Brief Fact Summary. Respondent, after being charged with violating a Georgia statute criminalizing sodomy, brought an action in the Federal District Court challenging the constitutionality of the statute.
Synopsis of Rule of Law. The United States Constitution does not confer a fundamental right upon homosexuals to engage in sodomy.
Condemnation of those practices is firmly rooted in Judeao-Christian moral and ethical standards.
View Full Point of LawIssue. Does the Federal Constitution confer a fundamental right upon homosexuals to engage in sodomy?
Held. No. Judgment reversed.
The Due Process Clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments have been interpreted to include not only procedural rights, but substantive rights as well. Case law has defined these substantive “fundamental liberties” as those that are “implicit in concept of ordered liberty” and “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition”. Sodomy was once a criminal offense at common law and when the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified, 32 or the 37 States in the Union criminalized sodomy. Therefore there can be no claim that homosexual sodomy is conduct that is “implicit in concept of ordered liberty” or “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition”.
The belief that homosexual sodomy is immoral serves as a sufficient rational basis to uphold the Georgia statute criminalizing sodomy.
Dissent. This case is not about the fundamental right to engage in sodomy but instead about the values that underlie the right to privacy.
The majority focuses its decision homosexual activity however the statute in question uses broad language that provides that “a person commits the offense of sodomy when he or she performs