As CA Judiciary gets ready to mull Prop. 8, it's a good time to remember a landmark decision

[pepperbear]

http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/02-102.ZO.html

The present case does not involve minors. It does not involve persons who might be injured or coerced or who are situated in relationships where consent might not easily be refused. It does not involve public conduct or prostitution. It does not involve whether the government must give formal recognition to any relationship that homosexual persons seek to enter. The case does involve two adults who, with full and mutual consent from each other, engaged in sexual practices common to a homosexual lifestyle. The petitioners are entitled to respect for their private lives. The State cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime. Their right to liberty under the Due Process Clause gives them the full right to engage in their conduct without intervention of the government. “It is a promise of the Constitution that there is a realm of personal liberty which the government may not enter. The Texas statute furthers no legitimate state interest which can justify its intrusion into the personal and private life of the individual.

http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/02-102.ZC.html

A law branding one class of persons as criminal solely based on the State’s moral disapproval
of that class and the conduct associated with that class runs contrary to the values of the Constitution and the Equal Protection Clause, under any standard of review. I therefore concur in the Court’s judgment that Texas’ sodomy law banning “deviate sexual intercourse” between consenting adults of the same sex, but not between consenting adults of different sexes, is unconstitutional.