Before Lawrence v. Texas: The Making of a Queer Social Movement by Wesley G. Phelps (review)

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• Before Lawrence v. Texas: The Making of a Queer Social Movement by Wesley G. Phelps
• La Shonda Mims

Before Lawrence v. Texas: The Making of a Queer Social Movement. By Wesley G. Phelps. ( Austin: University of Texas Press, 2023. Pp. 292. Notes, index, photos.)

In popular opinion, social movements are often defined by major events punctuating a tidy timeline. Yet historians know that an analysis of the long game is where we uncover the true significance of a major achievement. Before Lawrence v. Texas is an exhaustively researched legal and political analysis to which Wesley Phelps applies the methodology of social history. Through an investigation of the complex legislative maneuvering that defined Lawrence v. Texas, which is sometimes viewed as a spontaneous achievement in the history of LGBTQ rights, Phelps shows that over three decades urban activists fought less successful cases that influenced the seismic Lawrence decision.

From the 1860 sodomy law in Texas, Phelps travels the winding legal road to the Lawrence decision, demonstrating the importance of "ordinary citizens" to a "thriving democracy." This book centers on Texas cities because that is where political action and community organizing happens. When the Texas penal code was revised starting in 1965, it resulted in the 1974 adoption of Section 21.06, which criminalized same-sex sexual activity. Phelps argues that this "homosexual conduct law served as a rationale for denying queer Texans the rights and freedoms of first-class citizenship." (p. 81) The results were devastating. For example, when two lesbians joined their families together in Garland, Texas, including children from prior marriages, they quickly faced a brutal custody case. In 1975, one of the women lost custody of her biological children because of 21.06. Placing individual stories like this in the larger narrative of Texas's legal history is imperative in order to understand how daily queer life exposed a culture of inequality in the state.

At the heart of the book, Phelps focuses on queer resistance in the 1970s and 1980s. Phelps asserts that cases like Baker v. Wade in 1985 represented a "turning point" because they created a national storyline for the legislative fight against sodomy laws. (p. 12) Even though Baker's claims to privacy rights were unsuccessful, and the plaintiffs were "battle worn and scarred" at the end, Phelps argues that the case was "critical" [End Page 365] to initiating the "legal strategy" necessary to overturn the state's sodomy statute. (pp. 160-161) Following the Baker decision, two cases brought by women plaintiffs highlight the diversity of those arguing against the state's sodomy laws. As a lesbian woman of color, Linda Morales's fight exposed discrimination within predominately white lesbian and gay activist communities. By the late twentieth century as activists prepared again to challenge the sodomy law through federal channels, Phelps notes that they "could rely on a wealth of case history, legal precedent, and organizational momentum in their efforts." (p. 210)

Drawing a direct line from Lawrence to the Obergefell marriage equality decision, Phelps details Justice Kennedy's reliance on the Lawrence decision to extend equality beyond sexual intimacy to marriage rights. The book's conclusion brings forward the state of queer equality and protections in the post-Dobbs world, while acknowledging the importance of studying the queer past, as states like Texas are actively working to shut down its preservation and teaching. At times the human characters are lost, as Phelps details the inner workings of legal wrangling, although excellent images from his archival research enliven the narrative. Certainly, this book offers much to future researchers who should build on the issues of race and the queer past in Texas. In this important study, Phelps establishes that failures must be part of the larger narrative of queer history. It is vital to examine these struggles in the urban spaces of the South where daily fights reach across decades to end in transformative change.

La Shonda Mims University of Birmingham (United Kingdom) Copyright © 2022 The Texas State Historical Association ...