Court abolishes laws that are inherently unjust

To the editor:

David Limbaugh bemoans the loss of moral absolutes, which he says are embedded in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. He directs his outrage at activist Supreme Court justices who make decisions contrary to his concept of moral absolutes.

The Founders deferred to Judeo-Christian moral codes. They accepted slavery and that white women were to be denied certain rights guaranteed to white men. Before blacks would be designated as human beings and women accepted as equal under the law, it was necessary for thinking people, including activist justices, to openly question -- and reject -- some of the supposed moral absolutes.

Limbaugh's most serious concern involves homosexuality. Had there been an article on sexuality in the Constitution, it is a certainty that it would have reflected the Judeo-Christian moral teaching that homosexuality is a sin punishable by death. The states remedied this omission by enacting their own anti-homosexual laws.

However, in establishing that consensual sex, including homosexual sex, is a personal matter rather than a legal matter, the majority opinion of the 2003 Supreme Court justices did what thinking people and other justices had done: They no longer deferred to the Judeo-Christian moral code.

Limbaugh's response is that this opinion represents an "abandonment of the moral foundations of our freedoms" and introduces the specter of moral relativism. Not so. It serves rather as a further example of the need to abolish laws which from the beginning were unjust or inhumane.

JOHN C. BIERK

Cape Girardeau