Well, I just think, look, I'm not an expert imagining myself into another life. I doubt my ability to maintain interaction after the police have burst into my home and held me at gunpoint, you know. Welcome to You're Wrong About. I'm Sarah Marshall and today we are talking about Lawrence
v. Texas with our friend Marcus McCann. Marcus is a writer and a lawyer he last was with us earlier this year to talk about George Michael, which was a wonderful sprawling two-parter that was about one man's life and also pop music and also part cruising and also queer culture and coming of age and so much more than that. That's kind of Marcus' thing because today we bring you the first of a two-parter where we are talking about Lawrence v. Texas a 2003 Supreme Court
decision that was of tremendous importance. And I want to remind you I guess said 2003 with regards to America's Sodomy Laws specifically not to put too fine a point on it whether you're allowed to have gay sex in your own home. So like some of our recent Supreme Court focused or adjacent episodes on the concept of originalism with Mackenzie Joy Brennan and also on the Jane Collective with
Moira Donigan. This is an episode about how talking about the law and its consequences is for all of us and is something that we must do or else we will see our lives and our rights decided by a bunch of people who are willing to sell their soul for an RV and if you must sell your soul
I'm sorry for something more interesting. So this is an episode about an important period in American history and important decision in queer history, legal history in America but it's also the kind of episode of your wrong about that you've been hearing all along with a very familiar cast of characters a police officer who sees things that no one else can apparently and to normal people just trying to have an ordinary day who stumble into an extraordinary legal battle
and about what that battle does to them. And that's about it. Welcome to part one. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you for being here. If you want to hear bonus episodes we have some on Patreon and Apple Plus subscriptions and we have one coming out later on this month about the mystery of Summerton Man. Something that has fascinated me for quite a while and if you're fascinated I hope you check it out and if you don't know what I'm
talking about check it out as well for do your own research call down a little rabbit hole. It's fun. Thank you so much for joining us again. Here's your episode. Welcome to your wrong about the podcast where every month is Pride Month and also where we talk about the Supreme Court lately it would appear. Why not? You know they're wacky and with me today is Marcus McCann who last visited us to tell us the saga of George Michael and is back and I'm so happy you're back. Thank you for
returning. Oh thank you for inviting me. What a treat. What kind of stuff do you do and who are you and what are you enjoying this summer? I am a lawyer and a writer and I'm the author of a book about Park Cruising which was the kind of entry way into talking about George Michael's life. This topic we're we're going to be discussing today has some things in common and some things that are different and I feel like it's going to have a different shape a little bit but I'm excited
to talk about it with you. I feel like we have entered the period of the show for me personally where you know we are drawing close to an American election and it feels like a lot is on the line. We are dealing at the moment with with the feeling of hope which is weird and scary for people.
We just did an episode. I don't know if you've heard it with McKenzie Brennan on basically like a brief history of the Supreme Court and why they are the way that they are and sort of the concept of a originalism and basically how that
can serve as this is my you know summary how originalism as a school of thought can sort of serve as a shorthand way of saying well you know I as someone who is appointed to a lifelong term as one of the nine judges who all of the legal questions of the country eventually get kicked
up to or not all of them but you know the final authority the final boss in these matters I am able to say that I'm taking an originalist view of the constitution based to some extent often on this idea that like I simply know I am the person I am the one
who knocks I have been appointed to this position and therefore how do we know that Thomas Jefferson would like this idea well we just do I just do I mean is that accurate to your understanding I think that's a great summary and there'll be a cameo from originalism in the episode
but yeah because it's election time I think it's worth saying look look the Supreme Court isn't going to save you yeah but it is a good good idea to rally around local candidates and you know putting progressives in the house and senate there are referendums going on right now
especially on abortion in florida and elsewhere and you know the democrats have announced a plan for Supreme Court reform I don't know if it's practical and they're actually trying to get it implemented or if they're pulling a FDR if the democrats are really trying to startle the
Supreme Court into getting in line there's like when there's a long history of a very Supreme Court reactionary court striking down progressive laws and the country has has responded in different ways with greater and lesser degrees of success and but I think they're instructive you know
people get the idea that these US Supreme Court decisions are are the like decisive points turning points in American history yeah because it is a comforting idea like wouldn't it be nice if just abortion was something that we just like one in the early 70s
and could never be taken away and like whoops too bad for that right but it's also like 20 years of really intense work by women's libres before 1973 is really the reason that we have had ropey weighed and it's the same with other important US Supreme Court cases like if you look at
something like brown view board of education it's not the thing it's not the reason that schools were desegregated it was the the tireless efforts of generations of civil rights activists that led to that and then the Supreme Court's up there at the top just playing this game of sort of codifying
it no you know knowing that there's not some some daddy in the sky that's going to to save us from some of the more scary government interventions that have been planned and will be planned again is it in the on the one hand you know I think that is scary but on the other hand it's freeing because it means that it's actually the work that happens on the ground and on the streets that that's what's decisive in history like that the the Supreme Court decisions are just
a piece of the puzzle and maybe not even the most significant piece. The case we're going to talk about today Lawrence v. Texas is a good example of how it's a it's a story about some tenacious lawyers but also about some tenacious non-loyers who saw the the value of challenging something that they thought was unfair. Love a tenacious non-loyer. Same. So do you have a do you have a a sense of Lawrence v. Texas what do you know about the case? Blank slate please please tell us.
