The June 26 ruling was sweeping in two respects. It expanded the constitutional right to privacy and singled out equal protection for homosexuals.

The case stemmed from the 1998 arrest of John Geddes Lawrence and Tyron Garner in Houston. On the basis of a neighbor’s false report of an armed Black man “going crazy,” county sheriffs barged into Lawrence’s apartment and detained the two men on charges of “deviate sexual intercourse with another individual of the same sex.” Garner is Black, Lawrence is white.

The ruling unambiguously stated, “The liberty protected by the Constitution allows homosexual persons the right to choose to enter upon relationships in the confines of their homes and their own private lives and still retain their dignity as free persons.” The Court added, “When homosexual conduct is made criminal by the law of the State, that declaration in and of itself is an invitation to subject homosexual persons to discrimination both in the public and in the private spheres.” Individuals convicted under the Texas law are stigmatized by the “notation of convictions on their records and on job application forms, and registration as sex offenders under state law.”

The decision overruled the Supreme Court’s 1986 ruling upholding Georgia’s sodomy law in Bowers v. Hardwick, noting that its arguments and assumptions had become severely discredited by subsequent legal rulings and the continuing evolution of broadly held social attitudes. It dismissed the argument of Bowers that “proscriptions against sodomy have ancient roots,” observing that “American laws targeting same-sex couples did not develop until the last third of the 20th century.” The justices noted that by 1961 all states had sodomy laws, but since then these statutes have been repealed or blocked in court in all but 13 states, where they are rarely enforced today.

Rejecting the invocation of “Judeo-Christian moral and ethical standards” used in the Bowers decision as a basis for such laws, Kennedy stated, “The Nation’s laws and traditions in the past half century are most relevant here. They show an emerging awareness that liberty gives substantial protection to adult persons in deciding how to conduct their private lives in matters pertaining to sex.”

The decision roots itself explicitly in previous benchmarks in the expansion of privacy rights, particularly the 1965 and 1972 court rulings that overturned bans on the use of contraceptives, and the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision protecting a woman’s right to abortion. These legal victories were a consequence of the mass struggles of the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s for Black rights and women’s rights, which transformed the social attitudes and expectations of the U.S. population, especially working people.

It states that later legal decisions have “confirmed that the Due Process Clause protects personal decisions relating to marriage, procreation, contraception, family relationships, child rearing, and education.”

Subsequent actions in three Southern states continued this trend towards expanding the right to privacy and upholding a woman’s right to choose abortion. On July 8 U.S. district judge Stanwood Duval blocked the state of Louisiana from issuing specialty plates, including “Choose Life,” a code word of anti-abortion rights forces. The next day Missouri governor Robert Holden vetoed a bill that would have required women seeking abortion to sign a state-approved consent form and their physicians to provide them with certain information about “risks involved” at least 24 hours before performing the procedure. A day later the Florida Supreme Court struck down a state law requiring doctors to notify the parents of a teenager under 18 seeking an abortion before she can have the operation.

Also on July 9, U.S. district judge Edward Harrington dismissed a challenge by opponents of abortion rights to a Massachusetts law that mandates a protest-free “buffer zone” around abortion clinics.

For the first time in a Supreme Court case, the June 26 ruling cited precedents around the world as a factor. It pointed out that the European Court of Human Rights and courts in other countries have affirmed the “rights of homosexual adults to engage in intimate, consensual conduct.” It emphasized “values we share with a wider civilization” and the fact that privacy for gays “has been accepted as an integral part of human freedom in many other countries.”

A wide array of organizations filed “friend of the court” briefs in support of the two men challenging the Texas law—from gay rights, human rights, and medical groups to conservative organizations such as the Republican Unity Coalition and the Cato Institute.

“Not only does this ruling let us get on with our lives, but it opens the door for gay people all over the country to be treated equally,” said a jubilant Lawrence, one of the plaintiffs, in a press conference after the ruling.

Texas officials defended the law, saying they were protecting marriage, the family, the birth of children, and “moral standards.” In his dissenting opinion, Justice Antonin Scalia declared bitterly that the court ruling abetted “the so-called homosexual agenda,” which he said was “directed at eliminating the moral opprobrium that has traditionally attached to homosexual conduct.”

The Bush administration was noticeably silent on the ruling. On the other hand, right-wing groups were furious. Several National Review columnists predicted that the ruling would open the door to gay marriage and the erosion of the traditional nuclear family. Former editor Joseph Sobran warned that it would lead to sanctioning pedophiles. Ken Connor of the Family Research Council called it “a direct attack on the sanctity of marriage.”

Meanwhile, in one of the first efforts to use this precedent, a former army officer who was discharged in 1997 under “other than honorable” conditions for being gay has filed a lawsuit challenging as unconstitutional the U.S. military’s antigay “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy and the military sodomy statute.

The army brass discharged Lt. Col. Loren Loomis—a recipient of two Bronze Stars and a Purple Heart during the Vietnam War—just one week before he completed a 20-year career in the army, depriving him of a full retirement pension and other benefits. They did so after his home was burned and a firefighter found a videotape of him having sex with another man and turned it over to authorities.
 
 
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