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Court to hear arguments on Texas sodomy law
Allen Pusey
Issue date: 3/26/03 Section: News
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Homosexual men arrested for violating a Texas conduct law, ask Supreme Court to strike statute
WASHINGTON (KRT) — In September 1998, police barged into a Houston apartment investigating the report of a weapons disturbance; instead of a crazed gunman, they uncovered a constitutional controversy.
Inside the apartment, two men were engaging in consensual sex. Instead of ignoring the embarrassing false alarm, police arrested the two men for violation of Section 21.06 of the Texas penal code, the rarely enforced Texas Homosexual Conduct Law.
Today, lawyers for John Geddes Lawrence and Tyron Garner will ask the Supreme Court to strike down the Texas statute as discriminatory.
Such a decision would have far-reaching implications for gays and lesbians, who argue that laws targeting their intimate behavior — whether enforced or not — place unfair obstacles to public employment and services.
Texas is one of 13 states that criminalize sodomy, and one of four in which the laws apply only to same-sex intercourse.
Lawyers for Lawrence and Garner believe that the nation’s highest court may be open to their challenge.
“We honestly believe that all nine of the justices now sitting are potentially capable of agreeing with us,” said Ruth E. Harlow, counsel of record in the case and legal director of Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund.
Mark Tushnet, a constitutional scholar at Georgetown University Law School, said “it’s about as certain as anything can be” that the Supreme Court will reverse the Texas law.
“The effect’s going to be to invalidate all (state) statutes that make consensual sodomy a crime,” he said.
Under Texas’ law, sodomy is defined as anal or oral sex. The law once made such sexual practices illegal even for married heterosexual couples but was changed in 1973.
Rights activists say those changes, meant to liberalize laws on sexual conduct, now specifically discriminate against gays and violate the equal protection provisions of the Constitution.
WASHINGTON (KRT) — In September 1998, police barged into a Houston apartment investigating the report of a weapons disturbance; instead of a crazed gunman, they uncovered a constitutional controversy.
Inside the apartment, two men were engaging in consensual sex. Instead of ignoring the embarrassing false alarm, police arrested the two men for violation of Section 21.06 of the Texas penal code, the rarely enforced Texas Homosexual Conduct Law.
Today, lawyers for John Geddes Lawrence and Tyron Garner will ask the Supreme Court to strike down the Texas statute as discriminatory.
Such a decision would have far-reaching implications for gays and lesbians, who argue that laws targeting their intimate behavior — whether enforced or not — place unfair obstacles to public employment and services.
Texas is one of 13 states that criminalize sodomy, and one of four in which the laws apply only to same-sex intercourse.
Lawyers for Lawrence and Garner believe that the nation’s highest court may be open to their challenge.
“We honestly believe that all nine of the justices now sitting are potentially capable of agreeing with us,” said Ruth E. Harlow, counsel of record in the case and legal director of Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund.
Mark Tushnet, a constitutional scholar at Georgetown University Law School, said “it’s about as certain as anything can be” that the Supreme Court will reverse the Texas law.
“The effect’s going to be to invalidate all (state) statutes that make consensual sodomy a crime,” he said.
Under Texas’ law, sodomy is defined as anal or oral sex. The law once made such sexual practices illegal even for married heterosexual couples but was changed in 1973.
Rights activists say those changes, meant to liberalize laws on sexual conduct, now specifically discriminate against gays and violate the equal protection provisions of the Constitution.