Well great yeah in that case you're in for quite a ride so Lawrence v. Texas is the 2003 decision of the Supreme Court which struck down a a sawdemy law in Texas and by extension struck the criminal prohibitions that remained in in 13 other states. Wow. Lambda legal described it this way. The decisions sweeping language about gay people's equal right to liberty marks a new era of legal respect for the LGBT community.
Lawrence v. Texas is considered the most significant gay rights breakthrough of our time. The passive voice but you know yeah very impressive. One of the things that's interesting about that formulation is the organization is calling it a case about gay people's equal rights to liberty
which is kind of desaxing right this is a this is a case that's about primarily sex. Yes that's right and has a kinship with all of the other cases that are about bodily autonomy and the right to make fundamental personal decisions but that that sort of sphere of intimate decision making very often is about sex and sexual. Why don't you tell us the story from the beginning? This story begins in 1998 which is obviously fertile ground for this podcast. Big year for sex yeah.
Absolutely yeah so let me introduce you to to John Lawrence. He's a white working class kind of a guy. He's born in Texas in 1943 so he's in his 50s when we meet him in 1998 but just in terms of his background he joined the US Navy when he was 17. He was in the Navy for five years. He was even married briefly in the in the 1960s. He's also engaged in having relationships with men
throughout the 60s and 70s and he's also had some brushes with the law in the past. In 1967 in his 20s he's convicted of murder by automobile and he gets five years probation for that and he has two other driving well intoxicated charges one in 1978 and one in 1988. And I don't know it feels like the sort of social consensus around drunk driving has changed a bit from the 60s and 70s to now. I'm not saying that to defend John Lawrence's criminal record.
I'm just noting that that's part of his history. That is interesting though because I think of that as like one of the worst things that you can do. Okay so when we meet John in 1998 he's working as a medical technologist. He's got a long-term partner named Jose Garcia and in September of 1998 when we're searing in Jose is a way visiting family abroad. John and Jose by all accounts they're living a quiet life. They're not activists that they haven't been you know marching on
on gay rights or anything like that. John has an apartment that he's at this point lived in for 20 years since 1978 and it's in a very working-class neighborhood in East Houston and the apartment is called the Colorado Club. It's a lost church Michael song. Right yes exactly. It also sounds like it might be a mixed drink. My Colorado Club would have like gold leaf in it for sure. Oh yeah and maybe like an egg white. Yeah but it's great for hangovers. And then you should gold.
So you and I are opening a speak easy later. Yeah I'm fine with that. Yeah so he's living in the Colorado Club. He's on the second floor. It's one of those apartment buildings where there's no interior corridor. He has a staircase that goes directly from the exterior up to his second floor apartment. Well and like yeah that is you know apartment life is interesting you know because it's you know you've got neighbors that seems to be the main thing about it and I feel like this might
be relevant to our story. Well definitely the neighbors have different experiences of time. Let's put it that way. That there are sometimes late-night parties the police are called. The police are familiar with the Colorado Club. Let me put it that way. Okay. Yeah so that's John. I guess the first you're wrong about about his story is that Lawrence V Texas is not the name of the case. The name of the case is Lawrence at all V Texas. And that's because there's two there's two
accused persons. It's not just John. There's a second guy and his name is Tyrone Garner. alphabetically first and yet at all. Yeah totally right. Like I don't know how that happened. It's just like the two cases are going to get consolidated at some point. And while it's winding its way through the courts in Texas. And if that becomes the name. You know I think you learn as a kid that things happen in a more linear way than history bears out right. So this idea that you know
Roe v Wade fought its way to the Supreme Court. And the next day there was abortion for all. And really there were like a bunch of different cases that were all addressing the same issues. And it was just kind of and I think as Sarah Wettington herself has written like a kind of pure chance that Roe v Wade happened to be the one that made it their first you know and that it was really you know that history is the work of many. But we we like to
simplify it for the TV movie. Yeah I think that's often the way. I mean in in this case John and Tyrone know each other and they're going to be arrested on the same night. So it's not quite as much as the kind of popery approach that happened in when Roe v Wade went up to the Supreme Court in 1973. But Tyrone he is born in 1967 so he's 31 years old when we meet him. He's a black gay man. The youngest of 10 children from a Baptist family. And he's Texan. He grew up in Houston.
