http://www.sbcbaptistpress.org/bpnews.asp?ID=18365
May 27, 2004
By J. Alan Branch
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (BP)--When several municipalities issued marriage licenses for “same-sex couples” in direct contradiction to the civil codes of their individual states earlier this year, local magistrates took the exercise of autonomy to a new level and independently established community standards.
The actions by the local magistrates in many ways mimic the activism of the federal judiciary. In fact, the broadened concept of autonomy that dominates a great deal of civil discourse has been stitched together in a rather piecemeal fashion through various court decisions. A brief survey of these rulings demonstrates that autonomy was introduced as a way of securing certain contraceptive rights, was broadened to include abortion, and expanded further to include homosexuality. Thus, the flow has been from sexual liberty to abortion to greater sexual liberty.
Poe v. Ullman, 1961
This case is seminal for radical notions of autonomy in American jurisprudence because it is the first case in which a Supreme Court justice referred to a constitutional right to privacy. The case revolved around a Connecticut law that prohibited both the use and distribution of contraceptive devices. The court dismissed the case by a 5-4 margin because no one had actually been prosecuted under the law. However, Justice John Harlan stated in his dissent, “I believe that a statute making it a criminal offense for married couples to use contraceptives is an intolerable and unjustifiable invasion of privacy in the conduct of the most intimate concerns of an individual’s personal life.” Thus, the concept of a “right to privacy” made its official entry into American legal discourse.