To the relief of gay and lesbian Americans, the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday struck down a Texas law prohibiting homosexual sodomy. The 6-3 ruling in Lawrence vs. Texas was a historic marker for the court, demonstrating a progression in thinking and an overdue acknowledgement that the Constitution's guarantees of privacy and personal liberty apply to people of all sexual orientations.
Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the majority, placed a firm nail in the coffin of Bowers vs. Hardwick, the case that upheld a Georgia sodomy law 17 years ago. "Bowers was not correct when it was decided, and it is not correct today," wrote Kennedy, finally sweeping away a decision that had been one of the court's worst.
The court majority was careful not to suggest that the decision opens the way for recognition of same-sex marriage, though the dissent written by the court's hardened moralist, Justice Antonin Scalia, snidely suggested otherwise. But what Kennedy's opinion surely did was more fully describe the Constitution's protection of sexual privacy. "The petitioners are entitled to respect for their private lives," Kennedy wrote, referring to the men who challenged the law after being arrested for engaging in sodomy in their own home. "The state cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime."
In contrast to the eloquence of Kennedy's ruling, Scalia's dissent relied on the classic arguments of all puritans: that legislatures should be free to control society's sexual mores through the criminal code. His logic mirrored that of defenders of the antimiscegenation laws that came before the court nearly four decades ago.
Scalia accuses the court of having "largely signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda," and condemns his colleagues in the majority for being "imbued" with "the law profession's anti-antihomosexual culture," which he calls out of the mainstream. Scalia's crimped view of American liberty and his outward hostility toward gays and lesbians should keep him from consideration as the next chief justice, when and if a vacancy arises.
As Kennedy was reading excerpts of his decision on the court's final day, gay lawyers in the courtroom were quietly weeping. They and millions of other homosexual Americans have been waiting a long time for the nation's founding documents to find a place for their relationships. That day is finally here.
