Lawrence v Texas and the United States Supreme Court - Essay Example

? In the case of Lawrence v. Texas, decided before the United s Supreme Court, at issue was a Texas law that declared sexual activity between two individuals of the same gender illegal. The specific statute, listed in the text of the case, was Texas Penal Code §21.06(a), which stated “A person commits an offense if he engages in deviant sexual intercourse with another individual of the same sex.” It further defined “deviant sexual intercourse” to mean contact between the private areas such as the anus or genital area of one person by an object, or by the mouth and/or genitals of another person. The plaintiffs, John Geddes Lawrence and Tyron Gardner, brought suit alleging that their Fourteenth Amendment rights had been violated under the due process clause due to this statute. Though the United States Supreme Court ultimately struck down the Texas state statute, the decision was not unanimous, and opinions developed on both sides of the case. Justice Kennedy, in writing for the majority, had solid reasoning for declaring that Texas Penal Code Ann. §21.06(a) violated the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Chief among these reasons was that, to be blunt, the state had no business in the private affairs of people. It was stated that “In our tradition, the State is not omnipresent in the home” (1). In addition, he wrote, “Liberty presumes an autonomy of self that includes freedom of thought, belief, expression, and certain intimate conduct” (1). The majority opinion believed that neither the state nor the courts had the right to tell people what to do in their own homes. Only people could make the choice of what happened in their intimate conduct, and the court would do well not to interfere. Many other reasons were given for declaring the statute illegal, but the second main issue for doing so was the fact that should the “deviant sex” be taking place between two consenting adults, and not involving minor children, public conduct, and/or prostitution, then it was not for the Court to “define the meaning of the relationship or to set its boundaries absent injury to a person or abuse of an institution the law protects” (6). The majority went on to say that, for the most part, adults could be trusted to enter into relationships of their own free will, as well as to consent to the type of sexual activity that would take place in them. Though this was a decidedly main issue, it can be said that it goes back to the first main issue, which was that adults, as adults, had a right to do what they wanted in their own homes, free from fear of punishment. Central to the majority opinion was a previous case, Bowers v. Hardwick, decided in the opposite manner of Lawrence v. Texas. In Bowers v. Hardwick, the laws were upheld, and sodomy was declared to be an illegal act. The majority of Lawrence v. Texas declared that the reasoning behind the decision made to be flawed, as the Court did not “appreciate the extent of the liberty at stake” (6). What the Court failed to consider was that, again, the case was about consensual acts private to a relationship, again taking place in the privacy of a home, and not in public view. They also, again, did not involve minors. Therefore, according to the majority opinion, Bowers v. Hardwick should not have been allowed to uphold the laws in the first place, as individual liberties were being infringed upon. From the remarks made, it can be concluded that Lawrence v. Texas was simply correcting a wrong, and doing what Bowers v. Hardwick should have done in the first place, which was to declare sodomy the natural act of a relationship, and not something dirty and illegal. There were those on the Supreme Court that disagreed with the majority opinion, chief among them Justice Scalia and Justice Thomas. Their reasoning was separately made in their dissents, with Justice Scalia having the longer of the two. Justice Thomas kept it brief, mainly stating that while he concurred with the fact that the law was “uncommonly silly” as it was written, it was not his place to judge what laws should and should not be repealed. It was his obligation to “decide cases agreeably to the Constitution and laws of the United States” (1). He wrote plainly that he did not find anywhere in the Constitution that guaranteed an individual the right to privacy, nor did the Fourteenth Amendment, and therefore, he disagreed with the decision to remove the state statute as it was decided (1). Justice Scalia was far more verbose in his opinion. He found it disagreeable that the Court, while choosing to overturn the actual result of Bowers v. Hardwick, the Court also chose to ignore the fundamental reasoning behind the decision, which was that homosexual sodomy was a “fundamental right”. His reasoning was that, even though the Court found that sexual acts including sodomy were a basic liberty and not a fundamental right, they were not using an appropriate level of review to determine whether or not it was, or was not, a “basic liberty” versus a “fundamental right” (1). He further indicated that Bowers v. Hardwick declared them not to be a part of the due process clause, which the plaintiffs in Lawrence v. Texas were alleging was violated, because the Fourteenth Amendment only applied to basic liberties. Sodomy and homosexual sex were not a basic liberty; therefore, they did not qualify under the Fourteenth Amendment. Therefore, by that reasoning, no due process was violated. Justice Scalia, in dissenting, also touched upon three other errors which, in his opinion, made it impossible for him to agree with the majority. First, he found that there was no consistency among the Court for their decision, and that “manipulation” was taking place. For example, he stated that Roe v. Wade was already “on the books” well before Bowers v. Hardwick, as was Planned Parenthood v. Casey. Justice Scalia concluded that his colleagues were very willing and ready to go along with the majority in those cases, and uphold laws, but they were just as willing to turn around and declare the law null and void in the case of Lawrence v. Texas. This, to him, was unacceptable, and he called for his colleagues to invoke a constant measure of reliance and permanence when analyzing their decisions and writing their opinions. The second error that was unacceptable to Justice Scalia was that, in simple terms, this was not a matter for the Court to decide. While he agreed with the majority that “later generations can see that laws once thought necessary and proper in fact serve only to oppress,” he stated that when that happened, if that happened, that it was not an issue for the courts to become involved in (20). It was an issue to be argued amongst those that made the laws. In other words, it was a matter for the people of the country to decide, and not the Supreme Court. In reviewing the facts of the case, I must say that had I been a Supreme Court justice, I would have most definitely sided with the majority. People are entitled to do things in the privacy of their own homes that they would not want those outside of their homes to see. This includes everything from making a mess in the kitchen to practicing consensual anal sex between two partners, whether heterosexual or homosexual. I would find it hard to believe, as a Supreme Court justice, that my colleagues did not engage in activities within their own homes that they would not want the outside world to see. The same would be true of me. Should any state or law have the power to restrict my activities in my own home, I would be grievously insulted and offended. The Fourteenth Amendment, as per interpretations, gives me the right to have certain “privileges” without fear that I will be arrested and/or punished for them. So, given this reasoning, I have the right to do what I please, as long as it is not illegal in any way, inside of my own home. This includes sexual practices, if I so choose, as long as they are between two consenting adults and do not include minors or the exchange of money or favors for the acts of sexual conduct. Were I to be denied this practice, I would feel as though my basic rights were being denied under the United States Constitution, and I would most certainly feel differently about the country that I have loved all of my life. Works Cited Lawrence v. Texas. No 02-102. Supreme Court of the US. 26 June 2003. Web. Accessed 18 February 2012. Read More