As the Supreme Court begins its official term, the six justices who voted to strike down Texas’s sodomy law are still there, much to the chagrin of Pat Robertson.

In the aftermath of the Lawrence case, religious broadcaster Pat Robertson urged his nationwide TV audience on the “700 Club” to pray for God to remove three justices from the U.S. Supreme Court so that President Bush could replace them with even more conservative judges.

“We ask for miracles in regard to the Supreme Court,” Robertson said to his flock.

Robertson launched a 21-day prayer offensive because the Supreme Court struck down laws prohibiting consensual sodomy.

On his Christian Broadcasting Network website, Robertson said that the ruling “has opened the door to homosexual marriage, bigamy, legalized prostitution and even incest.”

Robertson wrote, “Would it not be possible for God to put it in the minds of these three judges that the time has come to retire?”

It’s surprising that Robertson is criticizing the Supreme Court for rejecting a law that punishes private sexual conduct.

In 1988, during his run for president, Robertson admitted that his first child was conceived out of wedlock. Just like sodomy is a crime, what Robertson did is a crime. In Virginia, for example, sexual intercourse outside of marriage is called “fornication.”

Throughout the history of the nation, many states have adopted (and some still have) laws not only prohibiting consensual sodomy, but also laws prohibiting virtually every kind of sexual conduct outside of marriage. Even within marriage, some states criminalize all non-procreative sex.

When Robertson had “sexual relations” with his future wife, both he and Mrs. Robertson committed a criminal offense. Had police busted into Pat Robertson’s swinging bachelor pad, just like the police did in Texas to find Mr. Lawrence and his lover engaged in intercourse, police would have charged the future Mr. and Mrs. Robertson with fornication.

The father of the Mrs. Robertson-to-be could have sued Robertson for “seduction,” because Robertson had “damaged” his chaste daughter.

I suspect that Mr. and Mrs. Robertson would have been horrified to have their privacy invaded and to be forced to appear in a court and face such charges.

Unlike sodomy prosecutions, which have occurred throughout history, there have been few fornication cases. Not that we haven’t had fornicators in our midst. In fact, our nation’s history reveals we have had fornicators in the country since its inception. Some of our founding fathers were doing more than just fathering the country. Both Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, crafters of the Declaration of Independence, not only engaged in fornication, but adultery too, and fathered children out of wedlock.

Republicans criticized Bill Clinton for his adultery with Monica Lewinksy. Ironically, adultery requires sexual intercourse and Bill and Monica never did that. Yet, then-Speaker Bob Livingston and powerful Congressmember Henry Hyde both admitted to not only extra-marital affairs (fornication and adultery), but also to fathering children out of wedlock.

Historically, most states treated fathering a child out of wedlock as a very serious crime. It was a crime called “bastardy.” Men could go to prison for such an act, but most did not, and, instead, courts ordered them to pay child support.

The ones who really paid for the act were the children. State laws treated them as “sins of the flesh,” “bastards” and “illegitimate.” Much like the children of gay parents today, these kids suffered because our nation agreed to treat them as inferior to babies born to parents in a legal marriage.

Of course, fathering a child out of wedlock is still serious. However, we treat it as a civil matter, with prosecutors helping mothers obtain child support from fathers. If we imprisoned every man who fathered a child out of wedlock, we’d have considerably more adult males in our nation’s prisons.

Pat Robertson should actually be grateful that the Court struck down laws prohibiting the states from criminalizing private sexual conduct, and prohibiting the states from extending statutes of limitation after expiring. Otherwise, Robertson could have easily found himself in a jail cell .