Author(s): Dale Carpenter

POLITICS & HISTORY

Were it not all so real and historically consequential, this book would read like a Grisham novel. But the painful reality is that American sodomy laws were hardly fiction; and were, in fact, used to prosecute gays and lesbians for centuries until they were declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. In a book that promises to draw in the same audience which made Randy Shilts's And the Band Played On a bestseller, Carpenter chronicles the story of Lawrence v. Texas, a case that invalidated a law that forbade gay Americans to have sex within the confines of their own bedroom. He takes us from the time of the alleged sexual encounter; to the arrest (in which the police showed up with an arsenal of guns and literally dragged the defendants off to jail); to a heroic but then-closeted law clerk who tipped off Lane Lewis, a bartender/gay rights activist; and then to Ruth Harlow, a gay litigator who brilliantly masterminded the defense all the way to the Supreme Court. This is a masterfully told work of legal detection that brims with newsworthy surprises, not least the fact that the defendants were arrested despite the fact that they never had sex. It is the first book to comprehensively examine the case whose impact has been compared to Brown v. Board and Roe v. Wade.