In 1998, Harris County sheriff’s deputies arrested John Lawrence and Tyron Garner near Houston for allegedly violating the state sodomy statute. The two working-class men, who were not activists and lived very private lives, quickly became the public faces of one final effort to eradicate sodomy laws across the country. Lawrence and Garner pursued a constitutional challenge to the law all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Would this be the final victory over the state sodomy law?

Queering the Lone Star State is funded in part by a grant from Humanities Texas, the state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Additional support is provided by the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, Willis Library’s Special Collections Division, and the departments of history and media arts at the University of North Texas. You can find more episodes, a selection of our sources, and a teaching guide at our website, https://www.queeringthelonestarstate.com/. The series is produced and edited by Sarah Lyngholm. Clare Robnett and Rodrigo Triana are our research assistants. Morgan Reese designed our website. Our theme music was composed by Nicolas Neidhardt.

Additional music for this episode was composed by Edmund J. King and Citokid.

In 1998, Harris County sheriff’s deputies arrested John Lawrence and Tyron Garner near Houston for allegedly violating the state sodomy statute. The two working-class men, who were not activists and lived very private lives, quickly became the public faces of one final effort to eradicate sodomy laws across the country. Lawrence and Garner pursued a constitutional challenge to the law all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Would this be the final victory over the state sodomy law?

Queering the Lone Star State is funded in part by a grant from Humanities Texas, the state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Additional support is provided by the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, Willis Library’s Special Collections Division, and the departments of history and media arts at the University of North Texas. You can find more episodes, a selection of our sources, and a teaching guide at our website, https://www.queeringthelonestarstate.com/. The series is produced and edited by Sarah Lyngholm. Clare Robnett and Rodrigo Triana are our research assistants. Morgan Reese designed our website. Our theme music was composed by Nicolas Neidhardt.

Audio of Joseph Quinn provided courtesy of Radiolab/WNYC Studios.

Additional music for this episode was composed by Christian Larssen and Jon Hansson.

In 1989, five plaintiffs launched a new legal challenge to the Texas sodomy law, but this time they argued that the law violated the state constitution. Texas district and appellate courts agreed and struck down the sodomy statute for violating state constitutional guarantees of privacy and equality. But then the case reached the Texas Supreme Court. Would the state’s highest civil court agree that the sodomy law violated the state constitution?

Queering the Lone Star State is funded in part by a grant from Humanities Texas, the state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Additional support is provided by the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, Willis Library’s Special Collections Division, and the departments of history and media arts at the University of North Texas. You can find more episodes, a selection of our sources, and a teaching guide at our website, https://www.queeringthelonestarstate.com/. The series is produced and edited by Sarah Lyngholm. Clare Robnett and Rodrigo Triana are our research assistants. Morgan Reese designed our website. Our theme music was composed by Nicolas Neidhardt.

KXAS-NBC 5 audio provided courtesy of the University of North Texas Libraries Special Collections.

Additional music in this episode was composed by Citokid, Christian Larssen, Jon Hansson, and Johannes Huppertz.