Date: Fri, 19 Jul 1996 22:48:43 -0700
Subject: Hardwick Story
From: awes@fn.net (The Land of Awes)


>I inadvertently deleted the excellent posting of the background 
>information on Bowers v. Hardwick. If anyone has it I would appreciate it 
>if they would send it to me. I'm in the middle of a Con Law class on 
>Equal Protection & The Bowers debate.

Michael Hardwick's Story

I was born in Miami in 1954 and raised in Miami. My mother is a very wonderful
and intelligent and sensitive woman. My father was a very intelligent and
craft-type man. He was a fireman and worked during the Cuban missile crisis
with fallout shelters and radiation. My parents divorced when I was twelve
years old and I lived with my mom until I was seventeen. I went to high school
here and it was pretty normal. Just like high school anywhere.

I have two sisters and a brother that are all older than me. My older sister
is forty and she is a lesbian. She has a daughter who is sixteen and she's
been a strong influence on me all my life. I have an older brother who is
straight and married and has children.

I wanted to be a landscape architect, and I went to school in botany and
horticulture at Florida State University in Gainesville. I spent three years
up there, pretty much as a spiritual recluse. I was seriously considering
becoming a Buddhist monk, and I was into a very spiritual frame, as far as
Karma and all of that. My family was all Catholic, so they were rather
disturbed about this. They were actually relieved when I told them I was
coming out instead. Their attitude was, Thank God!

>From Gainesville I went up to Atlanta and met this man that I fell in love
with. When I met this guy it seemed like a perfectly normal thing and that was
that. Things didn't work out between me and this man in Atlanta. He had a
lover, which I didn't know, so I left and went to Knoxville, Tennessee. I went
there because I had a girlfriend I had originally gone up to see in Atlanta
who was also gay, and she and her girlfriend were moving to Knoxville. They
were telling me, You've got to do something; you're a mess. So they brought me
up there and nursed me back to mental health. I was totally devastated for
about six months. All I did was listen to Billy Holliday and have The Blues.
When I got my balance I went to Gatlinburg, up in the Smoky Mountains, and I
really loved it up there. It was good for me inside, soul-searching and
putting things back into perspective. I really liked the place.

Then I left and went back down to Miami and told my mother and sister I was
gay, and they were very supportive. I was twenty-one years old at the time.
And I've been out since then. My mother was very accepting. She has become
very independent for the first time in her life. She's now living all by
herself on fourteen acres of land up in Gainesville, and she's loving it.
She's been great all along.

I started working in Miami, and I opened a business called Growth Concept
Environmental Design. Because I had bartended in a private gay restaurant,
very elite', I knew all these top designers. So when I opened by business I
immediately had an excellent clientele. I worked for about a year and a half
and I finally decided I needed more time by myself. I had questions that I
really hadn't worked out. So I sold my business to my junior partner and I
moved back to Gatlinburg because I was so taken with the Smoky Mountains. I
opened a health-food store and I hiked about forty miles a week. I was there
for two years and I lost my ass in the health food store, but at the same time
I gained a lot of knowledge of myself and became a friend to myself, which is
what I was really seeking to do.

This girlfriend that had pulled me out four years earlier was living in
Atlanta, so I went down there to visit her, which is how this whole case
started. I had been working for about a year, in a gay bar that was getting
ready to open up a discotheque. I was there one night until seven o'clock in
the morning, helping them put in insulation. When I left, I went up to the bar
and they gave me a beer. I was kind of debating whether I wanted to leave,
because I was pretty exhausted, or stay and finish the beer. I decided to
leave, and I opened the door and threw the beer bottle into this trash can by
the front door of the bar. I wasn't really in the mood for the beer.

Just as I did that I saw a cop drive by. I walked about a block, and he turned
around and came back and asked me where the beer was. I told him I had thrown
it in the trash can in front of the bar. He insisted I had thrown the beer
bottle right as he pulled up. He made me get in the car and asked what I was
doing. I told him that I worked there, which immediately identified me as a
homosexual, because he knew it was a homosexual bar. He was enjoying his
position as opposed to my position.

After about twenty minutes of bickering he drove me back so I could show him
where the beer bottle was. There was no way of getting out of the back of a
cop car. I told him it was in the trash can and he said he couldn't see it
from the car. I said, "Fine, just give me a ticket for drinking in public." He
was just busting my chops because he knew I was gay.

