is marital rape a constitutionally protected right accd. to this language?

[© tweed]

Would we allow the police to search the sacred precincts of marital bedrooms for telltale signs of the use of contraceptives? The [p486] very idea is repulsive to the notions of privacy surrounding the marriage relationship.

We deal with a right of privacy older than the Bill of Rights -- older than our political parties, older than our school system. Marriage is a coming together for better or for worse, hopefully enduring, and intimate to the degree of being sacred. It is an association that promotes a way of life, not causes; a harmony in living, not political faiths; a bilateral loyalty, not commercial or social projects. Yet it is an association for as noble a purpose as any involved in our prior decisions.

[The Mikado]

I'm not sure that existed marital rape existed as a legal concept in Griswold's time (though it of course existed as a reality).  That said, I don't think it does mean that any more than it means that spousal abuse or spousal homicide are protected in the sacred grounds of the marital bedroom.  There's a significant difference between ridiculous and unenforceable victimless crimes like the Connecticut absurd ban on marital couples using contraceptives, or, in a more recent example of the rhetoric of privacy of bedroom relations, Lawrence v. Texas, and what you're talking about.

[J. J.]

Pennsylvania didn't admit the possibility of marital rape until 1982-83.  Ironically, I was reading the Nibelungenlied at the time.

[John Dibble]

No, of course not. The privacy in question here is meant to refer to the privacy between two consenting adults - in the case of marital rape the victim would have the lawful right to allow law enforcement into the bedroom to collect evidence and have a medical examiner look at her body to document physical evidence of the abuse.

[Badger]

Pennsylvania didn't admit the possibility of marital rape until 1982-83.  Ironically, I was reading the Nibelungenlied at the time.

I remember. Then governor, later US Atty Gen. Dick Thornburgh, opposed the reform in that it might prompt "frivolous" rape claims.