Perry Gets Gotcha’d

Watch this Talking Points Memo video showing Rick Perry being quizzed on how he can be in favor of small government in light of his opposition to the very famous 2003 landmark Supreme Court case Lawrence v. Texas.

It is obvious that Perry had forgotten what that case was all about, yet when the case was decided, Perry, as governor of Texas, railed against the decision.

The decision struck down Texas’ anti-sodomy law that barred homosexuals from this sexual act, but not heterosexuals. Perry decried the decision at the time, calling the Texas law, a heavy-handed intrusion of government into the private bedrooms of Texas “appropriate,” and calling the Supreme Court Justices “nine oligarchs in robes” (even the 3 dissenters apparently).

And more recently in Perry v. Schwarzenegger (no relation) the dissenting opinion in Lawrence v. Texas, penned by Antonin Scalia, was used by Judge Vaughn Walker in his 2010 ruling that California’s Proposition 8, outlawing same-sex marriage in that state, was unconstitutional.

And yes, Perry was perfectly right in labeling the question as a “gotcha question” because he sure was.

Gotcha’d, that is.