Most of the story of John and Tyrone we only have it because of this guy this law professor named Dale Carpenter who interviewed them after the case and and really like dug in on on things. So I want to send you what he has to say when he's describing Tyrone Garner. I'm going to send it to the same way if that's okay. Yeah that's great. And then I'm also sending you a photo of John and Tyrone to look at. Wonderful. Okay so the the quote says he was shy, passive and according to those who
knew him effeminate. He had a slightly bent hands on hips way of standing. When he smiled he tended to cover his teeth with his lips as if embarrassed by their appearance. And then yeah the picture I don't know yeah he looks like kind of in a way like he looks as H but he looks in a way much younger than than 31. Yeah I think he's like kind of handsome and haunted looking a little bit. In the photo I sent you it's during the corporate proceedings so he's wearing
hmm he's wearing what looks like his funeral suit. You know like the you can see that the tie isn't well done up. I know it's so weird that people like have to learn how to tie a tie at some point in their life you know I mean not me of course. And then suddenly it becomes imperative for stressful situations to get it right. Yeah but yeah it's like the the black suit and like slate gray shirt right yeah gray shirt and tie yeah and it looks pretty big on him too which I'm sure
is contributing. Actually it's ruffled at the sleeves in a way that makes it look like a judges robe. Yeah right right and I don't know maybe it's even borrowed. So yeah that's him and the other man in the photo is John Lawrence. Hmm who looks to me a little bit like Tim Waltz. Yeah. Yeah. Well Tim Waltz is like one of the five body types for for for men of a certain age you know and it's it's the one where you're like okay yeah I'm I'll talk to you what a cookout.
I'm not afraid that I'm gonna have to start hearing about guns. Right right exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which is you know obviously a broad stereotype but you know I'll take it. I like this photo of the two of them because they're I you can tell that they're sort of out of their element
but they don't look scared to me they look like they know they belong you know. Yeah well I don't know it's I don't know the context of this moment but they yeah they look like they're they're both watching and waiting to see sort of what happens next and that is being able to stay focused on proceedings implies hope about the outcome I feel like. Yeah yeah.
Okay so a little bit more about Tyrone. Tyrone graduated from high school he took a typing course hmm but he mostly works odd jobs in restaurants he clean houses till carpenter says he never owned a car and he never had his name on the lease of an apartment. So sort of a quiet easy going guy and like John he's got no involvement in the gay rights movement and crucially living lives that mean that they you know are just like getting by not bothering anyone and also can be crushed
like ants if the you know system feels like it. Yeah that's right and I mean I think especially Tyrone is living in a kind of precarious way he's often kind of couch surfing or living with family members some some of his siblings or with his with his parents and is kind of um reliant on the other people in his life in a way I mean we all are right but yeah like in a more in a way that kind of the myth of you know getting the good job getting ahead and not having to you know look to your
family for your support you know in in the non-American dream kind of a way. Yeah yeah and I think that's how so many people in America live and we are not able to talk about it in a way that's like normalizing. We either view it as something that is like a personal failing of somebody
or as like a point of pity. Yeah we live in a country especially you know lately where where we're really still aggressively selling people the myth that if you can't afford you know food, shelter, housing, a car, clothes sort of continuing to consume things and sure in them back
out the way the marketplace wants you to that like that's the bare minimum and yet you know it's really not you know the bare minimum is I don't know there is no bare minimum at this point that we can expect people to do individually you know because I think that's a dangerous idea especially as it gets harder and more expensive so yeah that kind of life is something we've culturally framed as having not succeeded at being American and yet that is what Americans statistically I think
are most likely to be doing is getting by one way or another. Right just getting by living in your car with that kind of thing yeah and certainly not having a lawyer you know. Well that's right I mean I think one of the interesting things about this story is that Tyrone Garner becomes a pivot point on an important constitutional question that has affected millions of people's lives in the end.
I told you a minute ago that John and Tyrone know each other so there's a third character in this story that I he's just in the first act but it's worth getting to know him a little bit. His name's Robert U-Banks and he's 40 in 1998 when we made him. He's known John for a while and in fact they used to be roommates very briefly and John said that he couldn't live with
with Robert anymore because he was too wild. He also is somebody who does odd jobs he's a cook he works as the staff person at a boarding house couch serves kind of sleeps right can and him and Tyrone are boyfriends Robert and Tyrone they live together sometimes in a shared apartment and sometimes in boarding houses and at least for one period they live together with Tyrone
Baptist family. By the mid 1990s Robert and Tyrone are coming over to John's house periodically to do odd jobs for him and clean his house and sometimes afterwards they'll go out for dinner or go out to the gay bar together. John lives in East Houston and it's like 20 miles from downtown it's like quite far. On the days they go they take the bus. Yeah I just feel
like that would take a very long time. And you're dependent on the bus right like the bus doesn't run all night and it in fact runs infrequently during large parts of the the time when it is in service. Yeah there's like a special flavor to missing the bus that only comes once an hour. Oh totally right. Yeah okay so this is where we join them the three of them in the Colorado
Club apartment in on September the 17th 1998. The day it's 90 degree weather there's some optimism because Tyrone and Robert have got an apartment together and John has offered to give him give the two of them some of his old furniture. So they've come to to do some chores to do some cleaning and to prepare the furniture to take with them they're going to take the furniture the next day or move the furniture into the next the their apartment together the next day. You know
the feeling on a moving day right. It's especially on a day that's 90 degrees it's like there's hope and optimism and it's also hard work and you're it's easy to get grumpy. Yeah right yeah. Yeah so there's like always there's I feel like there's always more trips than you anticipate you know. Totally one task you think you're going to take apart the bed and then you don't have the right tool and so then the next tool is getting the the next task is getting the tool
or what. Yeah yeah and it just kind of goes on and on until finally it ends and you collapse exhausted and it's where never to move again. Totally right or in this case at the end of their workday they go to a Tex-Mex restaurant called popacitos and you know the kind of place that's known for fajitas and mojitos and that kind of thing and they have dinner and drinks together and go back to John's apartment around 9 p.m. Just the normalist day you know. Yeah just
a thing that millions of Americans do. Moving day and big dinner you know I know it well. Totally and I don't know what they ate a drink I'm picturing the like fish bowl margarita. Yeah they're like you know there's somebody is walking by with like sizzling fajitas for sure. Smell. Americans were just crazy about fajitas in the late 90s we loved that there was a food that made a noise I think. Right it's still cooking and it's on our table.
