Bower's v Hardwick was cited in 3 of yesterdays Supreme Court cases.  I
thought people might find it interesting how this decision is being used
by the court:

Chief Justice Renquist:
  We think, therefore, both in view of this history and of
our decided cases dealing with substantive liberty under the
Due Process Clause, that the Court was mistaken in Roe
when it classified a woman's decision to terminate her
pregnancy as a -fundamental right- that could be abridged
only in a manner which withstood -strict scrutiny.-  In so
concluding, we repeat the observation made in Bowers v.
Hardwick, 478 U. S. 186 (1986):
     -Nor are we inclined to take a more expansive view
of our authority to discover new fundamental rights
imbedded in the Due Process Clause.  The Court is
most vulnerable and comes nearest to illegitimacy
when it deals with judge-made constitutional law
having little or no cognizable roots in the language or
design of the Constitution.-  Id., at 194.

Justice Blackmun:
  The Chief Justice's criticism of Roe follows from his
stunted conception of individual liberty.  While recognizing
that the Due Process Clause protects more than simple
physical liberty, he then goes on to construe this Court's
personal-liberty cases as establishing only a laundry list of
particular rights, rather than a principled account of how
these particular rights are grounded in a more general right
of privacy.  Post, at 9.  This constricted view is reinforced by
The Chief Justice's exclusive reliance on tradition as a
source of fundamental rights.  He argues that the record in
favor of a right to abortion is no stronger than the record in
Michael H. v. Gerald D., 491 U. S. 110 (1989), where the
plurality found no fundamental right to visitation privileges
by an adulterous father, or in Bowers v. Hardwick, 478
U. S. 186 (1986), where the Court found no fundamental
right to engage in homosexual sodomy, or in a case involv-
ing the -firing of a gun . . . into another person's body.- 
Post, at 9-10.  In The Chief Justice's world, a woman
considering whether to terminate a pregnancy is entitled to
no more protection than adulterers, murderers, and so-
called -sexual deviates.-  Given The Chief Justice's
exclusive reliance on tradition, people using contraceptives
seem the next likely candidate for his list of outcasts.

Justice Scalia:
  The emptiness of the -reasoned judgment- that produced
Roe is displayed in plain view by the fact that, after more
than 19 years of effort by some of the brightest (and most
determined) legal minds in the country, after more than 10
cases upholding abortion rights in this Court, and after
dozens upon dozens of amicus briefs submitted in this and
other cases, the best the Court can do to explain how it is
that the word -liberty- must be thought to include the right
to destroy human fetuses is to rattle off a collection of
adjectives that simply decorate a value judgment and
conceal a political choice.  The right to abort, we are told,
inheres in -liberty- because it is among -a person's most
basic decisions,- ante, at 7; it involves a -most intimate and
personal choic[e],- ante, at 9; it is -central to personal
dignity and autonomy,- ibid.; it -originate[s] within the zone
of conscience and belief,- ibid.; it is -too intimate and
personal- for state interference, ante, at 10; it reflects
-intimate views- of a -deep, personal character,- ante, at 11;
it involves -intimate relationships,- and notions of -personal
autonomy and bodily integrity,- ante, at 15; and it concerns
a particularly -`important decisio[n],'- ante, at 16 (citation
omitted).  But it is obvious to anyone applying -reasoned
judgment- that the same adjectives can be applied to many
forms of conduct that this Court (including one of the
Justices in today's majority, see Bowers v. Hardwick, 478
U. S. 186 (1986)) has held are not entitled to constitutional
protection-because, like abortion, they are forms of
conduct that have long been criminalized in American
society.  Those adjectives might be applied, for example, to
homosexual sodomy, polygamy, adult incest, and suicide, all
of which are equally -intimate- and -deep[ly] personal-
decisions involving -personal autonomy and bodily integri-
ty,- and all of which can constitutionally be proscribed
because it is our unquestionable constitutional tradition
that they are proscribable.  It is not reasoned judgment that
supports the Court's decision; only personal predilection. 
Justice Curtis's warning is as timely today as it was 135
years ago:
-[W]hen a strict interpretation of the Constitution,
according to the fixed rules which govern the interpre-
tation of laws, is abandoned, and the theoretical
opinions of individuals are allowed to control its
meaning, we have no longer a Constitution; we are
under the government of individual men, who for the
time being have power to declare what the Constitution
is, according to their own views of what it ought to
mean.-  Dred Scott v. Sandford, 19 How. 393, 621
(1857) (Curtis, J., dissenting).
---
Some men have written that they don't understand what abortion rights
has to do with gay rights.  The Supreme Court seems to know...

________  __
\      / /  \
 \pink/  \__          -+--+-               Scott Safier    (corwin+@cmu.edu)
  \  /      \  _  __   |  |                Center for Integrated Manufacturing
   \/    \__/ (__/\_)_/|_/|_/                                 Decision Systems
        B0/1 f+ w- g k+ s- m(+) e++             Carnegie Mellon
member, T.S.A.K.C.

"We do not have an anti-gay policy... The problems Boy Scouts are
having are with people trying to get in - the gay community, the
homosexuals, the atheists."
Burford Hill, Western Regional Director, Boy Scouts of America. 
5 June 1992, San Francisco Chronicle