Plaintiff in landmark gay rights case dies

HOUSTON, Sept. 15 (UPI) -- The plaintiff in a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case striking down all laws making sex between gay adults a crime has died in a Houston hospital.

Tyron Garner, 39, was suffering from meningitis in the months preceding his death but the exact cause of death is unclear at this time, the Los Angeles Times reports.

Garner was arrested in 1998 along with John Geddes Lawrence for violation of a Texas law prohibiting sodomy.

The case would have ended there had the two not been approached by attorneys offering to represent them for free to test the anti-sodomy statute.

In 1986 the Supreme Court had upheld Georgia's sodomy law in the case of Bowers vs. Hardwick and it was questionable whether the court would reverse itself so soon after that decision.

But it did on June 26, 2003, declaring that gays have a right to privacy and dignity in their personal lives.

The high court's 6-3 ruling struck down laws in Texas and 12 other states that outlawed sex between gay people, overturning the criminal convictions of Garner and Lawrence.