Lars Eighner's Adult Homepage

Tyrone Garner

In 1998, Harris County (area around city of Houston) Sheriff's Deputies, entered the apartment of John Lawerence without a warrant, claiming they were responding to a report of an armed intruder, and found Lawrence and Tyrone Garner having consensual sex. The men were charged under section 21.06 of the Texas Penal Code, signed into law by Gov. Ann Richards, which made most forms of consensual, adult homosexual relations a class B misdemeanor.

Originally the men pled not guilty the charges,with a good chance of having the charges dismissed because of the irregularities in the circumstances of the arrest. However, attorneys for the Lambda Legal Defense Fund pursued the men to change their pleas to no contest so that their convictions could be used as a case to test the constitutionality of the (anti-)sodomy statute. The odd circumstances of the arrest have led some to speculate that events were set up to provide the test case. The facts of the case were never tried, but both parties stipulated to the version which does not include a setup.

Garner's name was second on the lawsuit which is now known as Lawrence v. Texas. Garner's given name is spelled without the final e which Garner preferred in the legal paperwork. On June 26, 2003 the Supreme Court overturned the (anti-)sodomy although it had upheld similar statutes as recently as 1986. The decision left no doubt that consensual, adult homosexual relations were legal throughout the United States.

Garner died of complications of meningitis which had deprived him of the use of his legs some time before his death. More than a month after his death, his family had been unable to raise the funds for a private burial and it is unclear whether they ever did.

"I don't really want to be a hero," Garner told The Houston Chronicle in 2004. "But I want to tell other gay people, 'Be who you are, and don't be afraid.'"