Who defines what is moral?

DALLAS — When U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia writes a dissent, he often swings for the rhetorical fences. He took a mighty cut last month with his bitter, sarcastic condemnation of the majority opinion in the Texas sodomy law case.

"This effectively decrees the end of all morals legislation," he thundered.

Well, maybe not. But the court's majority did reject morality as justification for any laws against homosexual sodomy. In doing so, legal and religious experts say, the court put new distance between law and morality and particularly faith-based morality.

Many who agree with the decision in "Lawrence vs. Texas" — and many who disagree — stand together in their belief that it will affect laws having nothing to do with gay sex. Among the questions the court left unanswered:

Where can legislatures turn to justify laws that were once understood to rest purely on moral principles? What kinds of activities — if any — can still be legally restricted just because most of us believe they're wrong?

Gambling? Fornication? Bigamy? Prostitution?

For some of these, a justification that boils down to "because the Bible tells us so" isn't going to fly.

Still, morality and the law have generally been considered as inextricably entwined as love and marriage — back when love and marriage were generally considered entwined.

"We may be seeing a diminution of the law as a moral educator," said Douglas Kmiec, dean of the law school at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. And when the majority in "Lawrence" claimed that their role was to "define the liberty of all," they overstepped, he said.

"What it means to be democratic is that we all should contribute to that discussion" of who defines liberty, he said.

Some experts say that discussion has already happened — and that the court is simply recognizing a shift in the public's understanding of morality, a shift away from religion's absolute standards.

"We as a society have tended to move toward rationality — science and cultural consensus — rather than divine revelation as being the foundation of how we make law," said Derek Davis, director of the center for church-state studies at Baylor University.