From ’48 to ’68

The Decline of Universal Rights, and the Cultural Ascent of the Latex Left

Abstract

In the 1996 case Romer V. Evans, the United States Supreme Court struck down a Colorado state constitutional amendment that had prohibited municipalities and local governments within the state from enacting ordinances grant- ing special treatment to“homosexual persons.”The Court deemed the initiative to have been driven by “animus” toward an identifiable minority class, i.e., those characterized as having or engaging in “homosexual, lesbian, bisexual orientation, conduct, practices or relationships,” and thus ran afoul of the Equal Protection Clause found in the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.