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

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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 Union 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 ...

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