ABSTRACT
Queer Americans have much to be happy about since the Supreme Court’s decision in Lawrence v. Texas. This chapter explores the semantic dimension of the Lawrence text, evaluating in particular the effect of anchoring that text to the Court’s privacy precedents. It considers the subjective dimension of the script, detailing what Janet Halley has called the “practices of categorization” through which legal subjects are rendered visible and given meaning. When the Supreme Court first articulated a constitutional right of privacy in Griswold, it drew a boundary around the marital bedroom and worried about police searching that private sanctuary for telltale signs of contraceptive use. Expanding the private sanctuary of marital bedrooms to include homosexuals may invite the homosexual into the private space of family life and may therefore generate substantial legal and political backlash. Justice Scalia’s nescient opinion avoids drawing any fixed meaning from sexual acts and worries that same-sex relationships may be elevated to the same position as marriage.
