Queer pride, for real

IT'S TEMPTING TO want to cheer for the U.S. Supreme Court, which, in a profoundly important civil rights case, overturned the heinous Bowers v. Hardwick June 27 and decriminalized queer sex. The ruling in Lawrence v. Texas does much more than toss out antisodomy laws: For the first time ever, it puts the nation's highest court on record as asserting that lesbian and gay people have specific civil rights that deserve federal protection. It opens the door to vastly expanding lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights. It will almost certainly go down in history as a turning point in a long, long struggle for social and legal acceptance for a large and long-oppressed minority.

But while the champagne corks are popping, it's important to remember that the credit for this breakthrough doesn't really go to the nine justices in Washington, D.C. The Supreme Court is a political creature, and it responds – slowly – to social change and community pressure. It was 50 years of queer organizing, from Harry Hay and the Mattachine Society to Stonewall to Harvey Milk to AIDS activism and thousands of other struggles, big and small, many of them based in San Francisco (and many at first derided as far too radical), that transformed U.S. society to the point that Lawrence v. Texas was possible.

There are a number of remarkable elements of the high court decision. The majority opinion, written by Justice Anthony Kennedy (a conservative Roman Catholic), is less a strict legal analysis than a meditation on freedom and human dignity. Kennedy asserts that even though the Texas antisodomy law at issue was only a misdemeanor offense, rarely prosecuted, the very fact that consensual intimate personal conduct inside one's own home could be criminalized is a violation of the most basic liberties in the Constitution and is "an invitation to discrimination." In the broadest possible language, he states that that notorious Bowers case (which upheld Georgia's antisodomy laws) "was not correct when it was decided [and] is not correct today."

The opinion reflects a dramatic change over the past several decades in mainstream attitudes toward lesbian and gay relationships. This is hardly a radical left-wing court, but from reading the opinion, and even the dissent by Clarence Thomas, it's clear that none of the justices (save for Antonin Scalia, who still fears the "homosexual agenda") want to be associated with antigay attitudes or want to endorse discrimination against LBGT people. (Thomas notes that the Texas law was "uncommonly silly" and that if he were in the Texas legislature, he would vote to repeal it.) That's a huge change from the Bowers era, in 1986, when the court had no problem asserting that homosexuality was by its nature deviant and criminal. And it's a reflection of the vast amount of effort a huge number of LGBT activists have put into changing the way society thinks. It's also a reminder that huge, sweeping social change doesn't always come instantly – it comes after decades of setbacks, after endless, often frustrating political work.

Scalia, in a scathing dissent, argues that the Lawrence precedent set the court firmly on the road to legalizing gay marriage. That's probably true. It's not a stretch to suggest that the LGBT legal community start looking right away for a good plaintiff and a strong case to take to court to force the issue.

And while this country is a long, long way from granting full rights and respect to queer people, and the struggle will continue for decades more to come, it's worth taking time here to celebrate – and to congratulate the thousands of grassroots queer activists who have, quite literally, changed the world.