Posted: June 27, 2003

Indiana Stonewall Democrats Laud Supreme Court Ruling

Indianapolis-- The Indiana Stonewall Democrats applauded today's landmark US Supreme Court ruling that strikes down discriminatory state sodomy laws in 13 states on the basis that they violate Americans' Constitutional right to privacy.

"We welcome the decision of the United States Supreme Court striking down the Texas law that criminalized same-sex private, consensual sexual behavior," commented Linda Perdue, President of the Indiana Stonewall Democrats. "This is a victory for individual liberties of all Americans, and is particularly welcome for gay people, who have been singled out for persecution and discrimination by these laws for decades."

The case involved two Houston men, John Lawrence and Tyron Garner. They pleaded no contest to breaking the sodomy law in 1998, after police broke into Lawrence's home in search of an armed intruder and discovered the two men engaged in intercourse. Both men were arrested and imprisoned overnight. They were fined $200 each and forced to pay court costs. The convictions barred them from holding several types of jobs in Texas and would have required them to register as sex offenders should they have moved to one of several other states.

By a 6-3 vote, the US Supreme Court, in an opinion written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, ruled the Texas law violated constitutional privacy rights. By a separate 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court also overturned its 1986 ruling that upheld a Georgia sodomy law and that declared that homosexuals have no constitutional right to engage in sodomy in private. The Texas and Georgia laws were written to outlaw homosexual sodomy whereas heterosexual sodomy was still legal.

The Lawrence v. Texas decision makes clear that gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Americans have a fundamental right to privacy, observed Sean Lemieux, an Indianapolis attorney and board member for the Indiana Stonewall Democrats. "Government can no longer demean a person's existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime."

Today's ruling strikes down sodomy laws in Alabama, Florida, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Utah and Virginia. As recently as 1960, every state had an anti-sodomy law. In 37 states, the statutes have been repealed by lawmakers or blocked by state courts. Indiana's sodomy law was repealed by the General Assembly in 1977.

"Gay Americans are parents, children, brothers, sisters, friends, co-workers and church-goers. They make important contributions in every Indiana community," added Perdue. "This ruling opens the door for new advances toward full equality and should be viewed as a challenge to Indiana legislators to help pass important legal protections for GLBT Hoosiers - like expansion of Indiana's civil rights laws to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity."

The Indiana Stonewall Democrats are committed to improving the record of the Indiana Democratic Party and educating voters about the vast difference that exists between the two major parties on issues of importance to the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender communities.