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The lengths to which the modern progressive Left has been willing to go in order to foist its radical agenda on the American people has certainly been well documented. But if any one group underneath liberalism's big tent of oppressed minorities has gained the most ground over the past few decades, surely it is the homosexual lobby.

For years, gay rights activists have cited the right to privacy when arguing their case in the court of law and public opinion. State laws prohibiting homosexual sodomy have long been at the center of the debate. In 1986, in the case of Bowers v. Hardwick, the U.S. Supreme Court could find nothing in the Constitution guaranteeing anyone the fundamental right to engage in homosexual sodomy. Less than twenty years later, however, such a right was miraculously located.

How did this happen? Justice Antonin Scalia offered the following explanation at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars:

There is no text in the Constitution that you could reinterpret to create a right to abortion, for example. So you need something else. That something else is called the doctrine of “substantive due process.”

What substantive due process is is quite simple – the Constitution has a Due Process Clause, which says that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. Now, what does this guarantee? Does it guarantee life, liberty, or property? No, indeed! All three can be taken away. You can be fined, you can be incarcerated, you can even be executed, but not without due process of law. It's a procedural guarantee. But the Court said, and this goes way back, in the 1920s at least, in fact the first case to do it was Dred Scott. But it became more popular in the 1920s. The Court said that there are some liberties that are so important that no process will suffice to take them away. Hence, substantive due process.

Now, what liberties are they? The Court will tell you. Be patient. When the doctrine of substantive due process was initially announced, it was limited in this way, the Court said it embraces only those liberties that are fundamental to a democratic society and rooted in the traditions of the American people.

Then we come to step three. Step three: that limitation is eliminated. Within the last 20 years, we have found to be covered by due process the right to abortion, which was so little rooted in the traditions of the American people that it was criminal for 200 years; the right to homosexual sodomy, which was so little rooted in the traditions of the American people that it was criminal for 200 years. So, it is literally true, and I don't think this is an exaggeration, that the Court has essentially liberated itself from the text of the Constitution, from the text and even from the traditions of the American people. It is up to the Court to say what is covered by substantive due process.

In essence, substantive due process – a judicially-manufactured notion in itself – is what lends unconditional legitimacy to nebulous abstractions like the right to privacy. It arbitrarily establishes what amounts to a constitutional right to socially liberal policies and gives rogue judges license to radically altar the nation's moral framework at the strike of a gavel—without any say from the American public. Of course, that makes perfect sense to liberals who, by and large, do not think that morality is a public interest, just a subjective set of personal preferences among individuals.

However, as is often the case with liberal groups, the gay lobby and its allies become suddenly disillusioned with the right to privacy when it's invoked by ideological opponents. Last year, David Parker, of Lexington Massachusetts, faced a court trial over a dispute about the teaching of homosexuality in his five-year-old son's kindergarten class. The controversy began when school officials distributed a “diversity book bag” to students, which included a book titled “Who's in a Family?” The book in question featured two households led by homosexual partners.

Parker was arrested and charged with criminal trespassing after refusing to leave a scheduled meeting with the officials unless they gave him the option of removing his son from classes involving homosexuality, transgenderism, and “gay”-headed relationships.

Massachusetts law requires schools to notify parents when sexuality is scheduled for discussion. But as Lexington School Committee Chairman Thomas B. Griffiths explained, “We don't view telling a child that there is a family out there with two mommies as teaching about homosexuality.” Whatever the merits of that statement, consider what Robert Scutch, the author of “Who's in a Family?,” had to say in a National Public Radio interview amid the growing controversy over his book: “I wrote the book to introduce these relationships to young children” and “start before they are taught there is any other way.”

In other words, if you're a parent, Scutch, and other like-minded individuals, want to get to your kids before you do. And considering that most parents do not put homosexuality on the list of things to talk about with their five-year-old, the activists know that the sooner they get started, the better.

The National Education Association, the nation's largest union, has adopted an openly pro-homosexual stance. Numerous sex education programs around the country have implemented material advocating the homosexual lifestyle, while disparaging traditional morality as repressed and homophobic. High school students have faced disciplinary action for expressing disapproval of homosexual behavior. And kindergarteners are now prime targets of gay activism, even though many people would prefer to call it something else.

So, I guess it's true: what homosexuals choose to do in their private lives is nobody's business—except for the kids in our public school classrooms.

Copyright by Eric Reikowski