The result is a book that turns conventional wisdom about Lawrence on its head. Indeed, the readers most likely to be surprised by “Flagrant Conduct” are those who think they already know the basic outlines of the case....almost no one familiar with the incident believed the police report. The judge handling the case suspected that Quinn had either made up or embellished the sex charge, and the county’s top prosecutor seemed personally reluctant to pursue it.
What kept the case alive, Carpenter shrewdly explains, was relentless pressure from opposite sides of the political spectrum: Republicans seeking a “family values” issue, on one end; gay rights activists handed a good “test case,” on the other....
For Smith and Lambda Legal, the case against sodomy laws hung on the “twin pillars” of “equal protection and the due process right to privacy.” But Smith went further in his argument to the court. As Carpenter notes, he “articulated the substantive idea that sexual intimacy among gay Americans was a good thing, not merely a tolerable thing.” Gay partnerships strengthened the fabric of society, a perception Americans increasingly grasped and accepted. In recognizing this, Smith declared, the court would not be leading a reluctant nation to a moral precipice, but rather catching up with realities of modern life.
Arguing for Texas was Chuck Rosenthal, the flamboyant, if woefully unprepared, Harris County district attorney. His brief was simple: the Supreme Court had rightly decided this issue in Bowers, and there was no reason to reverse. Sodomy laws reflected the people’s wisdom channeled through their elected representatives. When such laws become archaic, they should be discarded by the legislatures, not tossed out by the courts — in short, judicial restraint.
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