Lawrence V. Texas (2003)

Lawrence v. Texas (2003)
Justice Anthony Kennedy
Equality of treatment and the due process right to demand respect for conduct protected by the substantive guarantee of liberty are linked in important respects. . . . If protected conduct is made criminal and the law which does so remains unexamined for its substantive validity, its stigma might remain even if it were not enforceable as drawn for equal protection reasons. When homosexual conduct is made criminal by the law of the State, that declaration in and of itself is an invitation to subject homosexual persons to discrimination both in the public and in the private spheres. . . .
The State cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime. Their right to liberty under the Due Process Clause gives them the full right to engage in their conduct without intervention of the government. "It is a promise of the Constitution that there is a realm of personal liberty which the government may not enter." Casey, supra, at 847. The Texas statute furthers no legitimate state interest which can justify its intrusion into the personal and private life of the individual.
Had those who drew and ratified the Due Process Clauses of the Fifth Amendment or the Fourteenth Amendment known the components of liberty in its manifold possibilities, they might have been more specific. They did not presume to have this insight. They knew times can blind us to certain truths and later generations can see that laws once thought necessary and proper in fact serve only to oppress. As the Constitution endures, persons in every generation can invoke its principles in their own search for greater freedom.
-The decision in Lawrence v. Texas

A) was an aberration in the conservative culture of the 2000s.
B) exemplifies the Supreme Court's willingness to overturn its own earlier decisions.
C) was a victory for homosexuals but a defeat for other minorities.
D) emboldened the religious right.