Regardless, early this month (May), a Harris Poll was released which found that 82% and 87%, respectively, of our adult population opposes state regulation of private, sexual relations between same-sex domestic partners and opposite-sex married couples. Given the widespread homophobia that persists, this is a remarkable revelation of the value Americans place on the right to sexual privacy.

While majority rule has no role in issues affecting the freedoms and civil liberties guaranteed by our Constitution and Bill of Rights, in this instance it's worth noting that antisodomy laws both violate the right of privacy and run counter to the opposition the majority of Americans hold toward government intrusion into private, consensual sexual relations.

What's unsettling is the effect these statutes have on the gay community. Such laws have been used to criminalize homosexuals, to render them "unemployable"; to prevent them from legally marrying; to allow housing discrimination; and to prove them "unfit" for parenting, sometimes resulting in the loss of custody of their own children or the inability to adopt.

Most disturbing is the punishment some Christian extremists hope will ultimately be imposed on those who break these laws - execution.

Christian Reconstructionists, says William Martin, author of With God on Our Side, are striving for a theonomy in which homosexuality (and many other benign or relatively harmless behaviors) is subject to the death penalty.

In 1997, on "Crosstalk", a conservative Christian radio program, the now former-host Rich Agozino suggested that homosexuality should be punishable by death. According to Agozino, "Lesbian love [and] sodomy are viewed by God as being detestable and abominable ... Civil magistrates are to put people to death who practice these things." He even urged his audience to contact their legislators to propose antigay laws that would carry such penalty.

As an aside, I found this an interesting gem given that in February, Ingram Shlueter, producer of a nationally syndicated radio program by the same title (Crosstalk) dedicated a 30-minute segment to bashing my recent book, The Fundamentals of Extremism, refering to the authors, and liberals in general, as a menace.

Also, in 2001, Larry S. Kilgore of the Constitution Party of Texas said, "Well, we know punishing homosexuals by death would be extremely hard in today's society," adding, "But we hope that we can help to drive it underground so in about twenty or thirty years, the punishment can fit the crime."

The question that remains is why some Christian conservatives feel such a need to meddle in the private lives of others. Part of the answer was found in a 1996 experiment by Henry Adams, Lester Wright Jr., and Bethany Lohr, of the University of Georgia. Heterosexual men were hooked up to a penile plethysmograph and then watched videos of heterosexual, homosexual, and lesbian sex acts.

The men who were categorized as homophobic prior to viewing the videos were actually aroused while watching them; the nonhomophobics were not. In the end, the homophobic group still denied their sexual arousal, which suggests that homophobics are repressing, or unwilling to acknowledge, homosexual feelings.

I'd venture to guess that some of those protesting loudest against the removal antisodomy laws are really just terrified, maybe not even consciously, that the legalization just might lead them to cave in to homosexual temptations.

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