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Gale Encyclopedia of American Law Volume 12 P4 fully illuminates today's leading cases, major statutes, legal terms and concepts, notable persons involved with the law, important documents and more. Legal issues are fully discussed in easy-to-understand language, including such high-profile topics as the Americans with Disabilities Act, capital punishment, domestic violence, gay and lesbian rights, physician-assisted suicide and thousands more. | MILESTONES IN THE LAW LAWRENCE V. TEXAS 17 application of the statute to the following events There are three people in a room Alice Bob and Cathy. Bob approaches Alice and with her consent engages with her in several varieties of deviate sexual intercourse the conduct at issue here. Bob then leaves the room. Cathy approaches Alice and with her consent engages with her in several kinds of deviate sexual intercourse. Cathy is promptly arrested for violating section 21.06. I have indulged in this tableau to demonstrate one important point one person simply committed a sex act while another committed a crime. While the acts were exactly the same the gender of the actors was different and it was this difference alone that determined the criminal nature of the conduct. In other words because he is a man Bob committed no crime and may freely indulge his predilection for deviate sexual intercourse but because she is a woman Cathy is a criminal. Thus women are treated differently in this scenario and therefore are discriminated against by the explicit gender-based prohibition of section 21.06 and to suggest otherwise is disingenuous at best.2 It is also no answer to insist that because the statute also subjects men to similar discrimination in different scenarios somehow the discrimination here is rendered constitutionally acceptable. Discrimination in one instance is not cured by additional discrimination in another. Moreover section 21.06 grew out of the revision of the penal code in 1973.3 In the new statute two standards were created demarcated by the sex of the actors deviate sexual intercourse when performed by a man and a woman would henceforth be legal but deviate sexual intercourse performed by two men or two women would remain illegal. Thus after 1974 the distinction between legal and illegal conduct was clearly not the act but rather the sex of one of the participants. 2The characteristic injury of gender discrimination lies not in the failure to be treated on a
