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yusime
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Likes it here |
Location: United States
Registered: April 2008
Messages: 195
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http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/02-102.ZS.html
The reason I posted this should be easy to understand. The decision is from 2003.
He who joyfully marches in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake since for him a spinal cord would suffice. Albert Einstein
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13796
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Help me, Pat. I read it but got bogged down in the detail. I can see that two gay guys were spied on and convicted. I think that was overturned, but I got a little lost.
I can see it as important whichever outcome took place, but I think we'd all appreciate a little guidance?
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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yusime
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Likes it here |
Location: United States
Registered: April 2008
Messages: 195
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Just click on html version of the link underneath the Opinion then the one under Concurrence at the top of the page. In 6 years the Supreme Court has not yet used the argument in Lawrence v. Texas to decide another case on the basis of it's precedent. That is a bit odd.
This is a link to the 1985 decision Bowers V. Hardwick which was overruled by Lawrence v. Texas.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0478_0186_ZS.html
Bowers was not correct when it was decided, and it is not correct today. It ought not to remain binding precedent. Bowers v. Hardwick should be and now is overruled.
The present case does not involve minors. It does not involve persons who might be injured or coerced or who are situated in relationships where consent might not easily be refused. It does not involve public conduct or prostitution. It does not involve whether the government must give formal recognition to any relationship that homosexual persons seek to enter. The case does involve two adults who, with full and mutual consent from each other, engaged in sexual practices common to a homosexual lifestyle. The petitioners are entitled to respect for their private lives. The State cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime. Their right to liberty under the Due Process Clause gives them the full right to engage in their conduct without intervention of the government. “It is a promise of the Constitution that there is a realm of personal liberty which the government may not enter.” Casey, supra, at 847. The Texas statute furthers no legitimate state interest which can justify its intrusion into the personal and private life of the individual.
Had those who drew and ratified the Due Process Clauses of the Fifth Amendment or the Fourteenth Amendment known the components of liberty in its manifold possibilities, they might have been more specific. They did not presume to have this insight. They knew times can blind us to certain truths and later generations can see that laws once thought necessary and proper in fact serve only to oppress. As the Constitution endures, persons in every generation can invoke its principles in their own search for greater freedom.
He who joyfully marches in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake since for him a spinal cord would suffice. Albert Einstein
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13796
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Er, yes. But the same level of legalese is there.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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yusime
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Likes it here |
Location: United States
Registered: April 2008
Messages: 195
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Plain and simply put Lawrence v. Texas says states cannot punish someone for engaging in a sexual act with a member of the same gender in the privacy of their own home. So long as the sexual act is consensual and between people who are of the age of consent. What the Texas law did was punish people exclusively if they engaged in sex with someone of the same gender and the state only applied the law to males.
The most important lines in the argument.
The petitioners are entitled to respect for their private lives. The State cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime. Their right to liberty under the Due Process Clause gives them the full right to engage in their conduct without intervention of the government. “It is a promise of the Constitution that there is a realm of personal liberty which the government may not enter.” Casey, supra, at 847. The Texas statute furthers no legitimate state interest which can justify its intrusion into the personal and private life of the individual.
He who joyfully marches in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake since for him a spinal cord would suffice. Albert Einstein
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