Supreme Court Rejects Military
Sodomy Case
The
Advocate, January 19, 2005
The U.S. Supreme Court declined on Tuesday to review an
Air Force lieutenant’s criminal conviction for having sex with a 15-year-old
boy, which the officer contended was protected by a previous court decision
overturning state statutes that criminalized gay sex. Justices, without
comment, rejected the appeal by Second Lt. Ryan W. Davis. He pleaded guilty to
consensual sodomy and conduct unbecoming an officer in military court
following an April 1997 meeting with a boy at a park in Gulf Breeze, Fla.
Davis was subsequently dismissed from the Air Force, confined for 24 months,
and ordered to forfeit all pay and allowances.
Davis had asked the Supreme Court to overturn his
conviction following its 2003 decision in Lawrence
v. Texas. That ruling struck down state statutes criminalizing gay sex
as a violation of an individual’s constitutional right to sexual privacy.
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