so, in a sense, as the supreme court said in bowers vs. hardwick, these were laws of ancient origin, i suppose you could call it. but the supreme court in 1986 did not have a very deep or sophisticated understanding of the history of these laws. they were not laws that were targeted on their face only at gay sex. they targeted both heterosexual and homosexual nonprocreative sexual act, like oral sex, and in every state until the late 1960s and early 1970s that's the way they were written. in the mid-1950s, very influential legal authorities suggested a number of archaic sex laws be removed, and sodomy laws were among those. that began a process by which the states been repealing their own state sodomy laws, and that process proceeded through legislatures and state courts for a period of four decades. more than four decades. at the same time, some states held on to their sodomy laws, and others, like texas, got rid of all the rest of the are take sex laws but kept the sodomy law and narrowed and it specified dirt was called deafat sexual intercourse