The Procedural Queer: Substantive Due Process,Lawrence v. Texas, and Queer Rhetorical Futures

This essay discusses Justice Anthony M. Kennedy's choice to foreground arguments from due process rather than equal protection in the majority opinion in Lawrence v. Texas. Kennedy's choice can realize constitutional legal doctrine that is more consistent with radical queer politics than arguments from equal protection. Unlike some recent critiques of Kennedy's opinion, a queer rhetorical analysis of Lawrence reveals a futuristic, always-open-to-change vision in Kennedy's rhetorical framing of constitutional law that is significantly less damaging to possibilities for “queer world making” in the United States than other contemporary US judicial arguments of and about sexuality