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 Refused by High Court Texas: Private Consensual Sex Case Refused by High Court Lambda Legal Likely to Appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court |
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Compiled By GayToday Lambda Legal
With this ruling, there is no other court in Texas where the men can turn to appeal their convictions for having consensual sex at home. In an earlier case, the Texas Supreme Court ruled that this high criminal court had jurisdiction over any challenge to the 'Homosexual Conduct' law. Yet now that court also offers no hearing and no chance at justice on this subject. "It's shocking that neither of the supreme courts in Texas will even consider the serious constitutional problems with this law," said Lambda Legal Director Ruth E. Harlow. Lambda Legal argues that the 'Homosexual Conduct' law is discriminatory and conflicts with the right of privacy that all Texans enjoy. "The law intrudes on people's intimate lives and creates a legal double standard for lesbians and gay men. These men literally were arrested behind the walls of the home - is there any place more private?" said Lambda Legal Supervising Attorney Susan Sommer.
Texas has had a sodomy law since 1860, but decriminalized such activities by different-sex partners in 1974. Texas now is one of only three states, along with Kansas and Oklahoma, that prohibits consensual sex acts between same-sex partners only. Lambda Legal won its challenge to a similar Arkansas law at the trial court level in Jegley v. Picado; the state has appealed. Ten other states still prohibit consensual oral and anal sex between different- and same-sex partners alike, despite the nationwide trend toward abolishing such invasive criminal laws. Lawrence and Garner v. Texas |
