Looking Back on Lawrence v. Texas: VIDEO

Lambda Legal looks back on the case that brought down sodomy laws:

In 1998, on a September night in Houston, police stormed into John Lawrence's home and arrested him and Tyron Garner for violating Texas' "homosexual conduct" law. "Overruled!" highlights their story and the courtroom drama behind Lawrence v. Texas -- the case that led the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down all remaining state sodomy laws and launched a new era in the LGBT rights movement.

Watch, AFTER THE JUMP...

In related news, our legal expert Ari Ezra Waldman offered his thoughts on discussion of the new book Flagrant Conduct, which tells the story of the case, last week.

Marriage Litigation Strategy: From John Lawrence to Kristin Perry

BY ARI EZRA WALDMAN

With certain gay media outlets fanning its flames, a false fracas is unfolding about Lawrence v. Texas. It is creating an issue out of nothing and, as a result, it is obscuring the undisputed good work done by Lambda Legal, the American Foundation for Equal Rights (AFER), and other legal organizations to win our rights through impact litigation. 

The excellent Dahlia Lithwick takes to The New Yorker to review Professor Dale Carpenter's new book, Flagrant Conduct, which tells the sometimes-dramatic, sometimes-licentious, sometimes-mind numbingly arcane saga that precipitated the seminal decision in Lawrence v. Texas, a foundational case for every civil rights victory we will ever win. But, Ms. Lithwick took a scholarly book and learned the wrong lesson.

Professor Carpenter tells a story that most people do not know: about how the story started with four men drinking in an apartment, how policemen stormed into Lawrence's apartment looking for a gun but found none, how the worst thing the police saw was a lewd picture of James Dean, how Lawrence insisted on his innocence but pleaded "no contest" to challenge the anti-sodomy law, and how the men were poor, drunk, sometimes homeless, and probably not in love. But, although interesting, the particular personal histories of John Lawrence and Tyron Garner are irrelevant: Lawrence will always be a story about love because even if Lawrence didn't love Garner, their case legitimized gay love in the eyes of the law.

Ms. Lithwick also seems to imply that a lawyer's strategy to make the most effective arguments possible borders on deception or, in some way, makes the ultimate victory less wholesome. That is surprising coming from a lawyer, who should know that every case -- from one that challenges a ban on marriage recognition for gays to one that seeks $500 in medical expenses for a slip-and-fall -- has the same strategy: win.

Finally, she also misunderstands what gay rights cases are really all about. As I have argued many times, the traditional libertarian meme, "Get the government off our backs," will only get us so far. Texas may have had no business in Lawrence's bedroom that night in 1998, but our quest for the freedoms of intimacy, identity expression, and marriage is not a yearning for a small government that lets us do whatever we want behind closed doors; rather, it is a quest for social inclusion, societal honor, and the moral worth of a gay life's love.

CONTINUED, AFTER THE JUMP...

International Transgender Day Of Remembrance

Luisa was stoned to death; Idinia's throat was slit; Genesis was strangled; Fergie was shot. Those are just four of the (at least) 23 victims of anti-trans violence commemorated on this, the 13th Annual Transgender Day of Remembrance. Lambda Legal's transgender rights attorney, Dru Levasseur, issued this statement yesterday morning:

Today, on the eve of the 13th International Transgender Day of
Remembrance, we remember those we have lost and continue to lose to
anti-transgender hatred and violence, and recommit ourselves to fighting
for full equality for all transgender and gender non-conforming people.

The Massachusetts legislature just passed a transgender rights bill,
making Massachusetts the 16th state in the union to treat transgender
people as a protected class. The bill protects transgender residents of
Massachusetts in housing, credit, and the workplace, and includes
transgender people under hate crimes protections. This is an important
step, but in a year when eight transgender people were murdered in this
country, and many more worldwide, it is not enough.

"Lambda Legal continues to fight for the rights of transgender people at
work, in school, and in every aspect of their daily lives. We convinced an
Indiana school district to change its school dress code policies after
bringing a lawsuit on behalf of K.K. Logan (Logan v. Gary Community School
Corporation), a transgender woman who was barred from her high school prom
for wearing a dress; we and our partners at the ACLU won a federal lawsuit
(Fields v. Smith) filed on behalf of transgender women incarcerated in
Wisconsin who were barred from receiving transition-related health care, a
ruling upheld on appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh
Circuit; we filed a lawsuit in Oregon state court against the State of
Oregon and Public Employees Benefit Board on behalf of Alec Esquivel
(Esquivel v. Oregon), a transgender man denied medically necessary surgery
because he is transgender; and on December 1, we will present arguments
urging the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit to uphold a
federal court ruling that the action taken against our client, Vandy Beth
Glenn (Glenn v. Brumby et. al.), who was fired from her job as a
legislative editor by the Georgia General Assembly based on her gender
identity, was illegal and discriminatory.

