Before Lawrence v. Texas: The Making of a Queer Social Movement

In this insightful account, historian Phelps (A People’s War on Poverty) examines the legal activism that preceded the Supreme Court’s overturning of homosexual criminalization laws in Lawrence v. Texas (2003). He begins with Buchanan v. Batchelor (1970), the “first constitutional challenge to the state sodomy law,” which at that point was enforced regardless of sexuality. Partly as a result of that case, the law was made applicable only to those who performed anal or oral sex with members of the same sex. Phelps documents the impact of this change, including increased police harassment of the LGBTQ community, and shows how legal challenges became a major avenue of queer advocacy, noting that Baker v. Wade (1982) was “the first time a federal judge struck down a sodomy statute based on the constitutional rights of gay and lesbian individuals.” Though overturned by an appellate court, the decision was “a critical component in the developing legal strategy in the movement for queer equality,” Phelps argues, paving the way for a series of cases focused on the state constitution. Scholarly yet accessible, this valuable history reveals that Lawrence v. Texas was less of a “sudden explosion” than “a raging fire fueled by the burning embers of several decades of citizen activism.” Photos. (Feb.)