Social Issues Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Social Issues - Assignment ExampleIntroduction unrivalled of the key arguments of the civil rights together with Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender (LBGT) movements have for long advocated is the fact that the say has no rights in determining or getting itself involved in what happens between two accept adults in the privacy of their bedroom (Querbes, 2004). In these two cases, first in Georgia and then in Texas, police officers came into the citizens home and found him and his partner engaging in the act of consensual sodomy, which was interdict in these states. In the first case, even after the Georgia address and the Court of Appeal had rule in favor of the respondent, the compulsive Court overturned the decision and ruled that sodomy was not a fundamental right. In the second case, the autonomous Court basically ruled that they had no right to interrupt with what happened in the confines of the bedrooms of consenting adults (Querbes, 2004). 1 There were numerous societa l factors that led the US Supreme Court to abandon the rule of stare decisis. The stare decisis is a principle that basically holds that judges normally allow previously made decisions to stand. In the case of Lawrence v. Texas the Supreme Court saw need to on the whole rule in the opposite of the judgment in Bowers v. Hardwick due mainly to the switchs in attitudes, perceptions and views on homoeroticism in the country (Harms, 2011). In 1986 when the initial Bowers v. Hardwick decision was made the country had just come expose of the rather freewheeling permissive parliamentary law of the 1960s and 1970s and a decidedly conservative candor was more the norm (Hanon, 1999). It was therefore no wonder that more than half the states still had rules in puzzle that outlawed sodomy which was viewed as one of the practices that mevery felt made homoeroticism abhorrent. The American society then was much much stronger in intolerance with the homosexual lifestyle (Harms, 2011). For the court also by the time the second (Lawrence v. Texas) decision was taken there had been quite a change in the Supreme Court with nearly half (four out of nine) judges having either retired or died and been replaced, giving the Supreme Court a totally new outlook which made it easier for them to make such a radical change in decision. The majority in the Bowers v. The Hardwick decision was only 5-4 and one of the judges in the majority later changed his opinion and said he would have voted differently had he thought the matter was as substantial as it turned out to be (Harms, 2011). Historically mainstream United States Culture has always condemned homosexuality and any other type of deviant sexual practices hence the enactment of anti-sodomy laws in many US states up to the eighties. Gay men and women were seen and depicted as degenerates and sexual criminals and they, their practices, views and lifestyles by the medical profession, government and the mass media. In the early 198 0s, the Bowers v. Hardwick was therefore not an unpopular or an unusual decision at the time that it was made. 2 At the time of the Bowers v. A Hardwick case in 1986, the American publics attitude toward homosexuality was very conservative. In fact as late as 1988, only