Page:Jegley v. Picado, 349 Ark. 600 (2002).pdf/6

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14-122 as applied to private, consensual, noncommercial, same-sex sodomy.

1. CONSTITUTIONAL LAW—EQUAL PROTECTION—PURPOSE.—The guarantee of equal protection serves to protect minorities from discriminatory treatment at the hands of the majority; its purpose is not to protect traditional values and practices, but to call into question such values and practices when they operate to burden disadvantaged minorities.
2. CONSTITUTIONAL LAW—EQUAL PROTECTION—INTERMEDIATE LEVEL OF SCRUTINY.—A statute violates the federal Equal Protection Clause on the basis of sex where it provides dissimilar treatment for men and women who are similarly situated; for classifications based upon gender, an intermediate level of scrutiny is in order; to withstand an intermediate level of scrutiny, classifications by gender must serve important governmental objectives and be substantially related to achievement of those objectives.
3. CONSTITUTIONAL LAW—EQUAL PROTECTION—RATIONAL-BASIS TEST.—Although homosexual citizens do not constitute a protected class, they are a separate and identifiable class for purposes of equal-protection analysis; under equal-protection analysis, any legislation that distinguishes between two groups of people must be rationally related to a legitimate governmental purpose; the rational-basis test provides that the party challenging a statute's constitutionality has the burden of proving that the act lacks a rational relationship to a legitimate objective of the legislature under any reasonably conceivable set of facts; it is not the supreme court's role to discover the actual basis for the legislation; the supreme court merely considers whether there is any rational basis that demonstrates the possibility of a deliberate nexus with state objectives so that the legislation is not the product of arbitrary and capricious government purposes; if the supreme court determines that any rational basis exists, the statute will withstand constitutional challenge.
4. CONSTITUTIONAL LAW—EQUAL PROTECTION—LIMITATIONS ON POLICE POWER.—The police power is very broad and comprehensive and embraces maintenance of good order, quiet of the community, and the preservation of public morals; the legislature may, within constitutional limitations, prohibit all things hurtful to the comfort, safety, and welfare of the people; however; to justify the State in interposing its authority in behalf of the public, it must appear, first, that the interests of the public require such interference and, second, that the means are reasonably necessary for the