Articles From Our July, 2003 Newsletter

Taken from the New York Times:

Not Leading the World but Following It
June 18, 2003
By Laurence R. Helfer

Disparities in the legal treatment of lesbians and gay men in the United States and their treatment in the rest of world are becoming more pronounced. As the United States Supreme Court considers an important gay rights case, expected to be decided this month, it should realize that much of the globe sees the issue as a matter of basic human rights.

Last week the Ontario Court of Appeals in Canada ordered the provincial government to grant marriage licenses to two same-sex couples, ruling that restricting marriage to heterosexual couples could not be squared with the fundamental right to equality in Canada’s constitution. The Canadian court’s decision is hardly an aberration. In the last decade, national and local lawmakers in dozens of countries have enacted laws to bar discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in housing, employment, public accommodation and health benefits. Many of these countries are also beginning to recognize rights for lesbian and gay families.

Lesbian and gay couples now enjoy full marriage rights in the Netherlands and Belgium and may enter into registered partnerships in seven other European nations. In November 2000, the European Union adopted a new directive that mandates all member nations to provide equal treatment to lesbians and gay men in employment. At the time, this ruling covered 380 million people. With the union’s expansion to 25 countries, it will soon cover millions more.

These legal protections are spreading to parts of the developing world, like Ecuador, Brazil and Namibia. South Africa’s highest court has issued several rulings in favor of lesbians and gay men since that country became the first to outlaw discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in its constitution.

The legal landscape in the United States is very different. Several states continue to impose a criminal ban on sex between consenting adults of the same gender, even in the privacy of their own homes. Others have enacted new laws restricting marriage to a union between one man and one woman. There are two states that recognize same-sex partnerships, and nearly a dozen states and many more municipalities have laws banning discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in public accommodation and in employment. But the majority do not have such laws, and the prospects for enacting a federal anti -discrimination statute are bleak.

A ruling expected soon from the Supreme Court provides an opportunity to redress at least one of these issues. In the case of Lawrence v. Texas, the court is considering a constitutional challenge to the Texas sodomy law, which bans private, consensual sex between homosexual couples. When the court last reviewed a similar law in Georgia in a 1986 case, a 5-4 majority rejected the constitutional challenge.

Will the recent trend recognizing gay rights in other countries influence the court’s decision this time around? The justices are sharply divided over whether it is appropriate to consider foreign and international law when interpreting the United States Constitution. But in a recent ruling banning executions of the mentally retarded, a majority of the court took into account that such executions had received condemnation from the world community.

The international consensus in favor of gay rights is still evolving. But the court can no longer state, as Chief Justice Warren Burger did in the 1986 case, that a decision striking down a sodomy law would “cast aside millennia of moral teaching.”

Recent events have created rifts between the United States and the rest of the world over important questions of law and policy. But respect for human rights should not be among them. When it comes to protecting the basic civil liberties of all people, including lesbians and gay men, the United States should lead the world, not lag behind it.

Laurence R. Helfer is professor at Loyola Law School

Supreme Court Strikes Down Gay Sex Ban

WASHINGTON (AP) – The Supreme Court struck down a ban on gay sex Thursday, ruling that the law was an unconstitutional violation of privacy.

The 6-3 ruling reverses course from a ruling 17 years ago that states could punish homosexuals for what such laws historically called deviant sex.

The case is a major reexamination of the rights and acceptance of gay people in the United States. More broadly, it also tests a state's ability to classify as a crime what goes on behind the closed bedroom doors of consenting adults.

Thursday's ruling invalidated a Texas law against "deviate sexual intercourse with another individual of the same sex."

Defending that law, Texas officials said that it promoted the institutions of marriage and family, and argued that communities have the right to choose their own standards.

The law "demeans the lives of homosexual persons," Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the majority.

Laws forbidding homosexual sex, once universal, now are rare. Those on the books are rarely enforced but underpin other kinds of discrimination, lawyers for two Texas men had argued to the court.

The men "are entitled to respect for their private lives," Kennedy wrote.

"The state cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime," he said.

Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer agreed with Kennedy in full. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor agreed with the outcome of the case but not all of Kennedy's rationale.

Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas dissented.

"The court has largely signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda," Scalia wrote for the three. He took the unusual step of reading his dissent from the bench.

"The court has taken sides in the culture war," Scalia said, adding that he has "nothing against homosexuals."

The two men at the heart of the case, John Geddes Lawrence and Tyron Garner, have retreated from public view. They were each fined $200 and spent a night in jail for the misdemeanor sex charge in 1998.

The case began when a neighbor with a grudge faked a distress call to police, telling them that a man was "going crazy" in Lawrence's apartment. Police went to the apartment, pushed open the door and found the two men having anal sex.

As recently as 1960, every state had an anti-sodomy law. In 37 states, the statutes have been repealed by lawmakers or blocked by state courts.

Of the 13 states with sodomy laws, four – Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma and Missouri – prohibit oral and anal sex between same-sex couples. The other nine ban consensual sodomy for everyone: Alabama, Florida, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Utah and Virginia.

Thursday's ruling apparently invalidates those laws as well.

The Supreme Court was widely criticized 17 years ago when it upheld an antisodomy law similar to Texas'. The ruling became a rallying point for gay activists.

Of the nine justices who ruled on the 1986 case, only three remain on the court. Rehnquist was in the majority in that case – Bowers v. Hardwick – as was O'Connor. Stevens dissented.

A long list of legal and medical groups joined gay rights and human rights supporters in backing the Texas men. Many friend-of-the-court briefs argued that times have changed since 1986, and that the court should catch up.

At the time of the court's earlier ruling, 24 states criminalized such behavior. States that have since repealed the laws include Georgia, where the 1986 case arose.

Texas defended its sodomy law as in keeping with the state's interest in protecting marriage and child-rearing. Homosexual sodomy, the state argued in legal papers, "has nothing to do with marriage or conception or parenthood and it is not on a par with these sacred choices."

The state had urged the court to draw a constitutional line "at the threshold of the marital bedroom."

Although Texas itself did not make the argument, some of the state's supporters told the justices in friend-of-the-court filings that invalidating sodomy laws could take the court down the path of allowing same-sex marriage.

The case is Lawrence v. Texas, 02-102.

The Kansas City Anti-Violence Project

The Kansas City Anti-Violence Project (KCAVP) is an independent organization dedicated to providing services for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) victims of domestic violence and sexual assault. These crimes are prevalent in Kansas City's LGBT community, and are slowly becoming more visible in both the mainstream and alternative press. But until now, LGBT victims of domestic violence and sexual assault have had few, if any, resources to help them cope with physical, sexual and emotional abuse. KCAVP is ready to begin closing that gap and educating the community with your support and involvement.

Harold Duval Moving

Harold Duval will be moving soon to Carlinville, IL, between St. Louis and Springfield. His brother died recently.

Harold was a long time attender of PFLAG and will be missed. His address will be

910 Breckenridge St.
Carlinville, IL 62626-1013

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