Here, the matter gets truly sticky. Hardly anybody these days wants to punish sodomy through criminal proceedings. Marriage -- the basic building block of society -- is another matter entirely. Few Americans, if polls are right, want to redefine marriage on the say-so of the U.S. Supreme Court -- the "mere" say-so, if I may say so -- and of the gay rights lobby.
Until Lawrence vs. Texas, such matters were within the people's purview to decide -- as when Vermont's legislature authorized same-sex unions and Texas' legislature forbade them.
In rushes the court at this point, creating that which the social peace hates -- uncertainty, fear and distrust. A Newtonian reaction is under way already, with Republican Senate leader Bill Frist, for one example, endorsing a constitutional amendment that would define marriage as the union of man and woman.
We are about to start fighting bitterly over this regrettable but worthy amendment -- a measure we might have forgone had not the Supreme Court decided, in effect, to overrule several thousand years of moral testimony and understanding.
What a mess, indeed! We are likely as a people to end up hating and despising each other in ways we cannot now imagine. At the very thought of it, the blood freezes, the pit of the stomach tightens.