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From: Democracy Now!
Re: Rundown 6-27-03
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8:00-8:01 Billboard:
8:01-8:06 Headlines
8:06-8:07 One Minute Music Break
8:07-8:20 Supreme Court Strikes Down All Bans on Sodomy
and Gay Sex; it is the Largest Victory Ever for Gay And Lesbian
Civil Rights in the U.S.
The Supreme Court yesterday struck down Texas's ban on private,
consensual sex between adults of the same sex.
It is the most significant ruling ever for lesbian and gay
civil rights. Four states ban gay and lesbian sex. 9 other
states ban both hetero and homosexual sodomy. All of those
laws are now invalid.
The Supreme Court vote was six to three. Justice Anthony
Kennedy wrote for the majority. He said the Constitution allows
adults to choose to enter a gay relationship and still "retain
their dignity as free persons." He said that gay people, like
straight people, 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."
As Kennedy read these excerpts yesterday, many of the lesbian
and gay lawyers present began silently weeping.
Citing a prior Supreme Court ruling, Kennedy also wrote:
"These matters, involving the most intimate and personal choices
a person may make in a lifetime, choices central to personal
dignity and autonomy, are central to the liberty protected
by the Fourteenth Amendment. At the heart of liberty is the
right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning,
of the universe, and of the mystery of human life" He wrote,
"It is a promise of the Constitution that there is a realm
of personal liberty which the government may not enter."
The case involved two Texas men, John Geddes Lawrence and
Tyrone Garner. On the night of Sept. 17, 1998, a neighbor
of Lawrence faked a distress call to police. The neighbor
told the police that a man was "going crazy" in Lawrence's
apartment. Police went to the apartment, pushed open the door
and found Lawrence having consensual sex with Garner.
Texas law states that it is illegal to engage in so-called
"deviate sexual intercourse with another individual of the
same sex." Police fined the men and threw them in jail for
the night. Lawrence and Garner are now considered sex offenders
in several states.
The men appealed the charges all the way up to the Supreme
Court.
Yesterday's ruling was much broader in scope than anyone
had anticipated, on either side of the issue. Just 17 years
ago, in 1986, the Supreme Court heard a similar case and reached
the opposite conclusion. In Bowers v. Hardwick, the court
ruled the majority of the electorate believes that homosexual
sodomy is immoral and unacceptable, and that the sodomy laws
were"firmly rooted in Judeo-Christian moral and ethical standards."
Justice Antonin Scalia was a member of the court then, and
ruled with the court's majority to uphold Georgia's ban on
sodomy. Yesterday, he wrote a scathing dissent, and took took
the unusual step of reading his dissent from the bench. He
said the Court "has largely signed on to the so-called homosexual
agenda," and "It is clear from this that the Court has taken
sides in the culture war." He also said yesterday's decision
threatens every single state law against bigamy, adult incest,
bestiality, prostitution, adultery, obscenity and masturbation.
The ruling is about far more than consensual gay sex, and
affects lesbians as much as it affects gay men. Courts have
used laws criminalizing gay sex to justify taking children
away from their lesbian mothers. They have ruled employers
have the right to fire lesbians and gay men because they are
allegedly engaging in criminal behavior.
Last night, dozens of celebratory rallies were held in cities
across the country.
- Paul Smith, attorney who argued the case before the Supreme
Court, speaking at a celebratory rally yesterday outside
the Stonewall bar in New York's West Village. There were
dozens of similar rallies across the country.
- J.B., lesbian mother from Alabama who lost custody of
her daughter when the father discovered she was having in
open lesbian relationship. An appeals court overturned the
trial court's ruling, but the Supreme Court of Alabama upheld
it. In addition, the trial court banned her partner from
ever seeing J.B.'s daughter, even though the child's psychologist
determined the child had a good relationship with the partner
and that it was a beneficial relationship. Alabama's anti-sodomy
law provided the primary
- G.S., partner of J.B. The trial court banned her from
seeing her partner's daughter.
8:20-8:21 One Minute Music Break
8:40-8:41 One Minute Music Break
8:41-8:58 Remembering Stonewall:
A look back on that June night in 1969 when the NYPD raided
a gay bar in Greenwich Village leading to the Stonewell Rebellion
and a new movement
On this night back in 1969:
It was the height of the civil rights era. For more than
a decade, blacks and other oppressed groups had been openly
standing up to, and fighting against, their oppressors. But
gay people around the country were still quietly putting up
with police raids on gay venues, harassment, and discrimination.
All of this changed one night in June, 1969, when New York
City police officers raided a gay bar called Stonewall. Historian
Lillian Faderman describes the scene: two hundred working-class
patrons of the bar, including drag queens, third world gay
men, and a handful of butch lesbians, started to riot. Their
numbers doubled and soon, according to some sources, increased
tenfold. The riots continued the following night. Fires were
started all over the neighborhood. The first gay riots in
U.S. history became known as the Stonewall Rebellion. It was
the birth of a movement. The New York Times relegated the
story to five inches on page 33. It was headlined: "Four Policemen
Hurt in Village Raid."
8:58-8:59 Outro and Credits
For a copy of today’s program, call 1 (800) 881 2359.
Our website is www.democracynow.org.
Our email address is mail@democracynow.org.
Democracy Now! is produced by Kris Abrams, Mike Burke, Angie
Karran, Sharif Abdul Kouddous, Ana Nogueira, Elizabeth Press,
Noah Reibel and Vilka Tzouras. Mike Di Filippo is our music
maestro and engineer.
[Thanks also to Uri Galed, Angela Alston, Orlando Richards,
Simba Russeau, Rafael delaUz, Gabriel Weiss, Johnny Sender,
Rich Kim, Chris Zucker, Karen Ranucci, Denis Moynihan, Jenny
Filipazzo and Ionnis Mookas
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