'Lawrence v. Texas' D.A. Resigns During Scandal Probe

In yet another display hypocrisy on the part of anti-gay public officials, Houston District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal, has been forced to resign. It was Rosenthal who led the prosecution charge against the plaintiffs in Lawrence v. Texas, and who briefed the agument to try to convince the U. S. Supreme Court not to strike down the Texas sodomy statute (which thankfully took down Virginia's statute with it). Irony of ironies, Rosenthalis now citing privacy holdings in the Supreme Court opinion in Lawrence v. Texas as he tries to keep incriminating e-mails from being introduced in the lawsuits against him.

During the Lawrence oral argument, Rosenthal stated: "Even if you infer that various States acting through their legislative process have repealed sodomy laws, there is no protected right to engage in extrasexual — extramarital sexual relations, again, that can trace their roots to history or the traditions of this nation," Not surprizingly, it is now clear that Rosenthal had been involved in an extramarital affair while married and he is trying to hide e-mails evidencing the affair among other things. Once again, how do you say HYPOCRITE!!! Here are some highlights (http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=34239589):

HOUSTON – Add "former" before "Houston District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal," who's been outed as a racist and adulterer thanks to a bunch of emails he unsuccessfully tried to delete from his office computer. Rosenthal represented his state before the U.S. Supreme Court back in 2002 when the Supreme Ones were considering whether Texas could legally prevent gays from engaging in private sex acts. The result was the now-famous Lawrence v. Texas decision, which not only overturned Texas' anti-sodomy laws, but similar laws in the rest of the country.

But now Rosenthal, who's held the D.A.'s office since 2000, has resigned in the wake of a pair of federal lawsuits, one filed by brothers Sean and Erik Ibarra, who claimed they'd been falsely arrested and abused by county deputies, and another filed just two months ago by Lloyd Kelley, who'd campaigned for Rosenthal's job before the last election. Rosenthal attempted to purge emails that may have been related to the suits from his government email account before turning his hard drive over to federal investigators. But at the moment, what's more interesting is the stuff Rosenthal didn't destroy. Besides a cartoon depicting an African-American suffering from a "fatal overdose" of watermelon and fried chicken, Rosenthal had also retained sexually-explicit video clips and love notes to his secretary (who'd been his mistress during his previous marriage) in his "saved" mail.

Interestingly, according to the New York Times, "Mr. Rosenthal has sought to keep the e-mail messages sealed, citing 'zones of privacy' carved out by the United States Supreme Court in Lawrence v. Texas, the 2003 ruling overturning the state’s ban on sodomy — although Mr. Rosenthal had argued the case for Texas and the legality of the anti-sodomy laws."