United States Supreme Court
A police officer came to Michael Hardwick’s home to serve a warrant for failure to pay an earlier fine.
Unsure if Hardwick was at home, the person who answered his door directed the officer to Hardwick’s room,
where the officer witnessed Hardwick and another man engaging in oral sex. Both were arrested under a
Georgia law forbidding oral sex or sodomy. The Supreme Court was asked to invalidate the law because it
violated "the most intimate personal association with another consenting adult." In earlier
decisions, the court determined that a constitutional right to privacy existed in marital relations, in
decisions about contraceptives and other forms of birth control, in doctor-patient relationships, and
when making decisions about abortion. In other words, the state had no right to interfere in the most
personal decisions.
Although the Georgia law made no distinction between heterosexual and homosexual conduct, Justice Byron
White framed the issue of the case as one of whether there is a "fundamental right of homosexuals
to engage in sodomy," then he and the majority rejected this idea. Asserting that homosexual conduct
is not "deeply rooted in this nation’s history and traditions," the court refused to extend
privacy rights to consenting adult homosexuals. What other reasons did the conservative majority give
for the decision? How important is the issue raised in the dissent, that the Constitution is concerned
about the prying and spying eyes of the state? Do you believe you have a constitutional right to privacy
in your own home? Since this decision, twenty-four states enacted privacy laws or equal-protection acts
to cover adult sexual conduct, and Georgia’s attorney general, Michael Bowers, used this law to convict
men for having oral sex with their wives. In 1998, however, changes occurred. The Georgia Supreme Court
declared the law unconstitutional, and Mr. Bowers confessed to committing adultery and public acts of
immorality. |
