ABSTRACT
Lawrence v. Texas was first and foremost a successful challenge to the state’s authority to regulate sexual activity between consenting adults. Sodomy is legal throughout the United States, regardless of the sex of the participants. Against the majority’s understanding in Romer that animus toward homosexuals is a civil rights issue was Justice Scalia’s insistence that animus toward homosexuals is but a feature of the culture wars and that courts have no business standing on one side or the other of a cultural divide. Coloradoans, Scalia argued, are politically “entitled to be hostile toward homosexual conduct.” The defense of individual liberty under substantive due process is the theory that the Supreme Court has historically invoked to protect marriage, procreation, contraception, family relationships, child rearing, and education.
