X-rated handouts and teachers demanding a constitutional right to sex with their students.

On the latter, the people who mocked the slippery slope arguments yet again owe Justice Scalia and Senator Santorum an apology:

Emanuel relies heavily on a 2003 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Lawrence vs. Texas, that struck down as unconstitutional a state law prohibiting "deviate sexual conduct" between same-sex adults. The nation's highest court in that ruling took note of the "emerging awareness that liberty gives substantial protection to adult persons in deciding how to conduct their private lives in matters pertaining to sex."

The legal ramifications of the Lawrence ruling are still a matter of considerable debate. Emanuel, in his brief and oral arguments, quoted noted constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe, stating in a 2004 Harvard Law Review article that Lawrence's "full reach should prove expansive."

Thursday, Senior Justice David M. Borden asked just how expansive: "Has any court put blinders on and said you can't look at the relationship" between the sexual partners?

"I think Lawrence comes close," Emanuel replied. "I have no illusions. This is a difficult claim we've brought before the court. But Lawrence provides a basis for a good-faith claim. This is not a frivolous case.

"As of today, no court has yet adopted the position we're advocating, that Lawrence represents a fundamental right to sexual freedom," Emanuel said.

As I said at the time, I hold no brief for anti-sodomy laws, but the erosion of the principle that laws grounded in community moral standards are a rational and permissible basis for democratic lawmaking is a dangerously intrusive and anti-democratic, as well as irredeemably inconsistent with two centuries of constitutional tradition.