That it was, but to use it to implement restrictions upon lower level governments through the adoption of policy at the national level achieves limitation only by the exercise of power elsewhere. Clarence Thomas said it best - the Texas law itself was inane and "silly," but it was not the right of the federal government to exercise a greater power of its own to determine policy for the state of Texas.
If a state oversteps its bounds, it is in the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court to rule that such a law is unconstitutional.
Actually, as originally intended by the founders, Supreme Court jurisdiction to infringe upon the states was extremely limited and belonged only to matters where their jurisdictions crossed or came into dispute. Even the pro-national government federalist John Marshall upheld that belief in some of his rulings.
You know, lots of blacks have a great fear of "state's rights" because it became a euphemism for unlawful forced segregation even of state institutions(and unlawful forced segregation upon PRIVATE institutions, as well.)
Aside from that statement's complete irrelevance to the constitutional issue of the sodomy law, history tells us that absolutely no necessary connection ties the concept of states rights to segregation. Where they two crossed was experientially so only for a now-concluded period of history.
As for the relationship between states rights and race among the founding fathers, several of the doctrine's leading advocates were also anti-slavery. Luther Martin, the recognized leader of the states righters at the Constitutional Convention, refused to support the document largely because it made no plan to abolish slavery. Richard Henry Lee of Declaration of Independence fame, a leading states righter and anti-federalist, had previously championed anti-slave trade legislation in the Virginia legislature. St. George Tucker, a states righter from the Annapolis Convention and well regarded legal commentator on the Constitution, also penned a proposal to abolish slavery.