This is a great investigative article the SPLC has done on the background of the gay hate movement, groups and personalities going back Anita Briant (whatever happened to her anyway?). Here's a piece of it, it's 4 pages long and well worth the read. Pass it around if you can.
On June 26, 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the convictions of two Texas men arrested for having sex. Writing for the majority in Lawrence v. Texas, Justice Anthony Kennedy said that the two men were "entitled to respect for their private lives." The state, he declared, "cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime."
The decision was unusually popular. A national survey found that 75% of Republicans and 88% of Democrats wanted to see sodomy laws struck down. But not everyone cheered.
"Six lawyers robed in black have magically discovered a right of privacy that includes sexual perversion," said Jan LaRue, chief counsel for Concerned Women for America. "This opens the door to bigamy, adult incest, polygamy and prostitution," said Ken Connor, president of the Family Research Council.
For anti-gay crusaders, who have been fighting gay rights for three decades, Lawrence was the most unsettling court decision since Roe v. Wade. Fundamentalist groups had filed 15 briefs supporting Texas' sodomy laws, only to see their arguments — that gay sex was a threat to public health and "traditional family values," and that gay people do not deserve equal rights — shot down.
Southern Poverty Law Center
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