THE MANY PASSIONS OF MICHAEL HARDWICK
Sex and the Supreme Court in the Age of AIDS
by Martin Padgett
W. W. Norton & Co.
344 pages, $31.99
IN OCTOBER 2023 I attended the Spirit of Pride annual awards banquet hosted by the Pride Community Center of North Central Florida. I applauded when a young lawyer, Simone Chriss, was presented with an award for her legal work as director of the Transgender Rights Initiative at the Southern Legal Counsel. I didn’t know her, and I didn’t realize that her uncle, Michael Hardwick, was the plaintiff in the ill-fated Supreme Court gay rights case that originated in Georgia.
To refresh your memory, there were two cases challenging state enforcement of sodomy laws. In 1986, in Bowers v. Hardwick, the Supreme Court held that two consenting adults engaging in sodomy in their home were not protected under the due process clause of the 14th Amendment. In 2003, in Lawrence v. Texas, the court overturned Bowers v. Hardwick and concluded that they were. In The Many Passions of Michael Hardwick: Sex and the Supreme Court in the Age of AIDS, author Martin Padgett pays tribute to Hardwick, the plaintiff in the 1986 case. In doing so, he details how the courts reached their decisions and fully explains the social and historical context in a compelling narrative driven by Hardwick’s biography.
Hardwick, a native Floridian like me, was born the youngest of four, like me, eight days after me in 1954. In his 37-year life he lived in Miami, Gainesville, and Waldo, Florida; in the mountains near Gatlinburg, Tennessee; and, finally, in Atlanta. As a teenager in Miami, he was ordered into a reform program called The Seed after being arrested with a carload of friends for speeding. He then moved north and studied landscape architecture and Sanskrit at Santa Fe College in Gainesville before moving to Atlanta at age 22, joining a burgeoning gay population, and working in gay bars and nightclubs, including Backstreet and the Cove. Gregarious, resourceful, and artistic, Hardwick was successful in almost everything he tried.
On the morning of July 5, 1982, at the Cove, Hardwick put some finishing touches on a new discothèque and walked out the door to go home carrying an open beer bottle, which was prohibited by law. He saw a police car driving by, so he tossed the bottle in a trash can. The police car turned around, and the officer confronted him, wanting to know where the bottle had gone. Hardwick pointed at the trash can. The officer accused him of lying and put him in the backseat of the police car. Hardwick argued with the officer for a moment, then accepted a ticket for public drinking, which required a court appearance.
There was confusion about the date of this appearance. Hardwick later went to the courthouse, clarified the date on the ticket, and paid a $50 fine. However, unaware that the fine had been paid, the same police officer appeared at Hardwick’s home on the night of August 2nd with an invalid warrant. He entered and looked through a slight opening in Hardwick’s bedroom door, where he saw Hardwick and a friend engaging in mutual oral sex and, of less interest, a small amount of marijuana. The officer arrested Hardwick, took him to the police station, and threw him in a jail cell while announcing to the other prisoners that Hardwick was in for “cocksucking.” He was held there until he was bonded out for $325.
Enter the ACLU. They had been looking for a case to challenge the sodomy statute. This seemed an ideal fact pattern: two adults at home in their bedroom engaging in consensual sex. Padgett provides a detailed narrative of how the case reached the Supreme Court, plus inside information on how the court deliberated and decided the case. With the assistance of the prominent constitutional law professor Laurence Tribe, who argued the case before the Supreme Court, Padgett gained access to all internal documents and interviewed the clerks who were there at the time. You’ll meet Abby Rubenfeld, Pee Wee Herman’s sister, and her young protégé Evan Wolfson, who had a brief affair with Hardwick. During deliberations, Justice Louis Powell, who sided at the last minute with the majority, remarked to Justice Blackmun: “Harry, I’ve never known a homosexual in my life,” to which Blackmun responded: “Look around your chambers.” At the time, Cabell Chinnis was clerking for Powell, as had several other gay men over the years.
The Supreme Court decision was devastating to Hardwick. After this defeat, the Court even sent him a bill for $778.30 to cover paperwork costs. Hardwick feared that he would be known forever as a “radical cocksucker.” With time, art saved him. When his attorneys said he could safely leave Atlanta, he returned to Miami to paint and design. He was successful in decorating several South Florida gay nightclubs and bars and carried a business card advertising himself as an “optical alchemist.” But his life was cut short by AIDS in 1991; he died in Gainesville.
Padgett explores the impact of AIDS on Hardwick and the legal and social world of the time. The book is well-documented and indexed. Padgett interviewed seventy people, a daunting task but necessary to piece together the path of a young gay man as he moved through a fateful era from 1954 to 1991. After reading this book, I’m grateful for Michael Hardwick’s generosity, determination, and sacrifice for the cause of LGBT freedom and equality. Nothing demonstrates his legacy more vividly than the fact that his niece, civil rights attorney Simone Chriss, continues the fight today.
Larry Reynolds is a retired federal attorney.