Anyway, the ticket had a court date on the top and a date in the center and
they didn't coincide; they were one day apart. Tuesday was the court date, and
the officer had written Wednesday on top of the ticket. So Tuesday, two hours
after my court date, he was at my house with a warrant for my arrest. This was
Officer Torick. This was unheard of, because it takes forty-eight hours to
process a warrant. What I didn't realize, and didn't find out until later, was
that he had personally processed a warrant for the first time in ten years. So
I think there is reason to believe that he had it out for me.

I wasn't there when he came with the warrant. I got home that afternoon and my
roommate said there was a cop here with a warrant. I said, That's impossible;
my court date isn't until tomorrow. I went and got my ticket and realized the
court date was Tuesday, not Wednesday. I asked my roommate if he'd seen the
warrant and he said he hadn't. So I went down to the county clerk and showed
him the discrepancy on the ticket. He brought it before the judge, and he
fined me $50. I told the county clerk the cop had already been at my house
with a warrant and he said that was impossible. He wrote me a receipt just in
case I had any problems with it further down the road. That was that, and I
thought I had taken care of it and everything was finished, and I didn't give
it much thought.

Three weeks went by, and my mom had come up to visit me. I came home one
morning after work at 6:30 and there were three guys standing in front of my
house. I cannot say for sure that they had anything to do with this, but they
were very straight, middle thirties, civilian clothes. I got out of the car,
turned around, and they said "Michael" and I said yes, and they proceeded to
beat the hell out of me. Tore all the cartilage out of my nose, kicked me in
the face, cracked about six of my ribs. I passed out. I don't know how long I
was unconscious. When I came to, all I could think of was, God, I don't want
my mom to see me like this!

I managed to crawl up the stairs into the house, into the back bedroom. What I
didn't realize was that I'd left a trail of blood all the way back. My mom
woke up, found this trail of blood, found me passed out, and just freaked out.
I assured her that everything was okay, that it was like a fluke accident,
these guys were drunk or whatever. They weren't drunk, they weren't ruffians,
and they knew who I was. I convinced her everything was okay and she left to
go visit a friend in Pennsylvania.

I had a friend come in a few days later who was from out of town, in Atlanta
to apply for a government job. He waited for me to get off work. That night at
work, another friend of mine had gotten really drunk, and I took his car keys,
put him in a cab, and sent him to my house, so he was passed out on the couch
in the living room. He did not hear me and my friend come in. I retired with
my friend. He had left the front door open, and Officer Torick came into my
house about 8:30 in the morning. He had a warrant that had not been valid for
three weeks and that he didn't bother to call in and check on. Officer Torick
came in and woke up the guy who was passed out on my couch, who didn't know I
was there and had a friend with me.

Officer Torick then came to my bedroom. The door was cracked, and the door
opened up and I looked up and there was nobody there. I just blew it off as
the wind and went back to what I was involved in, which was mutual oral sex.
About thirty-five seconds went by and I heard another noise and I looked up,
and this officer is standing in my bedroom. He identified himself when he
realized I had seen him. He said, "My name is Officer Torick. Michael
Hardwick, you are under arrest." I said, "For what? What are you doing in my
bedroom?" He said, "I have a warrant for your arrest." I told him the warrant
isn't any good. He said, "It doesn't matter, because I [am] acting under good
faith."

I asked Torick if he would leave the room so we could get dressed and he said,
"There's no reason for that, because I have already seen you in your most
intimate aspect." He stood there and watched us get dressed, and then he
brought us over to a substation. We waited in the car for about twenty-five
minutes, handcuffed to the back floor. Then he brought us in and made sure
everyone in the holding cells and guard and people who were processing us knew
I was in there for "cocksucking" and that I should be able to get what I was
looking for. The guards were having real good time with that.

There was somebody there to get me out of jail within an hour, but it took
them twelve hours to get me out. In the meantime, after they processed me and
kept me in a holding cell for about four hours, they brought me up to the
third floor, where there [were] convicted criminals. I had no business being
up there. They again told all the people in the cells what I was in there for.
It was not a pleasant experience. My friend was freaking out, and when I got
out of jail I came back within an hour and got him out. He decided because of
his government position he could not go on with the case.

I was contacted about three days later by a man named Clint Sumrall who was
working in and out of the ACLU. For the last five years, he would go to the
courts every day and find sodomy cases and try to get a test case. By this
time, my mom had come back into town and found out what had happened. We had a
typical mother conversation -- she was saying, I knew I shouldn't have left!
So she went with me to meet with Sumrall and this team of ten lawyers. I asked
them what was the worst that could happen, what was the best that could
happen? They explained to me that the judge could make an example out of me
and give me twenty years in jail. My mom was saying, Do you realize I'll be
dead before I see you again? So they said, Just think about it for two or
three days.