Don't touch it's very hot. They don't know what's coming yet but they're sort of marching toward it in a way. Yeah these three men are going to continue drinking back at John's apartment and there's going to be a disagreement. So John and Tyrone are in the kitchen watching TV. There's two TVs in the apartment one in the kitchen and one in the living room. And Robert is in the living room by himself drinking straight vodka.
Robert. Right this is like a gun in the first act. Straight vodka in the second act. Yeah. And John eventually comes into the living room and says you got to knock that off and he takes away the bottle of vodka. This is what turns the evening kind of sour. I mean this is also the conditions under which rumors was recorded but you know. Right John is also continued to drink. I don't think he's been drinking at quite the same speed.
Tyrone has stopped drinking. He's not he's not continuing to drink. But they're having a disagreement at this point about how Tyrone and Robert are going to get home. So the bus isn't isn't running neither I mean they've all been drinking and none of them has a car. It's just so stressful to not have a car in a spread out city like I know that's not the point but I don't know it's worth noting. I mean it leads to conflict. It can lead to conflict as
as in this case where John says to Robert you're being belligerent. So you should leave but Tyrone if you want to sleep on the couch you can stay. Robert says no I should be allowed to stay and Tyrone should have to go. Not the Tyrone's done anything wrong really. But that's the kind of drunk logic right it is to be like yeah God so uncomfortable. I've been present in one of
in some of these evenings and you're just like oh my god. Totally right yeah and like tired and hot and stressed out about a move potentially like he can just imagine all of the yeah. The circumstances piling on top of the side. And inevitably somewhat dehydrated you know based on the day. And so at 1030 Robert grabs some change from the kitchen and he says he's going to go
down and get a soda from the vending machine. So it goes outside down the stairs and when he gets to the vending machines instead of putting his quarter in and like you can imagine the sort of vending machines glowing in the dark in the like exterior yes open-air common courtyard. Instead he uses the pay phone next to the vending machine and he calls in a complaint to the police. Wow
could have gotten a Pepsi right or what was in 1998 is it Pepsi clear? I don't remember when Pepsi clear when when their moment what I want to say it's earlier but like I yeah there's something about the iconography of a 90s vending machine that makes the scene like really snap
into focus for me because I remember I wasn't allowed to drink soda as a child but I remember that I would get out of my swimming lesson and I would like stare at these vending machines that they had like outside the changing room because they and I don't think they really do this
as much anymore or maybe I just don't notice but like the vending machine art of the 90s was like a beautiful high res image of like just a can of whatever soda surrounded by tons and tons of melting ice you know and like ice and water sort of like shooting up around it and it was like
covered in condensation and I was like I have never had a soda and maybe I never will but they look like the coldest thing and the most refreshing thing in the world and this beautiful beacon of soda beckoning towards you but it you know history is decided by what machine the quarter goes
into and it goes into the other one yeah that's right that's right and again this is like pure drunk logic right yeah so he calls in a report that there is a black man going crazy with a gun oh god honey like Robert isn't realizing that the barrier to him staying over isn't Tyrone
hmm it's his own bad behavior which he's doubling down on so at 10 to 11 the police radio um goes out the dispatcher says clear units beat 20 we have a weapons disturbance at the address the Colorado Club apartments and his apartment number and within minutes there are there's officers
on on this on the scene hmm the first officer who rises a guy named Joe Quentin he's a white guy with a shaved head like a kind of a swagger hmm come on without come on with end and so on yeah exactly he's like carpenter describes him as having like a notoriously bad attitude towards
citizens yikes like like in his interview with carpenter he brags about the size of his internal complaints file that kind of a guy do you love how like like people act as if like the public only turned against the police within the last 36 months or whatever and it's like no like it has been
a very clear part of our culture for a long time that the police are known for not liking civilians and we just have kind of known that and not worried about it on a large scale that much you know it's like you the fact that we know something and don't appear to be bothered by it
doesn't mean it isn't horrible when the police tell you something about about themselves and about their culture you should believe them yes Joe Quinn here's here's a quote from from Joe he says it's a survival mentality I don't care what I have to do they're not going to get me
I'm going to you know if it comes down to it if I have to run them over with a car with a baseball bat shoot them grab a knife and stab them whatever it takes I'm going to win yeah that's absolutely horrifying and it does remind me of something about the oj sims and trial I always found
interesting which is that you know we had this is not a big spoiler for people who are waiting for the rest of the the story from the show and and it will come someday don't worry but but one of the issues that came up in the trial which was that Mark Furman who is an LAPD detective had basically there was a series of tapes that came to light from a female screenwriter who he gave interviews to about what it was like to work for the LAPD and he told stories in which he claimed to have engaged
