Tales from the front lines: a look at how sodomy laws were used to victimize one lesbian and one gay man - Cover Story

Robin Shahar says she's happy working as a senior assistant city attorney in Atlanta -- but it's not the job she wanted. Indeed, criminal law was Shahar's interest when she graduated from law school in 1991. And everything seemed on track: Shahar was offered a staff attorney position in the office of Georgia attorney general Michael Bowers (the same Bowers who defended Georgia's sodomy law in Bowers v. Hardwick). Before starting her new job, however, Shahar and her partner, Fran, would be celebrating a commitment ceremony. Upon learning of the impending union, Bowers withdrew the job offer. Because Shahar is a lesbian, he reasoned, the public would perceive her as unwilling to enforce the sodomy law.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed suit in federal court on Shahar's behalf, alleging that Bowers had violated her constitutional right to equal protection as wen as her freedom of intimate association and religion under the First Amendment. After losing a summary judgment ruling before the district court, Shahar won a landmark gay rights ruling on appeal in 1995 when a three-judge panel of the U.S. court of appeals for the 11th circuit ruled that Shahar's relationship with her partner was protected under the fundamental right of intimate association. Unfortunately, that ruling was overturned by the full court in 1997. Shahar's lawyers tried unsuccessfully to have the case reconsidered after Bowers publicly admitted to a ten-year affair with a woman on his staff -- a violation of the Georgia adultery statute. (At the time, Bowers had resigned to campaign for the 1998 Republication gubernatorial nomination, a bid he lost.)

After seven years as a public litigant, Shahar has no regrets. I became a public figure here in Georgia, and that can be exhausting," she says. "But we were right to fight this. And even when the end result isn't a win, there can be victories along the way. And I think there's great value in that."

COPYRIGHT 1998 Liberation Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group