I realized that if there was anything I could do, even it if 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. One thing that influenced me was
that they'd been trying for five years to get a perfect case. Most of the
arrests that are made for sodomy in Atlanta are of people who are having sex
outside in public; or an adult and a minor; or two consenting adults, but
their families don't know they are gay; or they went through seven years of
college to teach and they'd be jeopardizing their teaching position. There's a
lot of different reasons why people would not want to go on with it. I was
fortunate enough to have a supportive family who knew I was gay. I'm a
bartender, so I can always work in a gay bar. And I was arrested in my own
house. So I was a perfect test case.

I immediately met with these ten lawyers and decided on two of them to
represent me. I chose John Sweet and Louis Levenson. They told me I had to get
prosecuted and have a conviction from the Superior Court in order to get into
the federal courts and be a test case. There was also a small amount of
marijuana in my room, so there was a misdemeanor charge and a felony. So I had
to go into the municipal courts before the Superior Court.

So here I go, marching into municipal court with two of the best hot-shot
lawyers in Georgia on a possession-of-marijuana misdemeanor. Officer Torick
got up there and said he had been let into my house; he didn't realize it had
been twenty-one days since the warrant, and he was acting under good faith.
The only question my lawyers asked him was why he stood there for thirty-five
seconds before he identified himself. He answered that the lights were low in
the room and he wasn't sure what was going on. The judge kind of chuckled and
asked my attorneys how I pled, and they said 'Guilty' with no argument. We
didn't want them to get suspicious as to what we were up to.

The transcripts went up to the Superior Court level, and when the prosecutors
saw who was representing me, and saw that I pled guilty on the marijuana
charge, they got suspicious. They sensed that something was coming and they
didn't want to get involved in it. So they refused to set a court date for me,
which would have meant that I would have four years of the case pending. Once
the time had run out, I would not be able to start a federal suit. At that
point it was very touchy. I'd been meeting with my lawyers about once a week
for two or three hours while they were preparing me for testimony. So we met,
and they said, "You can let things ride, but what we really need to do -- and
we're taking a very large chance -- is to push it." So I agreed to do that,
and we insisted that the district attorney prosecute me, because I did not
want this pending over me. They wrote back a letter saying they had no
intentions of further prosecution, which was in itself a judgment from the
Superior Court.

At that point, Kathy Wilde came into the case as my lawyer, working with the
ACLU, and I ended up getting very, very close to her. She was the perfect
lawyer to work with me and we saw eye-to-eye on everything. We started at the
federal level, and we filed a complaint that I was suing the police
commissioner of Atlanta and state attorney, Michael Bowers. There was also a
John and Mary Doe who joined my case. They came in through Kathy as
co-plaintiffs, stating that the reason they were pursuing this was because the
officer coming into my house had had a chilling effect on their own personal
relationship. They did not want to be identified. So we went to the federal
court, and Judge Hall saw that this was going to be a major thing. So he
immediately dismissed the case and said that I did not have a case. My lawyers
had assured me that was okay. Then we went to the court of appeals. They
decided two-to-one in my favor.

I didn't realize when I went into all of this that I was going to be suing the
police commissioner, nor did I realize that while in the federal courts I had
to continue to live in a city where the KKK was rather strong. The case lasted
about five years, and in that time I moved and got an apartment in someone
else's name -- my phone bills, electric bills, everything was in someone
else's name. I was still working as a bartender, plus I had opened up a floral
shop with a friend of mine, but all in his name again, because I didn't want
them to have any way of tracing me, especially after the beating. I lived very
incognito for the rest of the five years.

After the appeals court decided in my favor, the state brought it into the
Supreme Court. At that time I wanted to get out of the city. I'd been living
there in fear for three years and I just wanted to leave the city, but my
lawyers said it might hurt the case in the Supreme Court, and there was only
six months to go. I stuck it out for about five more months and moved down to
Miami about a month before the case was argued before the Supreme Court.

Then I went to the Supreme Court and was there for the hearing. No one knew
who I was. At that point, I had not done any interviews or speaking in public.
This issue was privacy, and I wanted to keep it a private issue. My lawyer had
informed me from the very beginning that it would be better to keep a low
profile because we did not want the personal aspects of the case to come into
it, which I agreed with. They thought that if there was a lot of personal
publicity it would affect the decision of the Supreme Court.