and just massive police brutality against black citizens and one of the questions you know inevitably about that was well was how much of that appears to have actually happened and like that area is interestingly inconclusive and what seems to have happened is that he dramatically exaggerated
the kinds of police brutality that he had engaged in in order to apparently like impress and flirt with this lady screenwriter and which I think makes the whole thing interestingly moot right where you're like well even if you haven't done half the horrible things that you're bragging about you
still think that you should brag about this kind of thing so it doesn't really matter you know like if if those are if that's how you think about your job then you know that's it's an equally urgent problem which I feel listening to that as well yeah it's that's brutal it says something about the kind of state of mind of of at least some police officers which is about kind of glorifying glorifying violence and control and you know I'm the one in charge right de-escalation is difficult
and that's why it's worth training people to do it and yeah you hear a quote like that and you think of kind of our whole culture of maybe escalating conflict whether it doesn't need to be any just so you can have something to dominate yeah that's right I mean Carpenter's analysis is that
Joe Quinn is a kind of very rigid hierarchical type of police officer not all police officers are like that but like that is systemic that is part of the structure of the police force right yeah and also that he doesn't respond well to challenges to his authority he's like kind of thin skined
about his masculinity which just you know it sounds like a delight just a joy to having class yeah yeah and so putting him into this situation is not a formula for de-escalation as you say yeah so he's the first one to arrive and by protocol that means he's going to be in charge of the scene
and there he finds standing about 50 feet away from the apartment rubber U-banks and rubber is crying and he's like kind of visibly upset and he repeats his claim that there's a black man in the apartment with a gun Joe Quinn officer Joe has his gun out and he starts barking orders at him like come here keep your hands where I can see them that sort of thing is this but like rubber is essentially paralyzed and can't move and so they're in this kind of like standoff for a minute until three more
officers arrive so now there's four police officers and they're able to pat down rubber make sure that he's not armed but they leave him kind of like a shaking and crying on the streets and they go up to the apartment and here's the police account so they say they try the knob and it's unlocked
and so they push the door at the front door all the way open and Joe Quinn shouts sheriff's department sheriff's department four officers fan out into the apartment the living room is empty they check one bedroom it's empty the dining area is empty and then in the kitchen they find
a fourth man named Ramon no one expects Ramon he's that he's joined them at some point and I I don't know when I don't think we've got a really great account he's not going to get charged with anything he's just going to be there for for the next little bit he's just there
throughout history unexpectedly you know just in the background having a can of pay it's it's what so he's a the police say they find him in the kitchen they yell at him don't move let me see your hands they order him onto his stomach you know on the floor they frisk him they handcuffed him
and they put him on the couch poor Ramon well exactly right um and then they go to the main bedroom this is the last room to be checked hmm the door is open but it's dark inside and they can see in from the light in the living room that's that's the light that they have another officer not Joe
is the first one to go in and then Joe joins him right after so the the the police are in the room where they find well Joe says Tyrone is on the bed on all fours completely naked and John is behind him and they're having anal sex mm-hmm the other officer says they're on the floor not on the bed
and in 2004 he's going to say that it was oral sex okay and later he's going to say he doesn't remember if it was oral sex or anal sex I you know I those are different neighborhoods of the body I really feel like you would know Joe says he ordered the two of them to to stop and for John to
step back but they refuse and the two continue to have sex defiantly in front of the officers for another minute or so hmm now look I really like to take people at their word and yet this really does not sound like the most plausible thing I've heard today what leads you to believe that
well I just think look I'm not an expert on any of this but I really just imagining myself into another life I doubt my ability to maintain interaction after the police have burst into my home and help me at gunpoint you know right so it involved if this if this version of the story is
true it would involve a John and Tyrone persisting in their sexual encounter after Joe has knocked down the door yelling sheriff's department and after he's yelled at Ramon to get on the floor frisked him handcuffed him put him on the couch mm-hmm and then after the first officer has even
gone into this bedroom that they've persisted to to continue having sex it's like it really doesn't make much sense does it well yeah and I feel like it it makes sense from from the perspective that like gay people and gay sex are not at all like normal police sex right where like when the
gay sex spell is upon you like you don't care if you're being held at gunpoint that's part of the agenda you have to abuse police officers by forcing them to look at what you're doing you know and just the idea that like normal human concepts of like fear and privacy wouldn't