Lambda Legal's 2009 survey on health care fairness, When Health Isn't
Caring, revealed that 70 percent of all transgender and gender
nonconforming respondents had experienced discrimination in health care
settings. We need laws that guarantee equal access to health care. And
until Congress passes the federal Employment Nondiscrimination Act (ENDA),
too many transgender people can be fired or face job discrimination based
on their gender identity and expression.

The Intenational Day of Remembrance website has a list of special events being held today.

Supreme Court Asked to Hear Louisiana Case Denying Accurate Birth Certificate to Adopted Son of Gay Dads

In February 2010, a federal appeals court upheld a December 2008 ruling by U.S. District Court judge Jay Zainey ordering the state of Louisiana to list both names of adopted gay parents, Oren Adar and Mickey Ray Smith, on their son's birth certificate. Their son was born in Louisiana but they adopted him in New York. The couple now lives in Orlando, and their case was overturned in April.

Today, Lambda Legal asked the U.S. Supreme Court to take the case:

Today Lambda Legal filed a petition for a writ of certiorari asking the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case of a same-sex couple seeking an accurate birth certificate for their Louisiana-born son whom they adopted in New York. The state of Louisiana has refused to recognize the adoption and issue a birth certificate listing both fathers as the boy's parents.

"By treating adopted children whose parents are unmarried worse than other adopted children, Louisiana violates two well-established federal constitutional protections, both of which embody principles of equal treatment and unify us as a nation. First, the constitution mandates that Louisiana, like every other state, must treat all out-of-state adoption judgments equally. Second, Louisiana may not treat adopted children themselves differently based on the marital status of their legal parents," said Kenneth D. Upton, Supervising Senior Staff Attorney in Lambda Legal's South Central Regional Office based in Dallas. "We have long since abandoned the notion that the government can punish children to express disapproval of their parents or their families. The state of Louisiana cannot withhold a birth certificate for this child simply because it doesn't like who his parents are."

View the legal papers filed today HERE.

Lambda Legal Launches Illinois Civil Union Tracker

The site was developed after the Illinois Governor Pat Quinn signed the states' civil unions bill into law. The law itself will go into effect on June 1, 2011. Writes Lambda Legal:

We know from experience in other states that have adopted civil union laws, that many couples and their children encounter problems getting respect for their relationships, whether in hospitals settings, by insurerers, employers, schools or in other situations. While not all unfair treatment leads to legal action, knowing more about your rights will help you respond.

For those of you who are eligible, you can sign up here.

Lambda Legal, ACLU to Sue Governor Linda Lingle and Hawaii Seeking Equal Rights. Benefits for Gay Couples

More details will come after a press conference later this morning HST (this afternoon, for many of us), but for now, the AP is reporting:

"Six gay couples in Hawaii are filing a lawsuit Thursday asking for the same rights as married couples, three weeks after Gov. Linda Lingle vetoed a same-sex civil unions measure. The lawsuit doesn't seek the titles of 'marriage' or 'civil unions' for gay partners. Instead, it requests that the court system extend them the benefits and responsibilities of marriage based on the Hawaii Constitution's prohibition against sex discrimination. 'We continue to be discriminated against,' said plaintiff Suzanne King, who has been in a relationship with her partner for 29 years. 'We're a family unit, and we live our lives just like everyone else, but we aren't treated the same.' The legal action in state court comes as a response to the Republican governor's veto July 6, when she said voters should decide whether to reserve marriage for couples of a man and a woman."

The case is expected to reach the Hawaii Supreme Court, or be rendered moot if the next governor or lawmakers approve a civil unions bill:

"The office of Hawaii Attorney General Mark Bennett declined comment Wednesday because it hadn't yet been served with the lawsuit. The state grants some rights to gay couples through its reciprocal beneficiaries system. But they lack the same legal priviledges and obligations of adoption, child support, alimony and access to family court, said Jennifer Pizer, senior counsel for Lambda Legal, which is bringing the case along with the American Civil Liberties Union."