Today In History, 1982: Michael Hardwick Arrested

Jim Burroway

August 3rd, 2016

Michael Hardwick

Michael Hardwick

It all started in July, when Michael Hardwick threw a beer bottle into a trash can outside of the Cove, an Atlanta gay bar where he worked. Atlanta police officer Keith Torick, who had been subject to numerous citizen complaints for his abusive and legally-questionable tactics, cited Hardwick for public drinking. That kicked off a long comedy of errors, beginning with Torick’s writing the wrong date on which Hardwick was to appear in court. When Hardwick failed to appear because of the error, Torick got a warrant for Hardwick’s arrest. Soon after, Hardwick went the courthouse, paid the $50 fine (which should have invalidated the warrant), and thought it was all taken care of. But for some reason, his payment wasn’t recorded correctly, and on August 3, that same Officer Torick showed up at Hardwick’s apartment at the highly unusual hour of 3:00 a.m. Torick entered the apartment (accounts differ on how he got in), and discovered Hardwick and another man engaged in oral sex, an act which Georgia’s sodomy law defined as a felony punishable with “imprisonment for not less than one nor more than 20 years.” Torick announced that the two were under arrest. Hardwick shot back, “What are you doing in my bedroom?”

The arrest was humiliating for the two men. Hardwick recalled that when the police officer brought them to the police station, he loudly made sure everyone there knew that he had arrested them for “cocksucking,” and that they should be able to find plenty of what they were looking for in Atlanta’s city jails. Hardwick posted bail within the hour, but was detained for twelve more hours near other criminals who had been told why he was there. Hardwick had never fought for gay rights before, but that moment changed him. “I realized that if there was anything I could do, even if it was just laying the foundation to change this horrendous law, that I would feel pretty bad about myself if I just walked away from it.”

Georgia Attorney General Michael J. Bowers

Georgia Attorney General Michael J. Bowers

After the local district attorney decided not to press charges, Hardwick decided to sue Georgia’s Attorney General Michael J. Bowers in federal court to overturn the state’s sodomy law. The ACLU agreed to take the case on Hardwick’s behalf. The case ultimately made it to the Supreme Court which, in a surprising move, overturned an 11th Circuit Court of Appeals decision and upheld Georgia’s sodomy law (Jun 30). Surprising because the Court had built a solid case history upholding the rights to privacy for heterosexuals to engage in private, non-procreative, non-marital sexual behavior in the privacy of their bedrooms — under exactly the same terms as Hardwick’s case. But for gay people, that same right to privacy simply vanished. It wouldn’t be until 2003, when the Supreme Court would finally admit that Bowers v. Hardwick “was not correct when it was decided, and it is not correct today” when it overturned sodomy laws nationwide in Lawrence v. Texas.

In 1998, Bowers resigned as Attorney General and ran for Governor. His race tanked after it emerged that the defender of the state’s morals had engaged in a decade-long affair in violation of Georgia’s similarly archaic adultery law. That same year, the Georgia Supreme Court declared the state’s sodomy law unconstitutional, because it infringed on a heterosexual man’s rights to privacy (Nov 23).

Bowers later acknowledged only one regret in the case that bears his name: that his name didn’t appear second “because then it wouldn’t look like I’m the homosexual.” Hardwick died in 1991 in Gainesville, Florida, reportedly from complications from AIDS.

[Additional sources: William Eskridge, Jr. Dishonorable Passions: Sodomy Laws in America, 1861-2003 (New York: Viking, 2008): 231-233.

Joyce Murdoch and Deb Price. Courting Justice: Gay Men and Lesbians v. the Supreme Court (New York: Basic Books, 2001). 277-309.]

Lonnie Lopez

August 3rd, 2016

No queer should EVER use the word “illegal” to describe undocumented immigrants. There was a time, not too long ago, when WE were “illegal.”

Lonnie Lopez

August 3rd, 2016

If just a small number of queers had had the same courage and self-respect as Mr. Hardwick, it wouldn’t have taken us 40 years to win something so banal as gay marriage.

What I want to know is what happened to Mr. Hardwick’s partner? As I understand it, he was African-American. As hard and humiliating as it was for Mr. Hardwick to endure this, I imagine for a gay black man in Texas it was horrific.

Diego S.

August 4th, 2016

I thought that BTB might be interested to know that Keith Torick is actually on Facebook. While it is 34 years from the time of Hardwick’s arrest, his posts may provide some insight into his motivations. His profile pic is an American flag with a Christian cross superimposed. https://www.facebook.com/keithtorick

I haven’t interacted with him, but maybe you would want to reach out and ask to interview him. That would make for a very interesting post and would add to the historical record.

Diego S.

August 4th, 2016

Lonnie, stop calling Mr. Hardwick and other gay people “queer.” If you want to call yourself that, go ahead, but respect other people and don’t impose your identity on them. As for your second comment, every country in the world – from Albania to Zimbabwe – prohibits unauthorized entry by foreign nationals. Illegal aliens are just that and language should not be altered in order to obscure.

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