cross a person's mind you know it's uh I don't know once you're in the realm of gay sex like all kind of mores or norms or what you should expect humans to behave like is at the window right yeah yeah and I mean it is you know it's this is I think a real theme and kind of
if you dehumanize someone who you see is criminal then none of their motives have to make sense and you can just in my opinion in this case make up the weirdest sounding stuff and not even have to justify why any human being could do it because you don't really see the people you're talking
about as human is what I think that reveals partly yeah yeah I mean if you think about it in terms of human motivations um Robert's gone to get a soda they haven't locked the front door yeah or close the door to the bedroom Ramon is over like right they're they're telling Ramon just sit tight we're
gonna go get it on and please don't tell Robert when he comes back we're just gonna go have a bit of anal yeah yeah and like not to get grossy about it also but they've just returned from a tax mixed restaurant and well yeah and a long day of like physical labor in a hot like in a hot
environment and yeah you know Sean is an older man like after a day like that like would you be interested in sex with your acquaintances maybe but like would it be sort of less physically taxing I don't know I feel like yeah right but the point is that it's like whatever
they were doing was to find out by the kind of day they'd had by like what would be most offensive to a policeman I guess in the situation I want to see and I wonder if there is I would like to think there is but like a nice porno based on the scenario I'm sure there is yes where they
defiantly do not stop yes when the when the police officers knock down the door yes and then they have no choice but to fall under the spell yeah I'm sure I'm sure that that's out there I don't know that it's branded as Lawrence v Texas specifically but there's an opportunity
out there free idea well you would need to do something to get our own life rights yeah but you know but people people would know we both doubt the story it's fair to say and also to clarify because I do feel like this is like from the beginning a very interesting term where it's like okay so
sodemy is a legal term I of course when I hear it think of the song from hair because I think there's a song in hair gets called sodemy but I mean what is sodemy as legally defined and like what some of the baggage that this word is is carrying with it by the late 90s yeah I mean if you go
all the way back most of most American sodemy laws have their lineage begin in England in 1533 under Henry VIII ironic totally if you think about of what he's doing he's trying to move power away from the church and into the states and so one of the things that he does is take a bunch of
things that used to be ecclesiastical crimes and he moves them into to becoming state crimes and one of them is what's what's known as the buggery act of 1533 oh Britain right the early American colonies adopt versions of it pretty quickly so the first one in the what will become the United
States is in the 1610 code in the colony of Virginia and in both the British law and the the colonial law and for some period after independence there's not a good definition of something and in fact it means different things to different people and different churches it's a category that
has typically meant anal sex and oral sex regardless of the gender of the participants also typically bestiality has been under that umbrella could sometimes be used to prosecute rape child abuse it's refined over time so it's kind of like how we use the term sex offender
today where it's like well which one is it though is it public urination or did they actually abuse someone like did someone you know what what is someone being accused of here and then it feels like the elasticity of that can be used you know dangerously right you can dial up or dial down the severity of it depending on what you're talking about and you can use what might be thought of as a relatively minor infraction to do pretty serious personal political harm to somebody
if that's your goal. Texas where we're going to be spending most of our our time today. I told you it's not my I'm not going to Texas. But so Texas is a republic from 1836 to 1846 and during that time there's no specific prohibition on Saudi me and nor is there a specific prohibition during the first 15 years of statehood so it gets its first Saudi me law in 1860. Because a very interesting time to be implementing laws about human behavior you know it's it's just like you know
it was a nice moment to choose a diversion I imagine. Right I mean these these kinds of laws are get picked up in periods of economic uncertainty or whether you know whenever we need a kind of punching bag and so maybe it's not surprising that 1860. But in the in the 19th century that there
is a push to strengthen various types of social prohibitions on sexual conduct. The Texas courts in 1867 in a case called Campbell conclude that Saudi Saudis too poorly defined and so we can't enforce it and so it's not for another another more than 10 years that the legislature fixes it toward the end of the 1870s. But after that the Texas courts do enforce it and in particular they prosecute a lot of consensual oral sex. And yeah and what does that look like and what kind of punishment
does that involve? Punishment is going to vary over depending on which historical period you're talking about with the Texas Saudi me law. Some of them have for some periods the minimum mandatory minimum is two years and some for some it's a mandatory minimum of five years and a ceiling of 15 years. Most of the time private acts of anal or oral sex among consenting adults behind closed doors are not prosecuted because how are the police going to know that it's happening?
