Tag Archives: Lawrence V. Texas

The Texas Tribune reports: In 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court found Texas’ ban on homosexual conduct to be unconstitutional in Lawrence v. Texas. More than 20 years later, the Legislature took its first steps to remove that prohibition from the books. On Thursday, the Texas House voted 72-55 to preliminarily approve House Bill 1738, which would remove from state statute …

The Texas Tribune reports: A promising Democratic push to repeal Texas’ defunct ban on gay sex has fizzled after the lower chamber ran out of time to consider House Bill 2055 on Thursday. In June 2003, the landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Lawrence v. Texas struck down the state’s criminalization of gay sex. Sessions after sessions since then, Texas …

The Houston Chronicle reports: Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton last week seemingly expressed support for the Supreme Court potentially overturning past rulings on cases involving the LGBTQ community following the downfall of Roe v. Wade on Friday. During a Friday appearance on News Nation’s “On Balance with Leland Vittert,” Paxton said he would support the Supreme Court revisiting the cases …

Media Matters has the transcript: Clarence Thomas wrote that striking down Roe should open up the high court to review other precedents that may be deemed demonstrably erroneous. Now he’s talking about a constitutional principle here and that is enumerated rights or the Ninth and Tenth Amendment. What is the role of the state? In future cases, we should consider …

From Clarence Thomas’s concurring opinion: The Court’s abortion cases are unique, see ante, at 31–32, 66, 71–72, and no party has asked us to decide “whether our entire Fourteenth Amendment jurisprudence must be preserved or revised,” McDonald, 561 U. S., at 813 (opinion of THOMAS, J.). Thus, I agree that “[n]othing in [the Court’s] opinion should be understood to cast …

The Guardian reports: In the same brief, which calls for Roe to be overturned, Mitchell and co-counsel Adam Mortara, an anti-abortion activist and lawyer who clerked for the Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas, said such a decision could open the door for other “lawless” rights and protections to be reversed, including the right to have gay sex and the right …

The Washington Post reports: Barrett said Wednesday that she believed two Supreme Court decisions outlawing racial discrimination were correctly decided but declined to say the same for other landmark opinions involving gay rights and access to contraceptives. Those responses came under questioning from Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), who asked her whether Brown v. Board of Education, which outlawed the “separate …

“That was the gate that opened the way to homosexual marriage. And within —what?— 12 years or something like that, we had homosexual marriage in this country. So we went from 9/11, when things were maybe a little more normal and we lost so much ground in such a fast time. It was just within that 12 years that that …

Via press release from hate group leader Tony Perkins: To most people, July 19th is just another day. If you asked them what happened on this date 25 years ago, only a handful would probably know that President Bill Clinton made “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” the policy for America’s military. Even fewer would know that the summer of 1993 help …

Just in from the Democratic National Committee: On the 3rd anniversary of Obergefell v. Hodges, the 5th anniversary of U.S. v. Windsor, and the 15th anniversary of Lawrence v. Texas, DNC Chair Tom Perez released the following statement: “Before the Supreme Court handed down its decision in U.S. v. Windsor five years ago, Edie Windsor said, ‘I think justice will …

The Associated Press reports: In Louisiana, a proposal to strengthen the law against bestiality is facing unexpected opposition from conservative lawmakers who see it as an underhanded move to strike the state’s unconstitutional ban on sodomy. Creating a new, wide-ranging anti-bestiality law would untangle the offense from the ban on sodomy in Louisiana’s “crime against nature ” statute, prompting some …

The Houston Chronicle reports: Every day in Texas, more than an estimated half-million people are breaking a law that’s on the books, but unenforceable. It’s technically illegal to be gay in Texas. The law, passed in 1974, makes homosexual conduct a class C misdemeanor, punishable by up to 180 days in jail and a $2,000 fine. The law has been …

Courthouse News Service reports: A federal class action filed more than a decade after the Supreme Court struck down state sodomy laws challenges a Mississippi statute that requires people convicted of having anal sex to register as sex offenders. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of five Mississippi residents who say they were convicted under various sodomy prohibitions, including the …

Via press release: U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) and Congresswoman Suzan DelBene (D-WA) introduced a resolution to designate June 26, as “LGBT Equality Day,” honoring the anniversary of three significant victories won at the U.S. Supreme Court for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) Americans. “America should celebrate the progress we have made to pass on to the next generation …

NOM president Brian Brown has penned a lengthy tribute to late Justice Antonin Scalia’s attempts to keep homosexuality criminalized in the United States. An excerpt: When the majority of his colleagues, led by Justice Anthony Kennedy, ruled in Romer v Evans that the voters of Colorado could not prohibit the granting of special rights to homosexuals, Scalia took them to …

“In 2003, Justice Kennedy, in the Lawrence opinion of the Supreme Court, wrote that liberty is ‘the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.’ That was not only bad metaphysics but blatant legal positivism; a philosophy which says, in effect, that the law is what the court …

Bloomberg gives us some interesting history: [Ted] Cruz is making the gay marriage debate the cornerstone of a bid to rally conservatives to his 2016 presidential bid, but same-sex issues haven’t always been the top priority for a lawmaker who built his profile as a limited-government, Tea Party-aligned conservative. As Texas solicitor general when the Lawrence v. Texas case came …

Via the San Antonio Express: Barely two months after a federal judge struck down Texas’ hair braiding regulations, a move to erase the unconstitutional statute already has bipartisan support. Not so for Texas’ anti-sodomy law, which remains on the books a dozen years after the U.S. Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional. “Absolutely, there is a difference,” said Rep. James White, …

“Let’s take [Ross] Douthat at his word and just accept that it didn’t occur to him the event was a fundraiser even after the MC began soliciting donations from the stage during the event. Let’s focus on this this instead: Douthat isn’t apologizing for crawling into bed with the ADF, an organization that wants to send Douthat’s colleagues Frank Bruni …