As I watch the sun go down, watching the world fade away, all I want to do is kiss you goodbye

I am behind in my reading, and so it was with sadness that today that I learned that Tyrone Garner passed away this past September 11. You might not know who Tyrone was, but he is important to every gay American.

In 1998, Tyrone was arrested with his friend, John G. Lawrence, as they were engaged in consensual sex. In 1998 in Texas, it was still illegal for 2 men to engage in consensual sex in the privacy of their own bedroom. A neighbor, who had not only been accused of harassing these two men in the past, had called in a false report of a gunman in the apartment complex, thus allowing the Harris County Sheriff’s deputy to walk into Mr. Lawrence’s unlocked apartment, thus catching the two men in flagrante in the bedroom (This fuckwad would later spent 15 days in jail for pleading guilty to the false report)

Mr. Lawrence and Mr. Garner pled no contest in Texas court, and were given $125 fines each and could have paid the fine and gone on their way.

Instead of going into obscurity, these men did what so many wouldn’t do in the past. They decided to fight it. They decided that the anti-homosexual sodomy laws of Texas were illegal and worth their fight. So they fought. They fought at the Texas Criminal Court, Texas Fourteenth Court of Appeals, the full Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, and then the U.S. Supreme Court.

On June 26, 2003, the U.S. Supreme court found in favor of Messrs. Lawrence and Garner. Only 227 years after we were told “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men were created equal” by the U.S. Declaration of Independence, 140 years after Mr. Lincoln told us that our nation was “dedicated to the proposition that all men were created equal,” and 137 years after the Fourteenth Amendment to the U. S. Constitution told us that no State could make a law that could “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws,” could those of us that are gay Americans truly feel free.

I remember where I was when I heard the news: in a car driving to my friend’s house listening to NPR, and I cried. And not because I was free to have sex with another man. Pennsylvania had their law struck down in 1980 when I was 10 years old, so I didn’t have to think about it. I cried because now the United States of America had finally realized that were all are equal, at least in one more important way, one way that heterosexuals hadn’t had to worry about ever, not really. You can’t have gay sex without it being sodomy (usually defined as any non-coital sexual act.)

I broke an anti-sodomy law once, Arkansas’ law. My ex was from there, and we visited his family there in 1993, and though I didn’t know it at the time, I was breaking the law when we did it in his mother’s shower, guest bedroom and basement. The Arkansas anti-sodomy law wasn’t overturned until a state case in 2001.

Along with John G. Lawrence, Tyrone Garner stood up in the face of on-going hatred, in the face of over 200 years of ignorance, and in the face of impossible odds, when he really didn’t need to put himself out there, and he stood up for all of us who couldn’t, didn’t or wouldn’t, and he helped us.

So now I will say Thank You Mr. Garner. You are brave, you are heroic and you are important. May your legacy lead us all into actual equality, but without you we wouldn’t be closer to it. Tyrone, may you Rest in Peace.