d8Rape
Literotica Guru
- Joined
- Mar 27, 2003
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It is signs like this that remind us "the end is near"
WASHINGTON (AP) - A gay-rights case before the Supreme court tests how times have changed for the country and for the court itself, which was widely criticized for a ruling 17 years ago that upheld a ban on homosexual sex. The court could reverse course and declare a similar ban unconstitutional.
Lawyers for two Texas men arrested in their bedroom are asking the court Wednesday to overturn their convictions for sodomy under a state ``Homosexual Conduct'' law. The law unfairly treats gay men and lesbians differently from heterosexuals who may engage in the same kinds of sex acts and violates privacy rights, the opponents argued in court filings.
State anti-sodomy laws, once universal, now are rare. Those on the books are infrequently enforced but underpin other kinds of discrimination, lawyers and gay rights supporters said.
``We truly hope the Supreme Court in its wisdom will remove this mechanism that has been used for so long to obstruct basic civility to gay and lesbian people,'' said Elizabeth Birch, executive director of the gay rights organization Human Rights Campaign.
In 1986, a narrow majority of the court upheld Georgia's sodomy law in a ruling that became a touchstone for the growing gay rights movement. Even then the court's decision seemed outdated and was publicly unpopular, said Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe, who argued on the losing side of the case.
``We're now dealing with a very small handful of statutes in a circumstance where the country, whatever its attitudes toward discrimination based on sexual orientation, (has reached) a broad consensus that what happens in the privacy of the bedroom between consenting adults is simply none of the state's business.''
As recently as 1960, every state had a sodomy law. In 37 states, the statutes have been repealed by lawmakers or blocked by state courts.
Of the 13 states with sodomy laws, four - Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma and Missouri - prohibit ``deviate sexual intercourse,'' or oral and anal sex, between same-sex couples. The other nine ban consensual sodomy for everyone: Alabama, Florida, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Utah and Virginia.
An unusual array of organizations is backing the two Texas men. In addition to a long list of gay rights, human rights and medical groups, a group of conservative Republicans and the libertarian Cato Institute and Institute for Justice argued in friend of the court filings that government should stay out of the bedroom.
``This case is an opportunity to confirm that the constitutional command of equal protection requires that gays be treated as equal to all other citizens under the law, subject to neither special preferences nor special disabilities,'' the brief for the Republican Unity Coalition said.
On the other side, the Texas government and its allies say the case is about the right of states to enforce the moral standards of their communities.
``The states of the union have historically prohibited a wide variety of extramarital sexual conduct,'' Texas authorities argued in legal papers. Nothing in that legal tradition recognizes ``a constitutionally protected liberty interest in engaging in any form of sexual conduct with whomever one chooses,'' the state argued.
Conservative legal and social organizations, religious groups and the states of Alabama, South Carolina and Utah back Texas in the case.
The case began in 1998, when a neighbor tricked police with a false report of a black man ``going crazy'' in John Geddes Lawrence's apartment. Police smashed their way in and found Lawrence having anal sex with another man, Tyron Garner.
Although Texas rarely enforced its antisodomy law, officers decided to book the two men and jail them overnight on charges of ``deviate sexual intercourse with another individual of the same sex.'' They were each fined $200 plus court costs.
WASHINGTON (AP) - A gay-rights case before the Supreme court tests how times have changed for the country and for the court itself, which was widely criticized for a ruling 17 years ago that upheld a ban on homosexual sex. The court could reverse course and declare a similar ban unconstitutional.
Lawyers for two Texas men arrested in their bedroom are asking the court Wednesday to overturn their convictions for sodomy under a state ``Homosexual Conduct'' law. The law unfairly treats gay men and lesbians differently from heterosexuals who may engage in the same kinds of sex acts and violates privacy rights, the opponents argued in court filings.
State anti-sodomy laws, once universal, now are rare. Those on the books are infrequently enforced but underpin other kinds of discrimination, lawyers and gay rights supporters said.
``We truly hope the Supreme Court in its wisdom will remove this mechanism that has been used for so long to obstruct basic civility to gay and lesbian people,'' said Elizabeth Birch, executive director of the gay rights organization Human Rights Campaign.
In 1986, a narrow majority of the court upheld Georgia's sodomy law in a ruling that became a touchstone for the growing gay rights movement. Even then the court's decision seemed outdated and was publicly unpopular, said Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe, who argued on the losing side of the case.
``We're now dealing with a very small handful of statutes in a circumstance where the country, whatever its attitudes toward discrimination based on sexual orientation, (has reached) a broad consensus that what happens in the privacy of the bedroom between consenting adults is simply none of the state's business.''
As recently as 1960, every state had a sodomy law. In 37 states, the statutes have been repealed by lawmakers or blocked by state courts.
Of the 13 states with sodomy laws, four - Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma and Missouri - prohibit ``deviate sexual intercourse,'' or oral and anal sex, between same-sex couples. The other nine ban consensual sodomy for everyone: Alabama, Florida, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Utah and Virginia.
An unusual array of organizations is backing the two Texas men. In addition to a long list of gay rights, human rights and medical groups, a group of conservative Republicans and the libertarian Cato Institute and Institute for Justice argued in friend of the court filings that government should stay out of the bedroom.
``This case is an opportunity to confirm that the constitutional command of equal protection requires that gays be treated as equal to all other citizens under the law, subject to neither special preferences nor special disabilities,'' the brief for the Republican Unity Coalition said.
On the other side, the Texas government and its allies say the case is about the right of states to enforce the moral standards of their communities.
``The states of the union have historically prohibited a wide variety of extramarital sexual conduct,'' Texas authorities argued in legal papers. Nothing in that legal tradition recognizes ``a constitutionally protected liberty interest in engaging in any form of sexual conduct with whomever one chooses,'' the state argued.
Conservative legal and social organizations, religious groups and the states of Alabama, South Carolina and Utah back Texas in the case.
The case began in 1998, when a neighbor tricked police with a false report of a black man ``going crazy'' in John Geddes Lawrence's apartment. Police smashed their way in and found Lawrence having anal sex with another man, Tyron Garner.
Although Texas rarely enforced its antisodomy law, officers decided to book the two men and jail them overnight on charges of ``deviate sexual intercourse with another individual of the same sex.'' They were each fined $200 plus court costs.
