ABSTRACT
In Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 US 186 (1986), the US Supreme Court held that there was no fundamental right to engage in homosexual sodomy, a decision that therefore limited the right to privacy. The case deeply divided the justices, who had widely divergent notions of the constitutional privacy right, the extent to which it should be broadened, and the contexts in which such a right existed. Michael Hardwick was charged with violating the Georgia statute criminalizing sodomy by engaging in oral sex with another man in the bedroom of his home. The police were in his home to serve a summons for failing to appear at a hearing for violating an open-container (liquor) ordinance and were directed by another houseguest to Hardwick's bedroom. Hardwick alleged that the law violated his fundamental right to privacy comparable to a heterosexual couple's desire to use birth control or a woman's right to terminate an early pregnancy.
