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...... In fact, it was not until 2003 that such laws were finally deemed illegal, again by a court decision. In the case of Lawrence v. Texas, the Texas laws against sodomy were stricken down as to invasive of privacy, which was protected by the Fourteenth Amendment (Head par. 21). Until this point, many states had laws that limited conduct between people of the same sex. These were often viewed as in the same category of laws that protected minors from sexual abuse. It should also be noted that laws limiting sexual interaction between people of different races were considered as morally important at a fairly recent time in this countrys history
One of the reasons that gay rights took so much longer to achieveand in fact they still are not fully protected, and do not have the same rights as other individualsis because the issue was not as clear cut as it is for gender, race, and other areas of protection (Stanford). One of the main causes behind this is that for a long time, it was assumed that homosexuality was actually a type of mental illness, and that engaging in homosexual behavior would be detrimental to the participants

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