May 20, 2016
Trump's SCOTUS Nom Wanted to Jail People for 'Homosexual Sodomy'
READ TIME: 2 MIN.
Earlier this week GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump released a list of nominees he is considering appointing to the vacant Supreme Court seat, should he be elected president. One of people on Trump's shortlist is a judge who has argued that states should jail people who commit "homosexual sodomy," Pink News reports.
On the Donald's list is Texas justice William H. Pryor Jr., who has a record of being one of the most anti-LGBT justices in the U.S.: In 2003, he argued that Texas should keep its sodomy law.
"[There is] no fundamental right to engage in homosexual sodomy just because it is done behind closed doors," Pryor wrote in his brief at the time, according to the liberal group People for the American Way. "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."
"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 added.
In the People for the American Way's report, the group writes:
"Pryor would deny gay men and lesbians the equal protection of the laws. He believes that it is constitutional to imprison gay men and lesbians for expressing their sexuality in the privacy of their own homes and has voluntarily filed an amicus brief in the Supreme Court urging the Court to uphold a Texas law that criminalizes such private consensual activity.
"Despite Supreme Court rulings to the contrary, Pryor has expressed the view that the Constitution should not apply to certain critical issues pertaining to the rights and freedoms of individual Americans, such as reproductive choice, the civil rights of gay men and lesbians, and religious liberty issues.
"Instead, Pryor has urged that these rights be determined by majority vote within each state, with the result that these rights could be diluted or eliminated in particular states.
"The effective and devastating result of this ideology would be that the fundamental guarantees of the Constitution would not apply equally across the country.
"Pryor's 'majoritarian' views would create an America in which a person's individual rights under the Constitution as the Supreme Court has articulated them would be fewer or greater depending on where that person lives."
