Читать книгу Texas Confidential - Michael Varhola - Страница 20

FOR THOSE WHO ARE INTERESTED, anal and oral sex between consenting adults of all genders is now legal in the State of Texas—but only since 2003, when the U.S. Supreme Court stepped in with the landmark Lawrence v. Texas case to tell the state where it could stick its intrusive sodomy laws.

Like the sodomy laws that existed in a dozen other U.S. states until the first decade of the twenty-first century, those in Texas originated with the ilk of pious people who think their own religious beliefs entitle them to tell other people what to do. Most states had repealed their laws of this sort in the 1970s—which generally prohibited consensual anal and oral sex between homosexual and sometimes also heterosexual people—but a handful of the most die-hard bastions of conservative sentiment continued to retain theirs.

Such laws do not get put to the test on a regular basis, and even Texas police departments probably never had Sodomy Squads dedicated to enforcing them, but they do periodically get thrust into the public arena.

On the night of September 7, 1998, just outside of Houston in Harris County, Sheriff’s Deputy Joseph Quinn, gun in hand, entered the unlocked apartment of fifty-five-year-old John Geddes Lawrence and encountered him and thirty-one-year-old Tyron Garner engaged in consensual anal sex. The deputy had been dispatched to the apartment in response to a report of a “crazy” man with a gun involved in a robbery or domestic disturbance. Struck by the enormity of what was actually going on in the home, the deputy, naturally, proceeded to arrest both of the offenders.

Ironically, the false report of an ongoing crime had been called in by forty-year-old neighbor, Robert Royce Eubanks, a boyfriend of Garner’s who, motivated by jealousy, had been harassing the two backdoor lovers. But, because the police were not aware that the report was false, probable cause to enter the residence was never a factor in the case that proceeded from the incident. Eubanks later pled guilty to filing a false police report and served fifteen days in jail as a result.

Lawrence and Garner were jailed and charged with violating Chapter 21, Section 21.06 of the Texas Penal Code, the state law dictating “Homosexual Conduct,” which prohibited “deviant sexual intercourse with another individual of the same sex.” Under this law, oral and anal sex between members of the same gender were classified as a Class C misdemeanor.

The two men were freed after they posted $200 bail and, two-and-a-half months later, they pleaded no contest to the charges against them before Justice of the Peace Mike Parrott.

Lawrence and Garner exercised their right to a new trial before a state criminal court, however, and there asked the judge to dismiss the charges against them on the basis of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution’s guarantees of equal protection and privacy. Their claim was that the Texas law was unconstitutional in that it both prohibited certain sex practices between same-sex couples but not heterosexual ones and was intrusive. When the criminal court rejected this argument, the two men once again pleaded no contest and reserved their right to file an appeal, upon which the court fined them $200 each, along with $141.25 in court costs.

The U. S. Supreme Court stepped in to tell the state where it could stick its intrusive sodomy laws.

In November 1999, the appellants presented arguments on the grounds of both equal protection and the right to privacy to a three-judge panel of the Texas Fourteenth Court of Appeals. Two of the judges ruled in their favor, finding that the sodomy law violated the 1972 Equal Rights Amendment to the Texas Constitution, which bars discrimination based on race, color, creed, national origin, or sex. The full court, however, ultimately overturned this decision, voting 7–2 to uphold the constitutionality of the state law and denying both the privacy and equal protection arguments that had been brought before it.

In April 2001, Lawrence petitioned the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the highest appellate court in the state for criminal matters, but it declined to review it.

Nearly two years later, however, in December 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear Lawrence v. Texas, prompting a wide variety of organizations to file amicus curiae briefs on behalf of both parties. In its deliberations, the justices had to consider whether the petitioners’ criminal convictions under the Texas law violated the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees of equal protection, liberty, and privacy.

On June 26, 2003, the Supreme Court decision rendered its highly publicized decision, in which it voted 6–3 to strike down the Texas law. Five of the justices—Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Anthony Kennedy, David Souter, and John Paul Stevens—maintained that this law violated due process guarantees, and one, Sandra Day O’Connor, found that it violated equal protection guarantees. In its deliberations, the high court rejected the legal arguments presented by the state of Texas, essentially dismissing them as matters of taste rather than law.

“The Texas statute furthers no legitimate state interest which can justify its intrusion into the personal and private life of the individual,” the high court stated in its decision. It did, however, also specify the limitations of its decision.

“The present case does not involve minors,” it said. “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.”

And, while the case had originated in Texas, the Supreme Court decision had the additional effect of invalidating the sodomy laws in twelve other states and overruled a 1986 ruling it had made in Bowers v. Hardwick, in which it had upheld the Georgia state sodomy law, and was applauded by proponents of gay rights.

“Bowers was not correct when it was decided,” the court stated. “And it is not correct today.”