Brad Sears, director of the Williams Project on Sexual Orientation Law at UCLA, called the 6-3 ruling in Lawrence v. Texas "the most important gay and lesbian rights decision ever handed down by any court in the United States." The case stemmed from a challenge by two Texas men, Tyron Garner and John Geddes Lawrence, to their arrest by police five years ago in Lawrence's Houston apartment after they were caught having sex.

With the affirming language of the Court's decision, Sears said the ruling "overturns obstacles toward advancing rights in all areas." In 1986, the justices had ruled 5-4 in Bowers v. Hardwick that states, in that case Georgia, had the right to ban same-sex sodomy.

"Bowers was such a negative decision," Sears said. "It reduced our lives to sex acts and limited rights in all other legal areas." The majority opinion in Lawrence, written by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, said that sodomy laws that criminalize private, consensual sex between adults of the same or opposite sex violate the fundamental right to privacy in the Constitution.

According to Sears, the ruling also improves the prospect of same-sex marriage becoming law in more states. Vermont currently comes the closest with civil unions that give many of the same rights and responsibilities of marriage to gays. And, should AB 205 pass in California (please see page 24), although falling short of granting gays the right to marry, it would be the most comprehensive civil-unions bill to date. Meanwhile, all eyes are on the Massachusetts case Goodridge et al v. Department of Public Health, the imminent ruling on which could grant gay people the right to civil marriage in that state.

"Gays can be treated separately no longer," Sears said. "[The ruling] reaffirms the right to privacy, a liberty interest, in the due process clause--freedom for relationships. Why doesn't this include a right to marriage as well?" Some 37 states and the federal government, however, have adopted so-called Defense of Marriage acts, which define marriage as applying only to a man and a woman, and bar recognition of same-sex marriages from other states. Eventually, this could be tested in the courts should an appropriate case arise.

Sears said the ruling also improves the likelihood of a test of the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy. Such a challenge has already been brought in Loomis v. USA (please see page 33). The military, however, has historically been given a great deal of deference, and the needs of the military will be seen as an important interest weighed against constitutional rights, he added.

On adoption and child custody laws, the ruling takes away a basis for deciding against gays and lesbians. "There is plenty of room, however, for homophobia to creep in other areas," Sears said. "Now they just say the mother or father is also a criminal. But they still can say they [children] won't have the proper role models--there's an inappropriate lifestyle in the house."

In the short term, Sears said, the ruling might work against gay rights by energizing the religious right. "This is what they're [Christian groups] going to use to bring out the vote in the next election," Sears said. "All political candidates will be asked this. There's even a split in public opinion on marriage versus other issues. People feel differently about marriage."

Jennifer Pizer, a senior staff attorney for the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund's Western Regional Office in Los Angeles, which represented the plaintiffs in the Lawrence case, said the ruling means "as gay Americans we no longer have the badge of criminality on our foreheads."

Earlier rulings had been used to deny child custody and adoption, and to justify employment discrimination, she said. "It [the ruling] removed a very common excuse for mistreating gay people," said Pizer, who attended the oral arguments in Washington, D.C., this spring. "It represents an official constitutional statement that we as individuals and we as same-sex couples should not be demeaned."

Pizer said the ruling represents an enormous step forward on two other legal battles: the freedom to marry and overturning the ban on gays serving openly in the military. "The reasons that were brought forward by the state of Texas were held to have no substance," Pizer said. "We will see in future cases what purported justifications the federal government will have in military policy and state policy, and federal government will have in discrimination about our marriages."

On political battles, Pizer said the ruling should energize people on both sides of the issue of civil rights for gay and lesbian Americans. "I think that the gay and lesbian community [had the right] to celebrate Independence Day in a way we never had to celebrate before," Pizer told Frontiers. "I think the decision marks the close of a very painful chapter in history for gay Americans. The Supreme Court was catching up with where the rest of the country is [on the issue of] adult consensual sex."

The decision, however, doesn't mean gay Americans should relax their guard, "There are many people in this country who wish we had no civil rights," Pizer said. "They are very motivated to deny us civil rights, perhaps more so after having lost on this issue. We need to celebrate our success and feel freer to be ourselves, and have a sense of self-worth to do the next chapter in our work." The future likely will include fights on issues involving civil rights for gays, as well as the makeup of a future court the next time there is a vacancy, Pizer said.

In particular, Pizer said she was impressed during oral arguments that two justices, Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, spoke of gays and lesbians being parents and raising children. "It gave me profound hope that our visibility and our humanness is being better and better understood," Pizer said.

David Cruz, a law professor at the University of Southern California, called Lawrence a "monumental decision of enormous importance to America in general and to lesbian, gay and bisexual communities in particular," much like Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 was a powerful message about the inherent dignity of a segment of the American population, blacks, who had been for too long denied full equality and respect.

