Sodomy Laws
In 2002, the Puerto Rico Supreme Court ruled that the commonwealth's ban on sodomy was not unconstitutional. In 2003, however, the U.S. Supreme Court declared unconstitutional all state and territorial statutes penalizing consensual sodomy, including Puerto Rico's, in the case Lawrence v. Texas.
This prompted opponents of the anti-gay law to focus their efforts to persuade lawmakers the change the law, which they did in 2005. Same-sex relations between consenting adults were officially legalized with the approval of the new Penal Code in 2005.
Read more about this topic: LGBT Rights In Puerto Rico
Famous quotes containing the words sodomy and/or laws:
“I see not much difference between ourselves & the Turks, save that we have foreskins and they none, that they have long dresses and we short, and that we talk much and they little. In England the vices in fashion are whoring & drinking, in Turkey, sodomy and smoking.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“The life of a good man will hardly improve us more than the life of a freebooter, for the inevitable laws appear as plainly in the infringement as in the observance, and our lives are sustained by a nearly equal expense of virtue of some kind. The decaying tree, while yet it lives, demands sun, wind, and rain no less than the green one. It secretes sap and performs the functions of health. If we choose, we may study the alburnum only. The gnarled stump has as tender a bud as the sapling.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)