No claim to protected class status (with all accompanying entitlements) can be founded for certain on the mere allegations of a particular group that the individuals who comprise it share a mode of behavior or mere desire to practice that behavior. Peel away the "civil rights" rhetoric surrounding "gay rights," and all gay militants are saying, to put it colloquially, is that there is no difference between being allegedly "horny" and being Black, Hispanic, female or handicapped.

But race, color, physical challenge and gender are simply not factors on which judgments of character can be based. No rational person would argue that another was immoral simply because he or she was black, or female, or blind. True ethnicity is not behavior or desire, moral or immoral. Being black isn't a behavior. Being a man or woman isn't a behavior or a desire. Being Hispanic isn't a behavior. Homosexuality is a behavior, or at least an alleged inclination. (Therefore, no member of a legitimate protected class is awarded, or can be denied, his or her status on the basis of sexual behavior or desire; for instance, an African American person who happens to be gay cannot be separated from his or her protected status or its benefits because he or she is gay.)

In 1986, the U.S. Supreme Court (in the case of "Bowers vs. Hardwick") was asked by homosexuals convicted under Georgia's sodomy law to overturn the sodomy statute and recognize homosexuals as a distinct class protected under "right to privacy" and due process considerations contained in the U.S. Constitution's Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. The Court's decision both upheld Georgia's criminal sodomy statute, and established that, in the view of the court, homosexual practices constitute behavior, certainly not factors qualifying a group for Constitutionally protected class status. In its ruling, the Court established four significant findings which firmly undercut gay activists' essential claim to true ethnic-equivalent or minority status. In the Court's words:

1. Georgia's sodomy statute did not violate the fundamental rights of homosexuals.
2. [The] Federal Constitution does not confer [a] fundamental right upon homosexuals to engage in sodomy.
3. There should be great resistance to expand[ing] [the] substantive reach of the due process clauses of [the] Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, particularly of it requires redefining [a] category of rights deemed to be fundamental.
4. [The] presumed belief of [a] majority of [the] Georgia electorate that homosexual sodomy is immoral and unacceptable provided a rational basis for Georgia's sodomy statute." (Emphasis added)

Certainly, no extreme leap of logic is required to conclude that, if the United States Constitution accords no fundamental right to engage in homosexual sodomy or the other sexual behaviors mentioned, and considers it no abuse of fundamental rights for states to criminalize such behavior, the High Court will not likely permit the awarding of protected class status to groups solely identified by homosexual practices or mere alleged homosexual desires.

The Court specifically characterized "fundamental liberties" under the Constitution "as those liberties that are deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition" -- which certainly have never included a "right" to practice homosexuality. And if it is argued that the quality in question when determining "gayness" is "sexual orientation" (i.e. mere desire, acted or unacted on, to have sex with persons of the same gender), would it not be manifestly absurd to build an entire new "protected class" status on nothing more than people's alleged fantasies?

Email this to a friend