The Supreme Court declared homosexual conduct legal across the nation Thursday, striking down Texas' same-sex sodomy law and declaring all anti-sodomy statutes unconstitutional.
Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the Court, which ruled 6-3 in Lawrence v. Texas that such laws violate the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.
"The petitioners are entitled to respect for their private lives. The State cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime," Kennedy wrote. "As the Constitution endures, persons in every generation can invoke its principles in their own search for greater freedom."
Ruth Harlow, legal director at Lambda Leagal and lead council in the Lawrence case, called the move a "historic leap forward."
"Justice Kennedy's opinion ... is a very powerful statement that all Americans including gay men and lesbians are entitled to make their own decisions about how they will love their partner," Harlow said.
Joining Kennedy in the opinion were Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, John Paul Stevens, David Souter and Stephen Breyer. Sandra Day O'Connor concurred in judgement.
The case overturns Bowers v. Hardwick, a 1986 decision that said there is no constitutional right for homosexuals to engage in sodomy. In his opinion, Kennedy cited Stevens's dissent in that case. Stevens had said a state could not make a practice illegal merely because the majority viewed it as immoral, and individual decisions concerning sexuality were entitled to protection under due process.
"Bowers was not correct when it was decided and it is not correct today," Kennedy wrote. "It ought not to remain binding precedent. Bowers v. Hardwick should be and now is overruled."
O'Connor did not join the Court in overruling Bowers, but she said the Texas statute was nonetheless unconstitutional, basing her opinion on the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. Her opinion, if controlling, would have struck down sodomy laws that specify homosexual conduct, but leave other sodomy statutes intact.
"The Texas statute makes homosexuals unequal in the eyes of the law," O'Connor wrote.
Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas and Chief Justice William Rehnquist dissented. Scalia argued that this ruling would invalidate laws prohibiting bigamy, same-sex marriage, prostitution, masturbation, adultury, fornication, beastiality, and obscenity.
"[These laws are] sustainable only in light of Bowers' validation of laws based on moral choices," he wrote. "Every single one of these laws is called into question by today's decision."
Texas is one of four states that has a sodomy law that specifies same-sex couples. The Court's decision states clearly that these laws are unconstitutional.
But the Court's decision is also interpreted to be broader, barring all laws that restrict consensual sodomy between adults.
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