Lawrence v. Texas 539 U.S. 558 (2003) is considered one of the landmark cases involving obscenity laws. The case involved John Geddes Lawrence and Tyron Garner who were found in Lawrence’s house engaging in harmony. Historic laws that characterized sex between same-sex couple as immoral guided the arresting officers. The duo was charged with a misdemeanor under the Texas anti-sodomy laws where they pleaded no contest and received fines for the offense in 2000. (Darmer, 2012). In 2003, the duo appealed to the US Supreme Court, which ruled 6-3 in their favor and by extension nullified anti-sodomy in Texas in 13 states. as a result, same-sex sexual activity became legal in all US states and territories.
The decision by the Supreme Court helped to outdated obscenity laws, which have been held dear for many decades owing to the US Judeo-Christianity religious beliefs. The court established that it was unconstitutional to infringe into the sexual privacy of two consenting adults no matter their sex. The court based its decision on the Fourteenth Amendment’s substantive due process found within the Due Process Clause. This clause asserts that the state has the responsibility of safeguarding the citizen's liberties (Darmer, 2012). The court also based its decisions on the Equal Protection Clause considering that the law prohibited homosexual sodomy but not heterosexual sodomy. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor felt that it was time that homosexual sodomy was protected just in the same way as heterosexual sodomy was protected (FindLaw, nd). The decision, in this case, affected previous sodomy cases most notably the Bowers v. Hardwick case in 1986. The court accepted that it had made a wrong decision in this case and challenged Georgia statutes that had failed to protect sexual privacy. Looking at Lawrence v. Texas, one can establish that the ruling outdated the existing obscenity laws as the decisions made other states to reconsider their obscenity laws. Individuals who consent to sodomy have a right to their privacy and liberty.
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References
Darmer, M. K. B. (2012). The enduring force of Scalia 's Lawrence and Romer dissents: The case for proposition 8. Berkeley La Raza Law Journal , 22(8), 155-174.
Findlaw. (nd). Lawrence v. Texas. Retrieved on 9 September 2019 from https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/539/558.html
