I fail to see the problem with people choosing to shag ina bathroom> If the door is closed then they're not interfering with your peeing pleasure are they? Whats wrong with it?

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I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. - Voltaire

There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare. - Art of War, Sun-Tzu, Chapter 2, Paragraph 6

"An eye for an eye makes everyone blind"-Gandi

In the US, public sex is generally frowned upon. Its just that simple. Kinda like how you Brits seem to have a problem with good food and allowing anyone to own a television. Just different ways of doing things.

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In case you were wondering, yes, there really ARE more idiots these days....technology has made natural selection obsolete.

To be completely frank, I personally have never given it a great deal of thought, and really don't care one way or the other. If that is how you feel, then you should be all means vote for people who reflect your views. But that is different from ignorantly and/or disingenuously insisting that the Constitution says anything about it, it doesn't, it neither requires it to be "protected" or criminalized, it leaves that as a matter of public policy to the values and wisdom of the people of the United States. The constitution no more requires that sodomy or public sex be legal than it requires that tax rates for all citizens be equal.

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"It's a good feeling to shoot a bad guy. Something you democrats would never understand. Americans are homesteaders, we want a safe home, keep the money we make, and shoot bad guys!"

----Denny Crane

Is it public though-if the doors closed it isn't. As I say I have no problem with it myself...

You don't like Fish and Chips? Bangers and Mash? I lvoe british cuisine...

Oh, and its very easy to own your own TV-most people seem to do it fine.

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I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. - Voltaire

There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare. - Art of War, Sun-Tzu, Chapter 2, Paragraph 6

"An eye for an eye makes everyone blind"-Gandi

I don't know enough of the constitution to judge about what it says-I'll leave that to the Judges who seem to have ruled in favour. But, personally, I have no problem with it at all.

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I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. - Voltaire

There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare. - Art of War, Sun-Tzu, Chapter 2, Paragraph 6

"An eye for an eye makes everyone blind"-Gandi

As i said - its our decision.
No and yes, but i would NEVER use the words "british" and "cuisine" in the same book, let alone sentence
Yeah - you just have to get a license for it. Personally i find even the idea of that to be vomit-inducing.

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In case you were wondering, yes, there really ARE more idiots these days....technology has made natural selection obsolete.

Well, given your own admission of ignorance on the topic, why bother wasting people's time in a rational and thoughtful discussion of the matter.

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"It's a good feeling to shoot a bad guy. Something you democrats would never understand. Americans are homesteaders, we want a safe home, keep the money we make, and shoot bad guys!"

----Denny Crane

I was expressing an opinion on the subject, putting a point up for discussion.

As I udnerstand it, from a limited study, the US constitution in an incredably flexable and unspecific document-some bits are very specifically codified, some bits are very flexible-I doubt that it has a specific section on this, does it?

Which means that it depends on how judges interprite the consitution on this matter-a matter of personal opinion "The consitution is what the judges make of it." This is, of course, a matter of private opinion, which is why I think that my thoughts are as valid as the judges.

EricOKC, your probably right with reguards to our food...but what do you class as cuisine anyways? Bangers and mash is far nice than a lot of the 'cuisine' I've tasted. As for the TV licince, I have no problem with it. I tkeeps the BBC on the air, and that makes it well worth it.

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I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. - Voltaire

There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare. - Art of War, Sun-Tzu, Chapter 2, Paragraph 6

"An eye for an eye makes everyone blind"-Gandi

Well, clearly demonstrating your aforementioned ignorance with regard to the Constitution and the role of Judges. As I mentioned, Judges are not intended to be free simply to make up stuff as they go along, there are ancient established rules for how possible ambiguities in legal texts are supposed to be interpreted. The idea that sodomy is a constitutional right violates most of those basic cannons.

Where people like you get confused is in the assumption that where the constitution is SILENT (which you seem to recognize that it is), it is left to THE PEOPLE to decide, not for judges to fill the hole or stretch the existing text like a piece of taffy in order for them to impose their personal views of what it SHOULD mean.

Let me ask you. It is an undeniable FACT that anti-sodomy laws existed before the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were ratified, existed after, and were never thought by ANYONE in either the society which ratified them, or for over 200 years that followed to be in conflict with the Constitution. Given that fact, how can any reasonable person interpret any supposed ambiguity in the text in a manner that interpretst the document to have meant something completely contradicted by the actual actions under that document by the people who wrote and ratified it?

Say, for example, the issue is whether or not the Bill of Rights was understood to prohibit prayers in publicly owned buildings; wouldn't the fact that the very people who wrote, passed, and ratified the Bill of Rights maintaned and expended public funds on the position of Congressional Chaplain who routinely offered prayers in publicly owned buildings an almost iron-clad indication that the Bill of Rights was NOT understood to ban the practice?

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"It's a good feeling to shoot a bad guy. Something you democrats would never understand. Americans are homesteaders, we want a safe home, keep the money we make, and shoot bad guys!"

----Denny Crane

No they don't, but you don't deny that they interprite the consitution and laws?

As far as I'm aware we're not talking about Sodomy, we're talking about straight sex here. The question is not weither or not theres a right to commit sodomy in the constitution, its weither or not its right to have sex in a public bathroom.
As I say this isn't a question of sodomy though-it sex in public toilets

Is any of this mentioned?

