I had a rant about the whole topic of this thread on Page 1, and I can see it went over like a lead balloon. I bring it up again because, given how I feel the SCOTUS has been abusing the meaning of the 14th Amendment, these three topics are pretty closely related.
Retro's ratings:
Birth control: Very highly support. An unwanted, and for that matter, even a wanted child uses up so much money, time, effort, space, and stress. Birth control should be extremely cheap and possibly free at colleges and high schools.
Gay or lesbian relations: Agents of the devil! Jk, how is this a question? It's as if someone asked "left-handed people?" They're not doing anything wrong and it's biologically normal to have a spectrum of sexual orientations.
Having a baby outside of marriage: It depends on if it's a successful single parent (which I have no problem with) or an irresponsible trash couple who now find themselves with a new problem (disapprove). Sometimes I wonder if it's best to have a permit system where you have to meet several requirements in order to have a child. It's really not fair to the child if they're going to grow up unloved and in difficult circumstances.
The Supreme Court's rulings on contraceptives --
Griswold v. Connecticut, Eisenstadt v. Baird, and
Carey v. Population Services Int'l -- were a crucial precedents that led the way to, and were cited by the Court in,
Lawrence v. Texas, which declared that "sodomy" is a constitutional right (for everyone). But, there's also a line of several Supreme Court cases on the topic of equal rights for illegitimate children --
Levy v. Louisiana, Glona v. American Guaranty and Liability Co., Labine v. Vincent, Weber v. Aetna Casualty and Surety Co., and several more cases that were handed down through the 1970s and into the early 1980s -- and without
those precedents, it would have been unlikely that the Court would have ever addressed gay rights at all. Not favorably. After all, there is something in common between being gay and being an illegitimate children: you can't help it that you have these descriptions, you were born that way, it's not your fault if you are. But there is also an issue of sexual mores that is at stake with both categories (gayness and illegitimacy of childbirth). If you care to see
Labine v. Vincent -- especially the dissenting opinion by Justice Brennan, first paragraph -- you'll see a remarkable degree of similarity between being gay and being an illegitimate child. I noticed the similarity about 23 years ago, the first time I read Brennan's dissent in
Labine.