Right it's it's you know from the beginning a weird thing to try and enforce or claim you can have on the books really. That's right and so most of the time when there is a prosecution it's because either someone was a young person or because they were involved forced sex or because there was because it was happening in a place that was not totally private either semi secluded and
you know like the idea that that people have private bedrooms and private houses that everyone could afford that it's like a really kind of 20th century idea and so you have lots of people living in boarding boarding houses and rooming houses in kind of congregate settings where privacy is is not total if I could put it that way. In 1925 there's a new penal code that's passed and they
inadvertently leave out Saudi me. It's it's it's blinked out of existence again but by the mid-1930s the Texas Court says no that must have been an accident because they couldn't have possibly intended to decriminalize Saudi me. Wow. What kind of language is there around the necessity for this law like what do we do we know what people are saying is going to happen if they don't
criminalize it? Yeah I mean these are these are laws that are designed to promote public morals and at this time what we're talking about now around the turn of the 20th century there is an uptick of these kind of like there's temperance movements and this kind of Christian good governance stuff where the goal is to create a quote unquote clean Christian population in in
the United States. Not at all like now. Right right we're going to see these parallels throughout the story of various things that look not all that different than what's going on now and I I do think that that's comforting because that period we get a new Saudi me law in 1943 which is explicit it says oral or anal sex regardless of gender,
bestiality and lute conduct with a minor those all qualify as as Saudi me. Yeah again it's you know well and that also feels like that you know serves to function to you know stigmatize all acts of deviant sex as you know equally dangerous regardless of whether they're abusive or involve a victim or are completely consensual in between adults you know puts them all on on a level playing field it seems like. Yeah that's right erasing difference and
gradations. One it's interesting because it makes consent irrelevant as a concept right it's like it's not and that seems to still be like very alive and purity culture today you know we're like the fact that it's deviant is the problem not the fact that it's dangerous so that there's a victim involved. I think that's right and you know this 1943 Saudi me law is actually going to get struck down by the Texas Supreme Court with the Texas Court of Appeals in 1970 because they say
if married couples want to engage in this activity why shouldn't they be allowed to. Which is such an interesting sort of legal quandary we've put ourselves in too of like well if you're married then everything is fine so how do we square that one. Right right I mean part of it is just this idea of a zone of marital privacy. The idea that heterosexual nuclear family is sancersized and that's the one area where the state should be reluctant to legislate. It's also this idea of marital privacy
is what animates the first of the contraception cases. Right. Prohibition on providing on selling contraceptives to married couples is unconstitutional for essentially the same the same reason we've been discussing and it's only a few years later in a case called Eisenstein Baird where that's broadened to include unmarried couples. After the Texas Court declares that the Saudi law is unconstitutional in 1970 we get a new law and that this is going
to be the law. This is our law. This is the one that that we're going to be following through the courts in 1998. It's known as the homosexual conduct law and also known as 2106. It's going to be the law that that John Lawrence is charged with. It defines deviate sexual intercourse as contact between the genitals and the mouth or anus. Yeah but it also so it only prohibits this conduct if you do it with somebody of the same sex. So straight people are excluded altogether and
for the for one of the first times in history lesbians sex is also criminalized. Oh equality. That's nice. Now at the same time this law is a major relaxation in terms of penalties. It imposes fines and no risk of jail time. There's just this moment in the 70s where they're prepared to introduce a new criminal code of fence a new homosexual conduct law but no jail time. So I'm sure that this wasn't the plan but I like to imagine that there would have been a meter made going around just
you know writing tickets for yeah public sex then then you can contest it. That's it that's it right like if it is true that when you go to challenge these tickets you're essentially going to traffic because it's such a minor crime. It does feel kind of like an ideological compromise where it's like we're going to keep stigmatizing this behavior but only as much as double parking. I mean it's quite odd and other states have more like in the 70s other states have more significant
criminal penalties for this kind of conduct. I will say also that there are efforts to repeal it almost immediately which is delightful. There's a state legislator named Craig Washington who tries to get it repealed in 1975 and there's repeal efforts in 1977 1979 in the 80s in 1993 like even in the period we're talking about there are repeal efforts in the legislature in 1997 1999 2000 so there are efforts at every stage of this this laws life to get it off the books.
But it gets passed and it so years on for a long time it sounds like. Yeah I mean it stopped me if you've heard this one before sometimes they have the votes in the house but they don't have the votes in the Senate the state Senate. Sometimes it's a matter of you know like when it's first introduced it's unpopular and passes it fails by a wide margin but at other times it's like really on a razor's edge. Yeah I mean what what effects do you think this law
passing and surviving for this long had on people generally? I think in a way you sort of had to be there and what I'd love to do is send you a quote from a guy named Rahul who is a long time gay activist in in Houston about the effect of this law so I'm gonna I'm sending it to you now.
Yeah okay every time you went to apply for a job somebody thought you're a criminal when you go home and you can't have the job and every time that you wanted to be a police officer they said no this lesbian violates Texas law when she goes home at night and she can't be a police officer so we went through that on adoptions we went through that on custody we went through that in probate court and we went through that with employment so 2106 was enforced every day but not as a
criminal statute. Yeah so I mean it was enforced as a criminal statute it was primarily used in cases where there was some other factor and especially in cases where it was cruising or some other public or semi public conduct it was very hard for the police to enforce it as a criminal statute for activity consensual activity among adults that took place behind closed doors. In a way I think that's what makes Lawrence V. Texas so interesting because it is a it is a case
about sex behind closed doors. Yeah so I think that I mean the you know the the parking ticket comparison for me I feel like you know like sure maybe it's they're both fines but that feels very simplistic on my part and very flippant as well because really it's like we're talking about how laws function as a tool used by people not to quote the joker here but living in a society right and how like like a very small minority of people actually work with the law enforcing it or you know
