58 N.Y.2d 936 (1983)

The New York Court of Appeals held unconstitutional the criminal prohibition on loitering “in a public place for the purpose of engaging, or soliciting another person to engage, in deviate sexual intercourse or other sexual behavior of a deviate nature.” The Court viewed this case as a companion to the consensual sodomy statute it had previously struck in Onofre.

Read More

41 N.Y.2d 1018 (1977)

Though the issue was non-reviewable, attorney E. Carrington Boggan raised “novel and difficult constitutional questions . . . of conduct traditionally treated as criminal and yet, when committed privately and circumspectly, suggestive of an unwarranted interference by the State with the lately recognized and inchoate ‘penumbral’ right of privacy.”

Read More

539 U.S. 558 (2003)

The U.S. Supreme Court overturned its 1986’s Bowers v. Hardwick decision and ruled that “[t]he state cannot demean their [homosexuals’] existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime.”

Read More