All in a Day’s Work: New York Repeals, Reinstates Sodomy Law on the Same Day
The New York legislature on this day repealed and then promptly reinstated the state’s sodomy law- all on the same day.
The repeal was part of the legislatures adoption of the Model Penal Code, a comprehensive revision and reform of criminal codes that many states across the country adopted. The purpose of the Model Penal Code, developed after ten years of work by the America Law Institute, was to make state criminal codes rational and well-organized, and to eliminate law reflecting out-of-date moral standards. The Model Penal Code, for example, was the first authoritative call for a liberalization of state criminal abortion laws.
Because of protests from moralists, New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller was convinced that repeal of the sodomy law would cause the entire Model Penal Code to be defeated. Consequently, he persuaded legislators to simultaneously enact a new sodomy law along with the Model Penal Code.
On June 30, 1986, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of anti-sodomy laws in Bowers v. Hardwick. Seventeen years later, in a dramatic reversal on June 26, 2003, the court declared anti-sodomy laws unconstitutional in Lawrence v. Texas.
Learn more about the long history of the New York sodomy law here.
Read: Dale Carpenter, Flagrant Conduct: The Story of Lawrence v. Texas: How a Bedroom Arrest Decriminalized Gay Americans (2012)
Learn more about the sodomy cases: David A. J. Richards, The Sodomy Cases: Bowers v. Hardwick and Lawrence v. Texas (2009)