Lawrence Vs. Texas: The Justification For The LGBT Community

Lawrence v. Texas: The Justification for the Decision and its Significance for the LGBTQ+ Community

The history of LGBTQ+ rights in the United States is long and complicated. LGBTQ+ identities that people outside that community accept change with time, as some identities establish themselves as commonplace while others are just being introduced to non-LGBTQ+ people. However, rights and acceptance of the LGBTQ+ community are nearly always tied to legal recognition. Lawrence v. Texas questioned whether or not a Texas statute that banned homosexual sodomy was constitutional. Although LGBTQ+ rights issues are controversial, everyone deserves to be equally protected under law regardless of sexual orientation. Likewise, the Fourteenth Amendment’s

Additionally, the means of their conviction were unconstitutional with the Fourth Amendment right to privacy and rules regarding search and seizure. The statute which convicted Lawrence and Garner “criminalizes sexual intimacy by same-sex couples, but not identical behavior by different-sex couples” (Lawrence v. Texas). The differentiation between gay and straight couples violated the Equal Protection Clause, which states “ nor shall any state ...deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the of the laws” (The Constitution of the United States, Amendment 14, Section 1, Clause 4.) The state of Texas discriminated against gay couples by forbidding them from engaging in sexual activity while allowing straight couples to do so. Gay couples were simply not equally protected under the statute, and thus it violated the Equal Protection Clause. The conviction of Lawrence and Garner under the sodomy statute also violated the Due Process Clause, which states, “nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law” (US Const. amendment 14, sec. 1, cl. 3.) The clause grants people liberty, and this includes “personal liberty in intimate decisions” (McBride). Finally, the method of Lawrence and Garner's conviction

The language used in the law was additionally devastating due to its discriminatory nature. The broad definition of sodomy associates gay sex with things like pedophilia and bestiality, (Sodomy) and while that definition was not the one used in the law, as that one singles out gay men specifically, it still carried those harmful connotations. Over eight million adults identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual (Gates), and while lesbians are generally not as affected by sodomy laws, removing them from the group still leaves a lot of people who could be hurt by these laws. Additionally, having a law that essentially states that being gay is not acceptable sends a negative message to gay youth, who are already 8.4 times more likely to have attempted suicide if they are not accepted by their families (Statistics You Should Know About Gay & Transgender Students). It is possible that the removal of the law improved the mental health of LGBTQ+ people, as, “suicide attempts by high school students decreased by 7 percent in stats after they passed laws to legalize same-sex marriage” (Segal). Even if it is only by a small percent, the removal of a discriminatory law could certainly have lowered LGBTQ+ suicide rates, especially as “Discrimination is a suicide risk factor for any minority group” (Segal). Sodomy laws