By Patrick J. Dooley
Arizona Daily Wildcat
February 18, 1998

Rehnquist put gays, lesbians under siege

To the Editor:

Recently the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court William Rehnquist spoke before an audience at the University of Arizona School of Law. I was among a small group of people protesting his arrival. A friend asked me, "Don't you have any respect for his position? What are you protesting anyway?" I answered that I have nothing but respect for his position, but I could not respect the man.

My response to the next question needs some background. In 1986 the Supreme Court ruled on a case called Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186. Police in Georgia arrived at the house of a Michael Hardwick. They were there on business unrelated to the crime for which he was charged. They inadvertently found him in bed with another man. He was arrested for violating Georgia's sodomy statute. In the opinion of the court held that there was no Constitutional right to privacy in regards to homosexual sodomy and that the police action was justified. According to the United States Supreme Court, the individual states have the legal right to arrest me for the most intimate expressions of love for my mate behind the closed doors of my home, and Chief Justice Rehnquist supported that opinion.

I learned of this decision on July 3 that year. On the fourth I didn't go with my friends to watch the fireworks and celebrate. I looked out my window at the flag I so proudly displayed by the front door a few days before and cried. When I saw that flag waving, and knew that it was supposed to stand for liberty and justice for all, I knew that in reality it did not. I was born on the soil of the United States, pay taxes, am law abiding, (with the exception of the Arizona equivalent to the statute in question), and according to the law am a citizen of this country. Yet I do not share in the Constitutional protection of privacy afforded my heterosexual peers. I am not free.

However, I have hope for the future. I hope that one day I will be able to proudly hold my head up on the Fourth of July, salute the flag, and know that she waves for all of her citizens equally. Until that day, my gay and lesbian brothers and sisters and I are under siege. Until the day the Chief Justice releases us from the oppression he has permitted the states to thrust upon us, I will protest his every arrival.

Patrick J. Dooley
first-year law student