Wikipedia:Today's featured article/September 16, 2004

Lawrence v. Texas was a 2003 case decided by the United States Supreme Court. In the 6–3 ruling, the justices invalidated the criminal prohibition of homosexual sodomy in Texas. The court had previously addressed the same issue in 1986 with Bowers v. Hardwick, but there had upheld the challenged Georgia statute, not finding a constitutional right to homosexual sodomy. Lawrence overturned Bowers, which it held viewed the liberty at stake too narrowly. The Lawrence court held that intimate consensual sexual conduct was part of the liberty protected by substantive due process under the Fourteenth Amendment. Lawrence had the effect of invalidating similar laws throughout the United States insofar as they apply to consenting adults acting in private. The case attracted much public attention, and a large number of amicus curiae briefs were filed in the case. The decision was celebrated by gay rights activists, hoping that further legal advances may result as a consequence; the decision was lamented by social conservatives for the same reasons. (more...)

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