It looks like they have the Politically Correct writer on the story!!:
Supreme Court strikes down Texas sodomy law06/26/2003
WASHINGTON – The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday struck down laws in Texas and 12 other states that criminalize sex between adults of the same gender – a decision that will have widespread effect on issues of personal privacy, as well as gay rights.
Speaking for a 6-3 majority that struck down the Texas law, Justice Anthony Kennedy said that gays are "entitled to respect for their private lives" and that government "cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime."
He was joined by Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Stephen Breyer, John Paul Stephens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David Souter.
Justice O'Connor, while joining the majority against the Texas law in a concurring opinion, also defended the court's ruling in a past sodomy case, leaving a majority of 5-4 to strike down the other states' laws.
Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas dissented on both counts. Writing for the minority, Justice Scalia said that the majority had "taken sides in the culture war."
The decision reversed the court's 1986 ruling in the Bowers vs. Hardwick case, in which a 5-4 majority affirmed a Georgia criminal law banning consensual sex between same-sex adults. At the time, Justice Byron White rejected the notion that any private sexual conduct, even within the home, is constitutionally protected.
"This is a historic day," said Ruth Harlow of the Lambda Legal Defense Fund, a gay-rights advocacy group. "The court has had the courage to reverse the decision it made 17 years ago and the wisdom to decide that case was wrong even then."
Of 13 states that criminalized sodomy, four, including Texas, apply the law only to same-sex intercourse – defined in Texas as anal or oral sex. Texas' law – Section 21.06 of the Texas penal code, also known as the Texas Homosexual Conduct Law. – originally included even married heterosexual couples but was changed in 1973.
Although the change was intended to liberalize laws on sexual conduct, gays and lesbians charged that it, in effect, disqualified homosexuals from employment and social opportunities by declaring their private behavior against the law.
The case the Supreme Court heard involved two Houston men, John G. Lawrence and Tyron Garner, believed to be the only consenting adults ever prosecuted under Texas' law.
In September 1998, police responding to a report of an angry gunman, burst into a Houston apartment and discovered Mr. Lawrence and Mr. Garner engaging in consensual sex. Instead of ignoring the false alarm, they arrested the two men for violation of Section 21.06.
Although the caller – later identified and prosecuted – admitted that he had intended to harass Mr. Lawrence and Mr. Garner, the case was not dropped. Mr. Lawrence and Mr. Garner pleaded "no contest" to the charge and were fined $200, but they made clear their intention to challenge the law.
"This is a new day for gay Americans, starting today," said Paul M. Smith, who argued the case for Houston plaintiffs.
In a brief arguing for the Texas law, Harris County prosecutors had argued that the Supreme Court had never recognized a right to sexual conduct "outside the venerable institution of marriage."
But during oral arguments in the Houston case in March, several justices openly questioned both who and what was being protected by the Texas law.
More than 100 organizations, including the AFL-CIO, the Anti-Defamation League, the American Public Health Association and the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, filed briefs in support of Mr. Lawrence and Mr. Garner. They were opposed by groups such as Jerry Falwell's Liberty Counsel and the American Family Association, a Christian lobbying group, along with the states of Alabama, South Carolina and Utah – all of which have sodomy laws.
Gay rights groups had said that a court ruling against the sodomy laws could vastly expand privacy rights and protections for gays. They noted, for example, that without the laws on the books, homosexuals could apply for jobs in fields such as law enforcement and to adopt children without lying when asked if they had broken the law.
In one "friend of the court" brief filed for the American Civil Liberties Union, Harvard constitutional lawyer Laurence H. Tribe argued that the Bowers decision was "an anomaly." In the last 40 years, he said, the court has struck down a number of state laws that tried to regulate sex, and even child-bearing, among married and unmarried couples.
Mr. Tribe argued that sodomy laws have existed for centuries but have seldom resulted in the prosecution of consenting adults. Neither Mr. Tribe nor the Harris county prosecutors were aware of any similar Texas case.
"It was gratifying today to hear the court in ringing affirmation join the community of nations," he said. "The state has no business dictating the most intimate, private relations of consenting American adults."
Mr. Tribe said the ruling extended not only to the criminalization of sexual behavior but also spoke to the discrimination against gays and lesbians made possible by such criminal laws.
"They said it's not the state's business to categorize people in these ways," he said.
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