UNT professor explains how queer activism in Texas helped end sodomy laws nationwide

In 1998, Harris County sheriff’s deputies arrested John Geddes Lawrence Jr. and Tyron Garner for allegedly having intercourse.

That arrest was doable beneath Texas’ Homosexual Conduct Law, which criminalized homosexual intercourse. Lawrence, Garner and their legal professionals challenged the regulation and the case went all the way in which to the Supreme Court.

In 2003, they gained.

In Lawrence v. Texas, the Supreme Court declared sodomy laws unconstitutional. Gay relationships had been decriminalized nationwide, paving the way in which for later civil rights victories, just like the legalization of same-sex marriage in 2015.

None of that may have been doable with out the many years of activism by queer Texans, UNT historical past professor Wesley Phelps argues in his new e-book, Before Lawrence v. Texas: The Making of a Queer Social Movement.

Phelps traces greater than a century of challenges to sodomy laws in Texas and highlights the individuals who laid the authorized basis for the Lawrence v. Texas determination. Some of the basic members of that motion had been activists in Dallas.

Phelps joined KERA to speak about his e-book.

This interview has been edited for size and readability.

What was life like for queer Texans beneath sodomy laws, notably the Homosexual Conduct Law of 1973?

There had been sodomy laws in the previous that outlawed non-procreative sexual habits amongst everybody. [The Homosexual Conduct Law] was particularly focused at homosexual and lesbian residents.

The regulation served as a authorized justification for a variety of discrimination in opposition to homosexual and lesbian Texans, from employment and household regulation to the allocation of social companies — simply numerous ways in which gays and lesbians had been discriminated in opposition to as a result of, in keeping with the regulation, they had been presumed criminals.

And police actively enforced this regulation.

Absolutely. The Dallas Police Department, like police departments throughout the nation, had what was often called a vice unit, and this was the unit that was accountable for intercourse crimes, policing, prostitution, issues like that. But in addition they policed same-sex sexual habits.

One of the methods they did that was by hiding out in locations the place notably homosexual males had been identified to congregate and cruise and generally have sexual encounters, locations like public restrooms. They would typically disguise in the partitions, disguise in ceilings. There was additionally a rash of bar raids of homosexual and lesbian institutions by the police division.

How did folks push again in opposition to sodomy laws in Texas?

Gays and lesbians began to come back collectively and create some organizations. The Dallas Gay Political Caucus was one of many first sort of activist homosexual and lesbian organizations in Dallas. There was additionally one in Houston, the Houston Gay Political Caucus. There had been related organizations in Austin and San Antonio and Galveston.

What they had been typically doing in the early and mid Nineteen Seventies [was] attempting to sort of push again in opposition to a few of the discrimination that they had been dealing with. Lots of that got here from the sodomy regulation. But it took activists a number of years to come back round to the concept that possibly we must always problem the legitimacy of the sodomy regulation itself.

In the Nineteen Seventies, they’re placing collectively patrol items in locations like Oak Lawn in Dallas, Montrose in Houston, to patrol the police on the one hand, and likewise to chop down on some violence that they had been experiencing. They additionally had been submitting complaints with native police departments about their remedy. They had been submitting complaints about discrimination in employment. And then regularly, by the late Nineteen Seventies, activists in Dallas and Houston resolve, we have actually received to problem the Homosexual Conduct Law itself.

Tell us about Dallas’ position in this push in opposition to the sodomy regulation, and the activist who’s on the duvet of your e-book: Don Baker.

Don Baker is the rationale I wished to put in writing this e-book. It was his story that I first encountered in the archives at the Briscoe Center at UT Austin.

Dallas activists had been completely central to difficult the Texas sodomy regulation starting in the late Nineteen Seventies and going all the way in which up into the Nineties. Don Baker had grown up in Dallas. He was from Oak Cliff. He had a really lengthy strategy of coming to phrases together with his personal sexual orientation, however by his late twenties, he had come to just accept that he was homosexual, and he moved again to Dallas and have become a substitute instructor in the Dallas college district.

Things had been going rather well for him, till at some point, the superintendent of the Dallas Independent School District introduced that he did not suppose there have been any homosexual folks working in the college district, and in the event that they had been, they’d be fired instantly.

That actually propelled [Baker] into a lifetime of activism. In 1979, he was approached by a company often called the Texas Human Rights Foundation, and he filed a constitutional case, a federal lawsuit in opposition to the Texas Homosexual Conduct Law. And that grew to become Baker v. Wade.

The Wade in that case is, in fact, Henry Wade, the identical defendant in Roe v. Wade. So there are quite a lot of attention-grabbing Texas connections right here.

Don Baker’s case, I argue, is an important case in opposition to the Texas Homosexual Conduct Law earlier than Lawrence v. Texas in the twenty first century. They initially gained. They received a good ruling from a district federal court docket in 1982 that was then sadly overturned by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans in 1985. And then the Supreme Court refused to listen to [the case].

It was a brief victory, however I argue in the e-book it was essential for this long-term battle in opposition to the Texas sodomy regulation. It actually laid the groundwork for the eventual success in Lawrence v. Texas in 2003.

You open the e-book with a quote from Don Baker, speaking about his authorized battle: “You have to look at the long-term, not the short-term in this case.” How do you suppose this quote resonates with civil rights struggles for queer folks right now?

I feel it is essential to maintain in thoughts that Don Baker mentioned that when it was turning into clear that the favorable ruling he had gotten in his case was going to be overturned, and that the Supreme Court most likely was not going to listen to this case.

He wished to elucidate to those who it is a long-term battle. We’re going to have short-term victories. We’re going to have short-term defeats. But if we preserve this long-term aim in thoughts, we will ultimately succeed. And I feel that is so related for right now after we’re seeing rising threats to queer equality.

We noticed with the Dobbs determination final yr, when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. That, in fact, was a devastating determination for ladies’s reproductive rights. But it is also a warning signal for any constitutional protections which can be primarily based on the proper to privateness. Of course, Lawrence v. Texas, the case that lastly overturned the Texas sodomy regulation and laws prefer it, that ruling was primarily based solely on privateness. It wasn’t primarily based on equal safety.

I feel selections like Lawrence v. Texas are very a lot in jeopardy. If we do not have that call, all the different beneficial properties for queer equality which have come about since then are additionally in jeopardy. Marriage equality is unthinkable so long as the sexual relationships between homosexual {couples} had been criminalized. Things just like the army coverage of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell being repealed. That victory simply appears impossible if homosexual intercourse remains to be criminalized.

I feel there are actual challenges forward, and I feel that is why that quote is so nice, as a result of Don Baker is saying, let’s do not lose sight of our long-term battle right here — and the battle might by no means be completely gained.

Phelps can be engaged on a podcast referred to as Queering the Lone Star State, which explores in element the circumstances he writes about in the e-book. It’s scheduled for launch in June, which marks Pride Month and the twentieth anniversary of the Lawrence v. Texas determination.

Got a tip? Email Miranda Suarez at msuarez@kera.org. You can comply with Miranda on Twitter @MirandaRSuarez.

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