Those who operate under the concept of the strict interpretation of the Constitution are re-addressing the famous Roe vs. Wade decision, arguing that the Supreme Court and the courts in general, do not have the right to create law, even in terms of deciding the constitutionality of law. And the Roe vs. Wade case is even more special, in that there are no provisions in the Constitution for privacy at all, except of course for the potential for interpretation under Due Process, Equal Protection, and other clauses that don’t specifically state privacy.
Harkening back to the days of the Court of Chancery, in which the concept of equity comes into play, you begin to understand how our modern legal system has a thousand years of trial and error behind it. Of course, the rest of our idea of government is pretty new, relatively speaking, but our system of law has been evolving for a while. And, since the Court of Chancery, Equity has been the legal school of thought (which, by the way, as a doctrine holds just as much weight as common law) that the courts not only decide what is legal according to the law, but what is equitable and just. There’s that concept again, justice, which anyone who is not third-grade level naive will understand is not necessarily the letter of the law.
So the precedent of interpreting the law and applying it in a just manner is clearly not a new ideal, and with that, our modern court systems have evolved into ones that attempt (and, admittedly, not always succeed) to find justice through both law and equity.
Therefore, we have by extension the right to privacy, which is freedom from prejudicial tyranny; the freedom to engage in your own pursuit of happiness without the concern that it will be exposed and you will be discriminated against by the State or society as a whole, simply for pursuing your own brand of happiness without infringing the rights of others.
Despite popular opinion, the Constitution and Bill of Rights was setup to protect the rights of the minority. You still have to consider the minority when dealing with 280 some odd million people, because beliefs, morals, and values are never going to be the same outside of a small group of individuals. Ultimately, you get the best cross-section you can of the majority of beliefs and values, based on society’s inherent decisions of right and wrong, and for any grey areas or disagreements, you leave open to interpretation on an individual basis and protect as much as possible. For instance, few societies on Earth would declare outright rape or true murder hunky-dory, but the answer is a little less clear in majority-minority terms of the finer points of say, Anti-Sodomy, Non-Cohabitation, Gay Rights, or any number of other hot privacy topics these days.
Those arguing against keeping the government out of the bedroom have forgotten these simple rules. You can quote all the statistics you want, take every slippery slope and ad hominem attack you can about how certain activities degrade the moral fiber and act as a slow cancer to our society as a whole, but don’t infringe on others’ right to the pursuit of happiness because you think it’s a sin, or degrading, or in many cases, it’s just plain icky. These people are doing nothing to destroy your right to the pursuit of happiness. Leave them alone, and keep your prying eyes out of their business.
Here’s to the moral sticklers minding their own business and keeping the hell out of other people’s bedrooms.
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