Alex Henderson: 10 Key Court Decisions That Prevent Right Wing

Christians from Controlling Your Sex Life. If the Christian Right had its way, the United States would be a fundamentalist theocracy in which contraception, homosexuality, abortion, sexually explicit hip hop lyrics, and all adult pornography were illegal, but making the US that much of a theocracy would mean overturning a lot of major Supreme Court decisions. Over the years, the US Supreme Court has had many rulings that helped to advance sexual freedom in the United States, and it will be easier to protect those advances if fewer socially conservatives to the High Court, if Republican Mitt Romney had been elected president on November 6, while President Obama has shown a tendency to nominate justices who are at least centrist in their judicial philosophy, and now that Obama is getting ready to begin his second term, he will be more likely to appoint justices who will uphold, or perhaps even expand Supreme Court decisions that are favorable to gay rights, contraception, or one's right to possess sexually explicit adult erotica. Below are 10 landmark decisions that have had major implications for sexual freedom in the United States: 1. Stanley v Georgia, 1969. The Christian Right loves to demonize the late Earl Warren, who served as chief justice of the US Supreme Court from 1953-1969, and social conservatives' hatred of Warren is quite ironic, in light of the fact that he was a Republican who was nominated by GOP President Dwight D Eisenhower. Warren served three terms as California's Republican governor, and was Republican Thomas E Dewey's running mate in the 1948 presidential election. But then, the term "socially liberal Republican" wasn't an oxymoron in the days of the Warren Court, and shortly before Warren's retirement in 1969, the Warren Court handed down one of the rulings social conservatives are still cursing 43 years later: It's decision in Stanley v Georgia, ruling upheld that it is not a crime even if the material is obscene. The Stanley v Georgia ruling upheld that selling, creating or distributing obscene adult material was illegal, but a consumer could not be charged with obscenity, merely for being in possession of that material.