Supreme Court to strike a blow for Texan gays

It seemed just a police beat oddity in a big American city. Neighbours called the cops to a Houston home where they said an armed man was running amok. The police burst in, only to find two men having sex. Now, however, the episode is set to bring about one of the biggest legal advances for gay rights in decades.

That night in 1998 the law could have beaten a discreet retreat and left the couple to their own devices. But John Lawrence and Tyron Garner were charged under Texas anti-sodomy laws, barring oral or anal sex between people of the same sex and fined $200 (£125) apiece.

The two men appealed, and last week the case found its way to the highest court in the land. And as they heard oral arguments before a packed audience, a majority of the nine Supreme Court justices gave every sign they agreed with their case.

If so, their judgment later this year will not only annul such laws in Texas and a dozen other US states – mostly in the south – but deliver a huge symbolic endorsement of the status of gays in America. It also would be a remarkable reversal by the Supreme Court, which as recently as 1986 upheld a similar law in Georgia.

In fact such laws are rarely enforced even in the 13 states that still have them on their statute books. But civil rights advocates claim they are routinely used by some employers to keep gays and lesbians out of jobs and by the courts to turn down child custody or adoption requests by gay couples.

Of the nine justices, only Chief Justice William Rehnquist and the court's conservative standard-bearer Antonin Scalia sided with Charles Rosenthal, district attorney for Houston's Harris County, and his argument that "Texas has the right to set moral standards". Mr Rosenthal added that it "cannot be correct" that "physical homosexual intimacy is now part of the fabric of American values". But last Wednesday such arguments sounded terribly dated.

For the remaining justices, two considerations seemed to be leading them towards striking down the Texas state law. The narrow one is that it violates an individual's right to privacy – that the state has no business in people's bedrooms, regulating their most intimate behaviour.

That stance is backed by mainstream civil libertarian groups, but gay rights groups seek a wider victory. They are hoping that the justices will deem the law to be in violation of the Constitution's guarantee of equal rights for all. That in turn would open the way for challenges over same-sex marriages, illegal in every state except Vermont, and most other forms of discrimination. In which case, a routine police call will enter the annals of American social history.