Supreme Court Strikes Down Gay Sex Ban
By ANNE GEARAN, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - What gay men and women do in the privacy of their bedrooms is their business and not the government's, the Supreme Court said Thursday in a historic civil rights ruling striking down bans on what some states have called deviate sex acts.

Gay rights advocates called the ruling, by a 6-3 vote, the most important legal advance ever for gay people in the United States.

Two gay men arrested after police walked in on them having sex "are entitled to respect for their private lives," Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote. "The state cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime."

In a lengthy, strongly worded dissent, the three most conservative justices called the ruling a huge mistake that showed the court had been co-opted by the "so-called homosexual agenda."

"The court has taken sides in the culture war," Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the three, suggesting the ruling would invite laws allowing same-sex marriages.

The court voted to strike down a Texas law that made homosexual sex a crime. The law allows police to arrest gays for oral or anal sex, conduct that would be legal for heterosexuals.

Of the 13 states with sodomy laws, four — Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma and Missouri — prohibit oral and anal sex between same-sex couples. The other nine ban consensual sodomy for everyone: Alabama, Florida, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Utah and Virginia.

Thursday's ruling invalidates all of those laws, lawyers said.

The case was the most significant of several released on the last day of the court's 2002-2003 term. Justices often choose the last day to announce if they plan to retire, but no one did so Thursday.

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