marc
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Needs to get a life! |
Registered: March 2003
Messages: 4729
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Supreme Court Overturns Sodomy Law in Landmark Move
By James Vicini
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In a landmark decision, the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday struck down sodomy laws that make it a crime for gays to have consensual sex in their own bedrooms, ruling such laws violate constitutional privacy rights.
By a 6-3 vote, the nation's highest court declared a Texas law was an unwarranted government intrusion into a person's home.
By a separate 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court took the rare step of overturning its 1986 ruling that upheld a Georgia sodomy law and that declared homosexuals have no constitutional right to engage in sodomy in private.
The 30-year-old Texas "homosexual conduct" law makes it a crime for same-sex couples to engage in oral and anal sex, even if it is consensual and occurs in the privacy of a person's bedroom. Violators face a maximum punishment of a $500 fine.
The opinion written by Justice Anthony Kennedy (news - web sites) will invalidate sodomy laws in 13 states. Besides Texas, the other states are Alabama, Florida, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Utah and Virginia.
"Liberty protects the person from unwarranted government intrusions into a dwelling or other private places. In our tradition, the state is not omnipresent in the home," Kennedy wrote in a ruling handed down on the last day of the court's term.
FREEDOM OF INTIMATE CONDUCT
"Liberty presumes an autonomy of self that includes freedom of thought, belief, expression and certain intimate conduct," he said, adding that gays have the right to choose to enter into relationships in the confines of their homes.
In a scathing dissent, however, Justice Antonin Scalia (news - web sites) said the court had "largely signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda."
Scalia was joined in the dissent by the court's two other most conservative members, Chief Justice William Rehnquist (news - web sites) and Clarence Thomas (news - web sites).
The case involved John Geddes Lawrence and Tryon Garner. In 1998, police officers entered Lawrence's apartment in Houston while investigating what turned out to be a false report of a disturbance with a gun. The officers found the two men engaged in anal sex.
Lawrence and Garner were arrested and charged with violating the Texas law. They pleaded no contest to the misdemeanor charges and each were fined $200. The two men then challenged the law's constitutionality.
Ruth Harlow, legal director of the New York-based Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund Inc., which represented the two men, called it the most important gay rights case in a generation.
Kennedy said the nation's laws and traditions in the past 50 years show an emerging awareness that privacy gives substantial protection to adults in deciding how to conduct their personal lives concerning sexual matters.
He said 25 states had sodomy laws at the time of the 1986 ruling. Even in the 13 states that now have sodomy laws, they are rarely enforced, Kennedy said.
"The present case does not involve minors. It does not involve persons who might be injured or coerced," he said. "It does not involve public conduct or prostitution."
He said, "The case does involve two adults who, with full and mutual consent from each other, engaged in sexual practices common to a homosexual lifestyle. (They) are entitled to respect for their private lives."
The American Civil Liberties Union (news - web sites), the American Bar Association and gay rights groups supported the two men in opposing the Texas law. It was backed by Alabama, South Carolina and Utah and a number of conservative groups, such as the Family Research Council.
Life is great for me... Most of the time... But then I meet people online... Very few are real friends... Many say they are but know nothing of what it means... Some say they are, but are so shallow...
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