Yeah, a break from war talk to discuss anal sex in my home state.

The Supreme Court is still hearing arguments in Lawrence v. Texas today. Here are the details from Slate (via Andrew Sullivan).

Texas police entered the apartment of Houston resident John Lawrence in response to a neighbor's fabricated claim that a man in there with a gun was "going crazy." What the cops actually found was Lawrence and Tyron Garner having anal sex, for which they were promptly arrested under a Texas law prohibiting "deviate sexual behavior" (i.e., oral or anal sex) between persons of the same gender.

Pause here to consider that bestiality is not considered "deviate" under Texas law.

Hey, we love our animals down here.

Lawrence and Garner were jailed, prosecuted, and fined over $200 each. They challenged the law, arguing that it violated the 14th Amendment's promise of privacy in intimate sexual matters and its guarantee of equal protection under the law. They prevailed in the Court of Appeals for the 14th District of Texas, but lost, 7-2, when the court reheard the case en banc. So they appealed to Texas' highest appellate court, which declined to hear it, and on to the U.S. Supreme Court, where their argument was heard this morning.

Now then, I heard some of the recap of the Supreme Court interchanges yesterday on NPR, and some if it, frankly, was embarrassing (as the Slate article points out).

This exchange was particularly stupid:

Smith explains that the anti-sodomy laws have pernicious secondary effects—keeping gay parents from gaining child visitation or custody or employment, for instance—and Rehnquist wonders whether, if these laws are stuck down, states can have laws "preferring non-homosexuals to homosexuals as kindergarten teachers." Smith replies that there would need to be some showing that gay kindergarten teachers produce harm to children. Scalia offers one: "Only that children might be induced to follow the path to homosexuality."

Because that's what those homosexual elementary school teachers are doing in the schools: recruiting and proselytizing for gay sex. Um.

I'm particularly embarrassed on behalf of Texas, that police charged into their room on shaky pretenses, then arrested them for sodomy laws. Ridiculous.

For the record, I'm all for any number of consenting adults, in the privacy of their homes putting damn near anything in any orifice that they please.

Let's hope the Supreme Court rules this way and overturns our silly law.