what that story says it is.
Plus I’m not even sure Pryor wrote it.
It says the Counsel of record is Nathan A. Forrester
Solicitor General
free – I took you up on your suggestion…and still came to the same conclusion.
ok, then I will take them one at a time and see if you change your mind.
1st. – Pryor compared it to “polygamy, incest, pedophilia, prostitution, and adultery” –
He never compared it to these. he says that if you use the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to overturn the law in question, it would open the door to it being used for these other purposes. in my mind that isn’t a comparison.
can you agree with that?
2nd. – argued that states should be free to prosecute gay people as criminals.
I don’t see anywhere he says that.
what he does say is that 22 states have laws on there books and it isn’t the courts job to change that, the state legislators are responsible for those changes.
**If the court got involved using this part of the constitution to overrule the states it would clog the court system with future lawsuits.
***Also try to remember what he is doing. his job is to apply constitutional standards that have been ruled on to this lawsuit.
He even says that if he were to find for the petitioner it would be legislating from the bench. which the courts should never due.
maybe people have a hard time understanding how the lower courts have to follow precedent.
also he has to address the laws the petitioner is saying apply to this case. He says he cant find anyway that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment applies to this lawsuit.
**add this to the post above i forgot to put it in but it applies to both posts.
i will let you look over those 2 posts while i have more coffee. just woke up 30 mins. ago.