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Now, as the court is preparing hear another high-stakes challenge to sodomy laws, even the most conservative justices are likely to show far more respect for the legal arguments put forth by those who believe such laws are unconstitutional. For in the years between Bowers and Lawrence v. Texas, which the court is scheduled to hear March 26 and decide by late June, the justices have spent an unprecedented amount of time with out gay men and lesbians and have even faced speculation about the sexual orientation of one of their own, David Souter.
“Souter had barely left the podium in the press room of the White House before Republican Party officials were raising ‘the 50-year-old bachelor thing,’ which was widely interpreted as a way of introducing speculation that Souter is homosexual,” Margaret Carlson wrote in Time magazine in August 1990, shortly after Souter’s nomination.
