High Court to Rule on Gay Rights : Case Involves Privacy for Adults, Georgia’s Law Banning Sodomy

The Supreme Court agreed today to decide whether the sexual activities of consenting homosexual adults are constitutionally protected.

The court said it will review a ruling that could, if upheld, result in striking down Georgia’s sodomy law and similar laws in other states.

Not since 1967, when it ruled that aliens found to be homosexual may be deported as people “afflicted with a psychopathic personality,” has the nation’s highest court issued a detailed “gay rights” decision.

Michael Hardwick, a self-described practicing homosexual, was arrested by Atlanta police in 1982 on charges of committing the crime of sodomy with another man in his home. Hardwick sued Georgia officials in 1983 even though prosecutors had decided not to seek an indictment against him.

Aimed at Sodomy Law

His suit sought to have Georgia’s sodomy law, which outlaws “any sexual act involving the sex organs of one person and the mouth or anus of another,” declared unconstitutional.

A married couple also challenged the law, saying it infringed on their privacy rights. Lower courts ruled that the couple had no legal standing to sue because there was no proof that Georgia authorities ever would enforce the law against them.

U.S. District Judge Robert H. Hall of Atlanta threw out Hardwick’s suit, ruling that the constitutional claims had been rejected by the Supreme Court when it upheld Virginia’s sodomy law in 1976.

In that ruling, the justices affirmed a lower court’s decision that the state sodomy law was constitutional but issued no written explanation of the affirmance.

Suit Reinstated

The 11th U.S Circuit Court of Appeals, by a 2-1 vote last May 21, reinstated Hardwick’s lawsuit.

The Atlanta-based appeals court said the Georgia law “infringes upon the fundamental constitutional (privacy) rights of Michael Hardwick,” and said the law may be valid only if state officials can “demonstrate a compelling interest in restricting this right.”

“The benefits of marriage can inure to individuals outside the traditional marriage relationship,” the appeals court said in sending the case back to Judge Hall. “For some, the sexual activity in question here serves the same purpose as the intimacy of marriage.”

In other action, the court:

--Agreed to consider reviving a federal law that bars anyone ever committed to a mental institution from buying a gun.

--In a big-stakes movie industry battle, effectively barred theater owners from trying to eliminate competition among them for particular films. The court, without comment, let stand a ruling in a case from Milwaukee that banned nationwide the practice known as “splitting.”

The Justice Department, in a 1980 suit, said that as a result of the splitting arrangement, the number of competitively bid films in Milwaukee fell from 317 in 1977 to none in 1981.

--In an unsigned opinion, ruled that California can require an Indian tribe to collect a tax on cigarettes sold to non-Indians. The justices said the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals improperly found that the Chemehuevi Indian tribe was not required to levy the tax at a shop on its Colorado River reservation.