You’re in your bedroom. The lights are low, you’ve just enjoyed a nice dinner with your significant other, and now it’s time for a little action. The last thing you expect is for the cops to bust through the front door of your apartment and arrest you.
But such was the case for John Lawrence and Tryon Garner, a couple whose apartment was bombarded four years ago on a bogus tip that an armed intruder had broken into the home. Even though Texas policemen seldom charge individuals in antisodomy cases, once they found the two in a compromising position, they decided to arrest and book them with sodomy.
This week the Supreme Court is hearing the case, in which the men’s lawyers request that the court overturn the sodomy laws in Texas. Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma and Missouri laws forbid oral and/or anal sex between gay people, while Louisiana is one of nine states that forbid oral and/or anal sex for everyone, irregardless of the participants’ genders (sorry, boys).
Apart from being a great excuse to decline your man’s repeated attempts to push your head closer to his crotch in hopes that after a while you’ll give in to his whims, these laws are outdated and obtuse. Although they were imposed in all 50 states until the ’60s, all but 13 have since eradicated the laws.
The reality of it is that the laws in Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma and Missouri discriminate against gay people. It is unfair that — in these states — a woman can orally pleasure her boyfriend or husband within the constraints of the law, whereas a man cannot do the same for his partner. Furthermore, a man can penetrate a woman but a man cannot penetrate another man without violating state laws. Since when does the state have the liberty of telling someone who they can sleep with?
Texas and its collaborators — including the states of South Carolina, Utah and Alabama, as well as the expected religious and conservative groups — are upholding the alleged obligation of the states to “impose moral standards” upon their citizens. Although many Churches and organizations insist upon the immorality of same-sex relationships, in today’s day and age it can hardly be considered socially immoral. So long as no one is being injured (i.e. statutory rape) two consenting adults should be able to freely engage in relationships that satisfy their preferences. And they should be able to sexually satisfy their partners.
The opposing side — backed by not only gay, human rights and medical organizations, but also libertarian and even conservative groups — is requesting the equal treatment of gay people and heterosexuals. The Republican Unity Coalition articulates: “This case is an opportunity to confirm that the constitutional command of equal protection requires that gays be treated as equal to all other citizens under the law, subject to neither special preferences nor special disabilities.” In other words, a blow job is a blow job is a blow job … doesn’t matter who’s giving it.
Hopefully the Supreme Court will see an end to the sodomy laws that restrict the sexual activity of homosexuals in Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma and Missouri. Furthermore, perhaps the near future will see the end to such laws in Louisiana and the eight other states that prohibit sodomy among heterosexuals as well. Aside from the fact that the laws rarely are enforced, it is absurd that laws forbidding blow jobs and anal sex still exist; sexual expression is not something that can be legally regulated without violating certain rights.
While obscenity laws should be upheld, the obscenity of what goes on in the privacy of one’s bedroom is to the discretion of those involved. But one doesn’t have to approve of the acts of oral and anal sex, or consider that they are not — as a criterion for immorality in many Churches — procreative sexual activities to see this is a matter of the state telling its citizens how to have sex and with whom.
As for the case of Lawrence v Texas, it’s like I said: A blow job is a blow job is a blow job. As for anal sex: Consenting adults should be able to ask, “You want to put that where?” without being penalized by law.