Bowers v. Hardwick "has been an albatross around the neck of [the LGBT] movement in the U.S. since it was decided in 1986," Cruz said. "By overruling this mainstay of the radical, anti-gay right, [Lawrence] has provided lesbigay persons across the nation with something close to formal legal emancipation, or at least more formally, full citizenship for lesbigay Americans."

He cautioned, however, that the courts cannot sustain social progress by themselves. "Much as after Brown it took concerted effort before even a semblance of equality for black persons could become a reality in much of the country, it will take further executive and legislative and citizen action before the lives of lesbigay persons will come to be treated as fully equal to those of the heterosexually identified population."

Cruz called it unlikely that the ruling will have a direct legal impact on legalizing gay marriage. "A majority of the Court probably agrees with Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's 'searching' form of judicial scrutiny of governmental sexual-orientation discrimination," Cruz said. "This would suggest that bare assertions of morality or immorality will not in the future save the mixed-sex requirement for civil marriage from an equal-protection challenge. But Justice O'Connor took pains to suggest that government has other interests at stake regarding marriage laws than it did with sodomy laws. And even Justice Anthony Kennedy's majority opinion carefully observed that the question of marriage rights was not presented or resolved by the Lawrence case."

Cruz noted, however, less direct consequences for the pursuit of same-sex couples' right to marry resulting from the case. To the extent Kennedy's opinion treats the right to privacy at issue in Lawrence "as part of a constellation of related rights involving 'marriage, procreation, contraception, family relationships, child rearing and education,' it may be more likely that courts will define the right to marry as presumptively extending to adult same-sex couples." The government might be required to satisfy a stricter scrutiny standard to justify the same-sex marriage exclusion, he said.

Politically, the Lawrence case also makes it less plausible for defenders of the status quo to claim gay men and lesbians are "presumptive criminals due to the presence of sodomy laws," Cruz said.

The Lawrence decision could have a bigger impact on "don't ask, don't tell" military policies. The ruling makes it highly unlikely that the military's flat ban on sodomy, even in private and off-base, could be judged constitutional, he said.

On the issues of adoption and parental rights, the ruling makes it clear that pronouncements of immorality will not count as a strong enough governmental interest to justify bans on adoption or denial of custody to gay people, Cruz said. "The overruling of Bowers by Lawrence should usher in a new era of greater equality for lesbian, gay and bisexual parents," he said.

Cruz said he hopes the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals considers Lawrence carefully before issuing its decision on a pending case Lofton v. State, which challenges Florida's ban on adoption by gays as a violation of the constitutional guarantee of equal protection of the laws.

Georgetown University law professor Chai R. Feldblum also agreed that the Lawrence ruling is a landmark decision in the history of gay civil rights. "It is only the beginning of a long march to freedom, but it is absolutely the necessary first step," he said.

With its ruling, the Court overrode the arguments of dissenters such as Justice Antonin Scalia, who viewed the majority of justices as following a "homosexual agenda" running counter to public opinion, Feldblum said. "To the contrary, if we are to believe Gallup poll results, the majority opinion in Lawrence reflects precisely the current moral assessments of the majority of the American public."

But, for gay marriage and overturning the ban on gays in the military to occur, Feldblum said, public opinion needs to become more supportive of gay people. Currently, 54% of the American population believes homosexuality is an acceptable orientation. "That number needs to increase to equal the substantial majority [63%] that currently believes homosexual sex should not be criminalized," Feldblum said.

Bernadette Brooten, professor of Christian studies at Brandeis University and author of "Love Between Women: Early Christian Responses to Homoeroticism," said the ruling removes from state law religious prohibitions against same-sex sexual conduct. "The Christian value of condemning same-sex love is not a tradition of which Christians can be proud," Brooten said. "Now Americans can devote desperately needed energy to the problems of sexual ethics that matter: sexual abuse, sexual harassment and domestic violence."

Gay-rights groups praised the ruling. The National Center for Lesbian Rights in San Francisco, in a prepared statement, said that even though most individuals targeted under sodomy laws are gay men, lesbians also have suffered.

"Lesbian mothers have been powerfully affected by sodomy laws even where the laws have not been enforced," said Jane Schacter, a law professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School. "Judges have frequently said the mere fact that lesbian sexual activity could be criminalized justified adverse decisions regarding the custody rights of lesbian mothers."

The L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center said the ruling puts the Supreme Court in step with the view of a majority of Americans, that "what goes on in the bedrooms of consenting adults is none of the government's business." Lorri L. Jean, chief executive officer of the Center, added, however, that it is appalling that it took until 2003 for the Supreme Court to "confirm that gay and lesbian Americans are not criminals simply because of who we love."

The Rev. Troy D. Perry, founder of the predominantly gay Metropolitan Community Church, headquartered in West Hollywood, called the Lawrence decision the most significant victory for gay and lesbian rights in his lifetime. "It's more than a legal victory--it is a powerful reminder that love and sexual expression are of equal importance to both heterosexual and homosexual families," he said.