It was never thought that many things conflicted with the consitution either until they where raised-look at all the landmark judgements that have been passed over the years? Roe vs Wade is a case at point, but there are many others over the years. The judges may only interprite but they change the very nature of the document-if not the words.

Did the foudners of the contitution mean it to protect abortion? No, but now it does, did they include blacks in 'all men are born equal?' No, they didn't. But now it protects both. Judges are proactive, they push forward there interpritation of the constitution. what means somthing to sombody 200 years ago may mean somthing very diffrent now.

It wasn't understood then-it is now, and it is now that is key. it dosn't matter what they thought then, its how it is interprated now.

The constitution was intended to be flexable, so that it could change with the times. Why have there been only 27 amedments? becuase judges have changed the interpritation so more arn't needed. The Equal Rights amendment was rejected on the grounds that the judges had ruled that the Bill of rights had protected the rights of Women and men equally-it hadn't previosuly been udnerstood to do that.

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I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. - Voltaire

There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare. - Art of War, Sun-Tzu, Chapter 2, Paragraph 6

"An eye for an eye makes everyone blind"-Gandi

Of course, DUH, but "interpret" doesn't mean license to make up any meaning they want it to with absolutely no legal or historical basis.

To which I would point out the EXACT same thing. Laws against sex in places of public accomodation existed at the time the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were ratified and it never occured to ANYONE (not a single lawyer for nearly 200 years ever conceived of there being a constitutional basis for such laws to be invalid). Is it really reasonable thereofre to conclude that anything in constitution was understood to prohibit such laws?





But that is exactly the point. The Judges are not given the power to RIGHT or CHANGE the meaning of the legal text's presented to them. The role of a judge is to INTERPRET, and to do so using firmly established rules which judges the likes of which have been routinely CHANGING the meaning of the Constiution have flat out ignored.

What you and others describe is not "interpreting", which is when someone tries to ascertain the EXISTING meaning of something, you are saying that judges should CREATE the meaning of a text.




It is amazing that people don't realize how utterly stupid the bolded portion of what you just said is. You go on, and on, and on, about how the constitution was written to be "flexible" (or even worse "vague"). But the Constitutioanl itself was NEVER intended to be "flexible", it was intended to provide a specific set of powers (some broader than other's in the limitations of their scope) to the Federal Government. They NEVER intended that the meaning of the document would be subject to change by any method other than Amendment. The mere fact that they put in Article V contradicts the notion that the documents endurance over changing times was left to its "flexability".

Furthermore, your argument might be more rational if it were not in defense of Judicial acts which accomplish JUST THE OPPOSITE. Roe. v. Wade made the Constitution LESS flexible, Lawrence v. Texas has made the Constitution LESS flexible.

And let's say it was intended to be flexible, do you really think that it was intended that the arbiters of that flexibility were to be the unelected branch which was desribed as being the "weakest" of the three by the DEFENDERS of the proposed Constitution.

And where is The Supreme Court even given the power to rule on what the Constiution means if it is not a traditional legal text with a fixed meaning?

And what if any constraints would you place on this absolute power you would grant to judges? If their "interpretation" has absolutely NO basis in the text of the constitution, the clear contemporaneous understanding of what that text was understood to say, or even today's society, what basis of legitimacy is their in the court's decrees?

I have read the Constitution, I have also read Plato's "The Republic", and one striking difference is that the Constitution does not create a class of Philosopher Kings in the judiciary the purpose of whom is to rule over and impose their wisdom on the lower citizens. Their job is to inperet and apply the will of the people as expressed in the law (including the constitution) as faithfully as possible to what the people undertood the law to mean.

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"It's a good feeling to shoot a bad guy. Something you democrats would never understand. Americans are homesteaders, we want a safe home, keep the money we make, and shoot bad guys!"

----Denny Crane

Like I said - you think its OK, the US does not. While I disagree with the way you do things over there, I don't have the audacity to suggest you change it.

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In case you were wondering, yes, there really ARE more idiots these days....technology has made natural selection obsolete.

Use common sense, if there is a mens room, and no one is using it, and a couple can get into that mens room without attracting attention, and get their business done and leave without attracting attention, then there will be no charges.
If a couple walk into a crowded mens room, get into a stall, and start some loud lovemaking, then security will be summoned.
Everyone has heard of the "mile high club", but since most flights I've been on since 9/11 have been pretty much full, with fairly steady traffic in the lavatory area, I doubt many people are joining the club lately.

The expectation of privacy implies that you aren't doing anything that will attract attention, there is no reasonable expectation of privacy if a couple walk into a crowded mens room.

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“ The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state.”

Adam Smith , The Wealth of Nations 1776

"We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics"
FDR's second Inaugural Address

And certainly no expectation of privacy from the person you are soliciting (as in Craig's case).

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"It's a good feeling to shoot a bad guy. Something you democrats would never understand. Americans are homesteaders, we want a safe home, keep the money we make, and shoot bad guys!"

----Denny Crane

She's asking if it's legal, not if she can get away with it.

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If a neocon whines about big government wealth redistribution, just ask him what he thinks about the portion of that big government that sends aid to Israel.