Lawrence v. Texas

In the case of Lawrence v. Texas, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled all state sodomy statutes unconstitutional. Writing for the majority in a 6-3 decision, Justice Anthony Kennedy described the laws as interfering with “transcendent dimensions” of personal liberty and declared that the criminalization of consensual sex “demeans the lives of homosexual persons.” The Lawrence case ended centuries of criminalizing sex between men and between women in the United States.

2003-06-26