BY LINDA BENTLEY | JUNE 16, 2010
CBP to celebrate deviant behavior on the taxpayers’ dime
‘I do not know what ‘acting in private’ means; surely consensual sodomy, like heterosexual intercourse, is rarely performed on stage.’
TUCSON – Sonoran News sifts through a never-ending stream of press releases and tries to bring pertinent information and subjects of interest to our readers.
On Monday morning, we received one from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) with a subject line: “Border Patrol’s Special Emphasis Program Celebrating Cultural Diversity and Awareness.”
The press release began, “The CBP components, including Border Patrol, the Office of Field Operations, the Office of Air and Marine and the Office of Information Technology continue to promote cultural awareness through the CBP Special Emphasis Program (SEP). SEP emphasizes the employment, development and advancement of Hispanics, Asian-Pacific Islanders, African-Americans, Native Americans, Women and Disabled Persons.”
Not fitting into any of the above categories, the press release states, “This month we will be celebrating Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Pride on June 18, 2010 … Please join us at the event to celebrate cultural diversity.”
Is this really about “cultural diversity” or sexual deviance? The Encarta Dictionary defines deviance as “behavior that is sharply different from a customary, traditional, or generally accepted standard.”
Contrary to what homosexual activist groups would like the public to believe, that approximately 10 percent of the U.S. population is gay, survey after survey indicates only about 2.3 percent of the population is gay.
Gay activists have been known to misquote Alfred Kinsey from his 1948 book: “Sexual Behavior in the Human Male,” to perpetuate the myth that 10 percent of the male population is gay.
Kinsey stated 10 percent of white males were “more or less” exclusively homosexual during at least a three-year period between the ages of 16 and 55.
Kinsey’s samples, which became a subject of controversy as well, since they were not drawn from random samples but from prison populations and people who identified themselves as being homosexual.
In 2000, the U.S. Census Bureau determined homosexual couples made up less than 1 percent of American households.
However, when Gallup asked Americans in 2002 what they estimated the American gay men and women population to be, the average response was that 21 percent of men were gay and 22 percent of women were lesbians.
So, by repeating mythical numbers coupled with the success of a well-funded Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender lobby, deviant sexual behavior has grown to become thought of as an acceptable alternative lifestyle enjoyed by more than one fifth of the population.
In 2002, the Centers for Disease Control’s National Center for Health Statistics reported 2.3 percent of the population considered itself to be homosexual.
The survey was based on 12,571 interviews with men and women between the ages of 15 and 44.
A footnote in an amicus curiea (friend of the court) brief filed in what became known as the Texas sodomy case, (John Geddes Lawrence v. Texas), decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2003, acknowledged “The most widely accepted study of sexual practices in the United States is the National Health and Social Life Survey,” which “found 2.8 percent of the male, and 1.8 percent of the female, population identify themselves as gay, lesbian or bisexual … This amounts to nearly 4 million openly gay men and 2 million openly gay women who identify as lesbian.”
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy delivered the opinion of the court in the Lawrence case, which challenged the “validity of a Texas statute making it a crime for two persons of the same sex to engage in certain intimate sexual conduct.”
He wrote, “Liberty presumes an autonomy of self that includes freedom of thought, belief, expression, and certain intimate conduct.”
The case stems from an incident in Houston, Texas where officers of the Harris County Police Department, responding to a reported weapons disturbance, entered an apartment where Lawrence resided and observed Lawrence and another man, Tyron Garner, engaging in a sexual act. Lawrence and Garner were arrested and charged with, “deviant sexual intercourse, namely anal sex, with a member of the same sex (man).”
The applicable Texas statute provided, “A person commits an offense if he engages in deviate sexual intercourse with another individual of the same sex.”
Kennedy said the laws prohibiting sodomy did not seem to have been enforced against consenting adults acting in private and stated, “A substantial number of sodomy prosecutions and convictions for which there are surviving records were for predatory acts against those who could not or did not consent, as in the case of a minor or the victim of an assault.”
Kennedy said the Texas statute “furthers no legitimate state interest which can justify its intrusion into the personal and private life of the individual.”
The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Texas Fourteenth District was reversed and the case was remanded for further proceedings.
Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote a concurring opinion, in which she stated the effect of Texas’ sodomy law was not just limited to the threat of prosecution or consequences of conviction, but branded all homosexuals as criminals, “thereby making it more difficult for homosexuals to be treated in the same manner as everyone else.”
O’Connor said it legally sanctioned discrimination against homosexuals in a variety of ways unrelated to the criminal law, including areas of employment, family issues and housing.
Justice Antonin Scalia wrote a dissenting opinion, with whom Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justice Clarence Thomas joined.
Scalia mocked the court’s claim, which he said was unsupported by any citations, “that laws prohibiting sodomy do not seem to have been supported against consenting adults acting in private.”
He wrote, “The key qualifier here is ‘acting in private’ – since the court admits that sodomy laws were enforced against consenting adults (although the court contends that prosecutions were ‘infrequent’). I do not know what ‘acting in private’ means; surely consensual sodomy, like heterosexual intercourse, is rarely performed on stage. If all the court means by ‘acting in private’ is ‘on private premises, with the doors closed and windows covered,’ it is entirely unsurprising that evidence of enforcement would be hard to come by.”
Scalia said he has nothing against homosexuals, or any other group, promoting their agenda through normal democratic means, he stated such matters are better left to the people than to the courts.
“One of the benefits of leaving regulation of this matter to the people rather than to the courts is that people, unlike judges, need not carry things to their logical conclusion.”
In a brief dissenting opinion of his own, Thomas wrote separately to note that the law before the court “is uncommonly silly,” and if he were a member of the Texas Legislature he would repeal it.
But, as a member of the Supreme Court, he said, “I am not empowered to help petitioners and others similarly situated. My duty, rather, is to ‘decide cases’ agreeably to the Constitution and the laws of the United States.”
The SEP event to “celebrate” homosexuality will be held at 11 a.m. on Friday, June 18, 2010 at the Holiday Inn, 4450 S. Palo Verde Road, Tucson. Call to RSVP with the Tucson Sector for Public Affairs at 520-748-3210.