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Bowers V Hardwick June 30 Essay Research

Bowers V. Hardwick (June 30 Essay, Research Paper


Court Case Number 15: Bowers v. Hardwick (June 30, 1986)


In August of 1982, Michael Hardwick was charged with violating the


Georgia statute criminalizing sodomy by committing that act with another adult


male in the bedroom of Hardwick’s home. Hardwick then brought suit in the


Federal District Court, therefore challenging the constitutionality of the


statute as it criminalized sodomy. Hardwick asserted that he was a practicing


homosexual, that the Georgia statute, as administered by the defendants, placed


him in imminent danger of arrest and that the statute for several reasons


violates the Federal Constitution.


I oppose the Court of Appeals decision that Michael Hardwick’s complaint


was dismissed by evidence seen through rights readily identifiable in the


Constitution’s text involved much more that the imposition of the Justices’ own


choice of values on the States and the Federal Government, the Court sought to


identify the nature of rights for heightened judicial protection. Such landmark


court decisions as Palko v. Connecticut stated this category includes those


fundamental liberties that are ?implicit in the concept of ordered liberty,?


such that ?neither liberty nor justice would exist if any fundamental liberties


were sacrificed.? In Moore v. East Cleveland, fundamental liberties are


characterized as those liberties that are ?deeply rooted in this Nation’s


history and tradition.?


Proscriptions against a fundamental right to homosexuals to engage in


acts of consensual sodomy have ancient roots. Sodomy was a criminal offense at


common law and was forbidden by the laws of the original thirteen States when


they ratified the Bill of Rights. In 1868, when the Fourteenth Amendment was


ratified, all but five of the thirty-seven States in the Unio

n had criminal


sodomy laws. In fact, until 1961, all fifty States and the District of Columbia


continue to provide criminal penalties for sodomy performed in private and


between consenting adults.


As his honorable Justice John Paul Stevens opinion stated, sodomy was


condemned as an odious and sinful type of behavior during the formative period


of the common law. That condemnation was equally damning for heterosexual and


homosexual sodomy. Moreover, it provided no special exemption for married


couples. The license to cohabit and to produce legitimate offspring simply did


not include any permission to engage in sexual conduct that was considered a ?


crime against nature.?


One the more prominent features of Bowers v. Hardwick involved the


Georgia statute, ?the presumed belief of a majority of the electorate in Georgia


that homosexual sodomy is immoral and unacceptable.? The Georgia electorate


enacted a law that presumably reflects the belief that all sodomy is immoral and


unacceptable. Unless the Court is prepared to conclude that such a law is


constitutional, it may not rely on the work product of the Georgia Legislature


to support its holding decision. For the Georgia statute does not single out


homosexuals as a separate class meriting special disfavored treatment.


I strongly believe that according to the Bill of Rights and the Georgia


statute, they both state in similar contexts that homosexuals and heterosexuals


are treated both equally and that as long as the Bill of Rights states that


sodomy is a criminal offense at common law and the Georgia statute reiterates


the theme that all sodomy; whether committed by a heterosexual or homosexual


couple, is immoral and unacceptable, my opinion shall stand against the final


decision made by Justice John Paul Stevens, Justices’ Brennan, and Marshall.

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