The Rights of Gay Americans
New
York Times, March 27, 2003
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http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/27/opinion/27THU3.html
Thomas McLaughlin, who is 14,
says he has been harassed because he is gay—by his own school. He and his
family report that when officials at Jacksonville Junior High School in
Arkansas learned that he was a homosexual, a counselor called his mother to
inform her. And a teacher wrote a letter telling him he would go to hell. The
Supreme Court should think of Mr. McLaughlin as it considers the gay rights
case that it heard arguments in yesterday. More than 84 percent of gay,
lesbian, bisexual and transgender students, primarily in high school, are
exposed to antigay comments from students or faculty over the course of a
year, according to a national survey. More than one-third reported being
physically harassed.
A main reason antigay
discrimination continues in schools—and on the job and in the streets—is
that the law has not been emphatic enough about protecting gay Americans. Some
states, and many localities, have antidiscrimination laws. But the Supreme
Court has put its considerable weight on the other side. In a much-criticized
1986 decision, Bowers v. Hardwick, the court held that the right of
privacy does not extend to sexual relations between gays.
The Supreme Court now has a
chance to right that wrong. Two Texas men are challenging their convictions
for engaging in consensual sexual relations in a private home. They argue that
Texas’s sodomy law deprives them of the right of intimate association other
Americans enjoy. And they make a compelling case that the law renders gays
second-class citizens. The fact that sodomy is illegal, they note, has been
invoked to deny gay people jobs, deny them the protection of hate crime laws
and bar them from visiting rights with their own children.
Chief Justice William Rehnquist seemed to defend the
Texas law yesterday when he said, “Almost all laws are based on disapproval
of some people or conduct.” That may be. But among the court’s most
important decisions of the past half-century have been those that ban
discrimination. Sodomy laws, which deprive homosexuals of the right to privacy
that other Americans take for granted, violate this nation’s Constitution
and its spirit. The court should strike down the Texas law and extend to gay
Americans full equality under the law.
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