dealing with it directly but everybody else is able to use that those laws existing in the language of them as you know sort of language from like you said the daddy in the sky saying hey it's not just your opinion that you don't want to live next to gay people it's the laws opinion as well. Yeah it's essentially like a social license to discriminate. Right. It's not I mean it's not surprising that the US Supreme Court doesn't recognize that gay people are protected from discrimination
in employment until 2020. I think people underestimate how crushing it is to have aspects of your fundamental identity become a kind of political football or like punching bag or something that is that reply guys can debate you know I mean we're watching this in in particular around
around trans people right now and access to health care where the idea that they're that are very existence is something that is a political controversy or something that is quote reasonable people could disagree about unquote you know in all of these cases these gay rights
cases that go up in the 90s and then 2000s there are stinging dissents from Supreme Court justices that are saying in argument before the Supreme Court on on Lawrence v Texas one of the judges asks the lawyer well if we side with you it doesn't that mean that we're not allowed to
give preference to heterosexual kindergarten teachers and we're going to have to employ gay kindergarten teachers right and there's just like all of this underneath that question this sort of substratta of prejudice and assumptions and stigma and so yes we're very much living in that
world. During the course of the of the appeals process while this is going up there's very good reason why the lawyers are going to tell John and Tyrone not to contest the underlying conduct and so we are never going to get officer Joe with Joe Quinn under oath we don't get
we don't get testimony we don't get cross examination by like 2005 the two of them are strongly hinting that they were not engaged in sexual encounter and later on in the decade John Lawrence will out and out say no there was no sex that day yeah yeah but here's where there's stories
re reconnect and there's agreement between what the police officers account and and John's account which is they're questioned about the gun and obviously there's no gun there's no gun in a cursory search so the officers then go and get Robert U banks the guy who's like been left crying on the in the in the dark in the courtyard and bringing back in and so now they're all all four of
them sitting on the couch handcuffed and angry. God yeah right like the day has turned from from a pretty normal feeling day into something unusual for them yeah John Lawrence is really mad as you would imagine and he's like telling the police I can't believe you're in like why are
you in my house you're not allowed to be here he calls them stormtroopers he calls them the Gestapo he calls the jackboots these are very good older man insults yeah and I certainly agree with the substance and you can imagine that officer Joe doesn't take kindly to that lack of respect
uh meanwhile there's a there's a piece of art in the bedroom which is like a caricature drawing of James Dean with an exaggerated hard on nice so the police have seen that and we don't know the exact sequence of events but tyrants later gonna say the police are using derogatory slurs
to refer to them calling them the f word and calling them queers and I should say also tyrant tyrant is not mething off to the cops he's quiet he's following the the police's various orders surrounded by white men who can't shut up what a dream all right I think people in police
interactions tend to know what they're kind of how much kind of power or privilege they have to push back in a particular situation and maybe some white men overestimate that in the case of John Lawrence at this moment on the couch perhaps but it seems to me that tyrant garner is
painfully aware of you know the position that it potentially puts in that that said officer Quinn will later say that he remembers tyrant as being a naggy little b word so yeah with everyone on the couch the police conduct a more thorough search there's no gun
there's no illegal drugs they do find porn magazines it's the 90s and they go through them looking for child porn but there's no child porn and so Joe apparently calls a 24 hour DA telephone line yeah and asks the lawyer on duty can I charge these two guys with
preaching the homosexual conduct law if it takes place in private and he's told that he can so John and Tyrant are charged with that and Robert U banks is charged as you can imagine with making a false police report and Ramon is let go and that's the last that we hear of Ramon wow
all right happy trails Ramon uh Robert is charged with making a false police report which is about dishonesty right right and if we're can if we're reasonably sure that the police are are making up the story about catching John and Tyrant in the act then they're all they're making a false
it's not a police report to the police but they are falsely saying what happened and I just think it's like a parallel that you know you've got these two angry men who are looking for a way to cause havoc in John and Tyrant's life and they're successful yeah honestly yeah I think it
also shows that you know what what comes up I think often in stories and cases about how the law applies to marginalized groups is you know this idea that American law is constructed I think you know I think it's easy to see on the unspoken belief that technically it applies to everyone
but it literally only applies to people who you know the powers that be feel the need to keep in line yeah and I that feels really salient for this for this story Jo Quinn's pissed off and when he's pissed off he's gonna act out and now we're gonna see the
consequences of that Jo Quinn makes one more decision which is to take the men down to the station he doesn't need to do that like this is a extremely minor misdemeanor yeah punishable by a fine and instead he drags them out of the apartment John is so pissed off that he refuses to walk down
the concrete stairs and he's dragged down the stairs wow he refuses to put on shoes and he's taken there he's wearing it like a shirt and kind of underwear but he's not wearing pants he's not wearing pants and he's not wearing shoes and so he's dragged out of his apartment
and him and Tyrone are taken to the police station not really a fun place to leave them for this week but there's more to the story and we get some some good moments with John and Tyrone soon yeah yeah well and I'm looking forward to that and also just I don't know I love in a way that like
this is a story that actually that went somewhere that had you know that there were that it didn't August and after a couple days and become one of uncounted injustices that just befall people and that have no you know don't lead anywhere up bigger yeah that well yeah and it could just as
easily have never seen the light of day yeah and the reason that it does that it gets out is because of queer gossip which is delightful I can't wait to get back to everyone and that was part one thank you so much for joining us thank you for learning with us thank you
to Marcus McCann our guest today and author of part cruising what happens when we wander off the path thank you as always to Carolyn Kendrick for editing and for producing part two of this episode part two of this episode will be out in a week and we can't wait to share it with you see you next time so