WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court struck down a ban on gay sex Thursday, ruling that the law was an unconstitutional violation of privacy.

The 6-3 ruling reverses course from a ruling 17 years ago that states could punish homosexuals for what such laws historically called deviant sex.

The case is a major reexamination of the rights and acceptance of gay people in the United States. More broadly, it also tests a state's ability to classify as a crime what goes on behind the closed bedroom doors of consenting adults.

Thursday's ruling invalidated a Texas law against "deviate sexual intercourse with another individual of the same sex."

Defending that law, Texas officials said that it promoted the institutions of marriage and family, and argued that communities have the right to choose their ownis whether the majority may use the power of the State to enforce these views on the whole society through operation of the criminal law."

Uh oh. Kennedy's Opinion of the Court quotes and reaffirms the mysterious passage in Casey:

These matters, involving the most intimate and personal choices a person may make in a lifetime, choices central to personal dignity and autonomy, are central to the liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life. Beliefs about these matters could not define the attributes of personhood were they formed under the compulsion of the State.

Upholding laws that existed from the start of the country should