Information On Homosexuality in the 1930's

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superam court cases

On 2003-APR-7, Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) commented on a currently active case before the U.S. Supreme Court: Lawrence v. Texas (2003). The case involves two gay men, John Geddes Lawrence, and Tyron Garner, who were arrested after police found them engaged in anal sex, in private, inside Lawrence's apartment. Under Texas' "sodomy law," only a man and a women are free to engage in oral or anal sexual behavior. Gays and lesbians cannot. Ruth Harlow, of the Lambda Legal Defense Fund, said: the Texas law "brands gay people as second-class citizens....[The plaintiffs were] punished for engaging in consensual sexual intimacy in the privacy of one of their homes. Texas' 'homosexual conduct' law targets gay and lesbian couples while leaving heterosexual couples free to engage in the very same acts." ₁ Similar legislation exists in the contiguous states of Kansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma.

Laws prohibiting homosexual behavior are commonly called "sodomy laws." They have taken many forms in different jurisdictions. Some criminalize certain behavior by opposite-gender as well as same-gender couples. It would not be much of an exaggeration to say that every sexual act except sexual intercourse between a married couple using the missionary position in the dark has been criminalized in at least one U.S. state at one time during its history.

These laws and regulations can be traced back at least to biblical times. In England, homosexual behavior was originally handled in the ecclesiastical courts. By 1791 CE, when the original 13 states ratified the Bill of Rights, they all treated sodomy as a criminal offense. By 1961, the U.S. military, and all of the states and territories maintained "sodomy" laws on their books -- some dating back more than a century. Some were worded so generally that they would even criminalize consensual oral sex in private between a married couple as a "crime against nature." In 1961, Illinois became the first American jurisdiction to repeal its sodomy law.