ABSTRACT
In Hardwick, the Supreme Court upheld as constitutional a Georgia sodomy statute that made oral or anal intercourse a felony punishable by up to twenty years in prison. Although Michael Hardwick was litigated as a sexual privacy case, and despite the fact that the Georgia statute drew no distinctions based on sexual orientation, the case has been interpreted primarily as a ruling on homosexuality. Since Hardwick was decided, the threshold question in the litigation of lesbian and gay rights cases has become whether Hardwick only extinguishes the claim to a substantive due process privacy right, or whether it also predetermines challenges under the Equal Protection Clause. The core of the debate over the ramifications of Hardwick grows out of the disjuncture between the legal definition of sodomy and its social and cultural meanings. The decision in Hardwick now bedevils virtually all litigation concerning lesbian and gay rights claims.
