A Bedroom of One's Own: Morality and Sexual Privacy after Lawrence v. Texas

Abstract

If Justice Scalia's dire prediction in Lawrence v. Texas comes true, Texas, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Kansas, and Colorado may no longer be able to forbid the sale of vibrators, dildos, and other "sex toys" within their borders. These states have enacted legislation to inhibit activity in the sex toys market. Under the now discredited Bowers v. Hardwick, which upheld criminalizing same-sex sodomy, the government was free to label the sale of sex toys as a "crime" by prosecuting it under the banner of morality. As Justice Scalia laments, however, Lawrence's overruling of Bowers may change all that by restricting the scope of permissible government intrusion in the bedroom.