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Criminalizing same-sex behavior
U.S. Supreme Court case:
Bowers v. Hardwick (1986)

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Bowers v. Hardwick:
Between 1980 and 2002, courts in ten states -- Arkansas,
Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Montana, New York,
Pennsylvania, and Tennessee -- ruled their state's anti-gay sex laws to be
unconstitutional.
In 1986, the U.S. Supreme Court reviewed a Georgia case involving
same-sex behavior: Bowers v. Hardwick. The Justices were
split 5 to 4 on the constitutionality of the law.
 | The majority of Justices on the court found that the "Georgia
statute is constitutional....
(a) The Constitution does not confer a fundamental right upon
homosexuals to engage in sodomy. None of the fundamental rights
announced in this Court's prior cases involving family relationships,
marriage, or procreation bear any resemblance to the right asserted in
this case. And any claim that those cases stand for the proposition that
any kind of private sexual conduct between consenting adults is
constitutionally insulated from state proscription is unsupportable....
(b) Against a background in which many States have criminalized
sodomy and still do, to claim that a right to engage in such conduct is
'deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition' or 'implicit in
the concept of ordered liberty' is, at best, facetious....
(c) There should be great resistance to expand the reach of the Due
Process Clauses to cover new fundamental rights. Otherwise, the
Judiciary necessarily would take upon itself further authority to govern
the country without constitutional authority. The claimed right in this
case falls far short of overcoming this resistance.....
(d) The fact that homosexual conduct occurs in the privacy of the
home does not affect the result.
(e) Sodomy laws should not be invalidated on the asserted basis that
majority belief that sodomy is immoral is an inadequate rationale to
support the laws...." |
 | Justice John Paul Stevens (R) dissented. He wrote: "...the fact
that the governing majority in a State has traditionally viewed a
particular practice as immoral is not a sufficient reason for upholding
a law prohibiting the practice; neither history nor tradition could save
a law prohibiting miscegenation from constitutional attack....individual
decisions by married persons, concerning the intimacies of their
physical relationship, even when not intended to produce offspring, are
a form of 'liberty' protected by the Due Process Clause of the
Fourteenth Amendment....Moreover, this protection extends to intimate
choices by unmarried as well as married persons....Society has every
right to encourage its individual members to follow particular
traditions in expressing affection for one another and in gratifying
their personal desires. It, of course, may prohibit an individual from
imposing his will on another to satisfy his own selfish interests. It
also may prevent an individual from interfering with, or violating, a
legally sanctioned and protected relationship, such as marriage. And it
may explain the relative advantages and disadvantages of different forms
of intimate expression. But when individual married couples are isolated
from observation by others, the way in which they voluntarily choose to
conduct their intimate relations is a matter for them - not the...State
- to decide....The essential 'liberty' that animated the development of
the law in cases like Griswold, Eisenstadt, and Carey surely embraces
the right to engage in nonreproductive, sexual conduct that others may
consider offensive or immoral." [Citations and footnote references
deleted] "Paradoxical as it may seem, our prior cases thus
establish that a State may not prohibit sodomy within 'the sacred
precincts of marital bedrooms,' ...or, indeed, between unmarried
heterosexual adults....In all events, it is perfectly clear that the
State of Georgia may not totally prohibit the conduct proscribed by
16-6-2 of the Georgia Criminal Code." 1
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The justices voted 5-4 to uphold the right of states to ban any form of
sexual activity that they may decide is deviate. Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr.,
later said publicly that he regretted his vote for the majority. 2

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References:
- The text of the Supreme Court's decision in Bowers v. Hardwick
is online at FindLaw. See:
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/
- Linda Greenhouse, "Justices to Reconsider Ruling Against Sex
Between Gays," New York Times, 2002-DEC-3, at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/03/

Copyright © 2002 & 2003 by Ontario Consultants on Religious
Tolerance
Originally written: 2002-DEC-13
Latest update: 2003-JAN-17
Author: B.A. Robinson

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