Constitutional Law——Substantive Due Process and the Not-So Fundamental Right to Sexual Orientation——Lawrence v. Texas, 123 S. Ct. 2472 (2003)

The Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution serves not only as a guarantee of procedural propriety, but also as a source of substantive individual rights.  Although the Supreme Court of the United States has repeatedly employed “”substantive due process”” to prevent government intrusion into the most intimate aspects of daily life, the Court has refused to extend its protection to private homosexual intimacy.  In Lawrence v. Texas, the Supreme Court considered whether a Texas statute criminalizing same-sex sodomy violated the right to liberty and privacy that the Due Process Clause protects.  The Court struck down the statute, holding that the state may not interfere with homosexual intimacy in the privacy of one’’s home. . . .