Lambda Legal Urges U.S. Supreme Court to Overturn Texas’s ‘Homosexual
Conduct’ Law
Dozens of Respected and Diverse Groups Step Forward in Support
Lambda Legal News Release, January 16, 2003
Contact: Eric Ferrero; 212-809-8585, x227; eferrero@lambdalegal.org
New York—Lambda Legal filed its brief today urging the U.S. Supreme Court
to overturn Texas’s "Homosexual Conduct" law, which criminalizes
oral and anal sex by consenting gay couples and is widely used to justify
discrimination against lesbians and gay men. A diverse array of some of the
nation’s most respected organizations – including conservative groups,
civil rights organizations, religious groups and health professionals –
filed friend-of-the-court briefs on Lambda Legal’s behalf today, also asking
the U.S. Supreme Court to declare the Texas law unconstitutional.
Lambda Legal represents John Lawrence and Tyron Garner, who were arrested
in Lawrence’s Houston home and jailed overnight after officers responding to
a false report found the men engaged in private, consensual sex. Once
convicted of violating the "Homosexual Conduct" law, they were
forced to pay fines and are now considered sex offenders in several states.
"This is a tremendously important case for gay people and for everyone
who believes in basic freedoms. These laws are an affront to equality, invade
the most private sphere of adult life, and harm gay people in many ways,"
said Ruth Harlow, Legal Director at Lambda Legal and the lead attorney in the
case.
"The state should not have the power to go into the bedrooms of
consenting adults in the middle of the night and arrest them," Harlow
said. "But that’s only the beginning of the damage done by this law and
others like it around the country. These laws are widely used to justify
discrimination against gay people in everyday life; they’re invoked in
denying employment to gay people, in refusing custody or visitation for gay
parents, and even in intimidating gay people out of exercising their free
speech rights."
In addition to Texas, three states – Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma—
still have consensual sodomy laws that apply only to gay people. Nine states
– Alabama, Florida, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South
Carolina, Virginia and Utah – and Puerto Rico still have consensual sodomy
laws that apply to straight and gay adults, but are invoked almost exclusively
against lesbians and gay men in everyday life. These laws typically ban oral
and anal sex with penalties that range from fines to 10 years in prison.
Organizations in Texas and all of the other states with sodomy laws are
among the scores of groups that filed more than a dozen friend-of-the-court
briefs today urging the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down Texas’s law. Those
groups include:
- The CATO Institute, telling the court that laws like the one in Texas
violate personal liberties and contradict the nation’s historical commitment
to freedom from government intrusion
- The libertarian Institute for Justice, saying that sodomy laws give the
government inappropriate and unconstitutional power to invade people’s
privacy
- The Republican Unity Coalition, arguing that it’s improper for a state
to use a law to express its disapproval of gay people
- More than two dozen religious groups, explaining that even though some
denominations don’t approve of or support homosexuality, they and the
majority of religions all oppose laws criminalizing private, consensual
intimacy between lesbian or gay couples
- The National Association of Social Workers (along with its Texas state
branch), the American Psychological Association and other respected health and
mental health groups, telling the court that homosexuality is not a disorder
and that sodomy laws reinforce prejudice, discrimination and violence against
lesbian and gay people
- The Mexican-American Legal Defense & Education Fund, the Puerto Rican
Legal Defense & Education Fund, the Asian- American Legal Defense &
Education Fund and more than two dozen gay rights groups and other civil
rights organizations, explaining that there’s no justification for branding
gay people as deviant with laws like Texas’s
- Law scholars, historians, international human rights experts, public
health authorities and others, telling the court that sodomy laws are
unconstitutional and harm gay people in many ways
"Some of the most diverse and respected voices in this country are
lining up to tell the Supreme Court that these laws are contrary to American
values," Harlow said. "Conservative groups are coming forward to say
that the government has no business in people’s bedrooms. Mainstream civil
rights organizations are speaking out about the inequalities and blatant
discrimination these laws create. And our nation’s leading health advocates
are unequivocally saying that these laws don’t serve any public
interest."
The state of Texas will file its reply to Lambda Legal’s brief by Feb.
18, which is also the deadline for any organizations to file briefs in support
of the Texas law. The case is not yet scheduled for arguments, which will take
place this Spring. Lambda Legal attorneys Ruth Harlow, Patricia Logue and
Susan Sommer, along with Brian Chase in Lambda Legal’s Dallas office, are
litigating the case. William M. Hohengarten, Paul M. Smith, and Daniel Mach
from Jenner & Block, LLC in Washington, D.C., and Mitchell Katine from
Williams, Birnberg & Andersen, L.L.P. in Houston, are Lambda Legal’s
cooperating attorneys on the case. For more background on the case and sodomy
laws generally, go to www.LambdaLegal.org
[Home] [News] [Lawrence
v. Texas]