It was an education to be there. I had forty-two lawyers working on my case,
plus Laurence Tribe of Harvard Law School arguing the case for me. I had met
with all of them early that morning for breakfast, and we were kind of
psyching each other up. I was going to be sitting with one of the people who
wrote the amicus brief for Lambda, which does gay legal defense in New York,
and they once again assured me that no one knew who I was. So I sat in the
Supreme Court as a completely anonymous person. The whole omnipresence of the
room, the procedure of the judges coming in, is sort of overpowering. I
expected the room to be huge, but it wasn't; it was a very small room. You
could see the judges' faces and their expressions no matter where you sat.

The guy from the state came up first and argued for about five minutes and he
was an idiot. He kept going on about how the state did have a justified
government interest in continuing to enforce the law because it prevented
adultery and retarded children and bestiality, and that if they changed the
law all of those things would be legal. He made absolutely no sense. I think
it was Justice Burger who asked why, if they had my head on a silver platter,
if they had such a justified government interest in enforcing this law, did
they refuse to prosecute me. At which point, his answer was that he wasn't at
liberty to discuss that. The nine Justices and the whole place cracked up and
he pretty much ended his argument.

Then Laurence Tribe got up and articulately argued for about forty-five
minutes. He was incredible. I've never seen any person more in control of his
senses than he was. When he got done, everyone was very much pre-victory. They
were sure I would win. About forty of us went to lunch around the corner, and
everything seemed very positive and optimistic, and I flew back to Miami to
work. Then came the waiting period. That was the worst phase for me, because
we never knew when the decision was coming. I would be on pins and needles,
and every time the phone rang I'd be jumping. They made it the last decision
of the year, of course. They waited until just after all of the Gay Pride
parades around the country.

I was at work when I heard about the decision. I cater a complimentary buffet
for about a hundred people a day, so I go into work about four or five hours
before anyone else gets there to do all my prep work. On this particular
morning I could not sleep, and I got to work about nine o'clock. A friend of
mine had been watching cable news and had seen it and knew where to find me
and came over. When I opened the door he was crying and saying that he was
sorry, and I didn't know what the hell he was talking about. Finally I calmed
him down and he told me what had happened: that I had lost by a five-to-four
vote.

I was totally stunned. My friend took off and I was there for about four hours
by myself and that's when it really sunk in. I just cried-not so much because
I had failed but because to me it was frightening to think that in the year of
1986 our Supreme Court, next to God, could make a decision that was more
suitable to the mentality of the Spanish Inquisition. It was frightening and
it stunned me. J was scared. I bad been fighting this case for five years and
everyone had seemed so confident that I was really not expecting this decision
the way that they handed it down.

So I called Kathy Wilde and I called Laurence Tribe. I think he was more
devastated than I was. Nobody expected it. I was calling for some kind of
reaffirming that everything was going to be okay and that something could be
done. But they said, That's it! There's nothing we can do. I learned later
that I originally had five votes in my favor on the Supreme Court. Justice
Powell came out a week later and said to the press that he had originally
decided in my favor. I still don't understand why Powell changed his mind in
my case. What a half-assed decision!

At that time, everyone thought I was still in Atlanta. And I thought this was
okay, I'll just get through this personally. People who knew what I was doing
kept coming into the bar and saying, I'm sorry. And I'd say that I'd rather
not talk about it. I figured the best place for me would be behind the bar,
because it would make me pull myself out of it.

About eight o'clock that night, in comes this woman from Channel ii news, with
a man behind her with a camera on his shoulder. This is in a gay club. I was
stunned. All of a sudden it sunk in that they could find me. I asked her how
she knew where I was and she said she was very resourceful. She wanted to do
an interview, and I immediately left the bar and went upstairs. I was shaking.
She got pissed off because she couldn't do an interview with me, and on the
eleven o'clock news she's talking about Michael Hardwick, and the whole time
she has the camera focused on the bar I work at.

About two days went by where I was just kind of stunned. There wasn't anything
I could do to change the way I [felt], and I'm normally a very positive
person. It wasn't that! was negative. I was just nonresponsive to anything.
Then all of a sudden I started getting pissed off, angry. Kathy called me two
days later and she said that Newsweek magazine just came out with a national
poll that said fifty-seven percent of the people were opposed to the decision.
And she said, By the way, Phil Donahue called and wants to know if you'll do
his show. She was very clever, letting me know the nation was behind me, and
then hitting me with the Donahue show. Up until then, they had all advised me
to keep it private. But she said, "This is one approach you can take: you can
come out and let people know this was not a homosexual decision, as they tried
to put it out, but that it affects everyone as individuals, as consenting
adults. And the only way you re going to get that across to them is to use
this opportunity."

That was the first time I'd ever spoken publicly. Donahue called and said he
was putting me on with Jerry Falwell, and I said I wouldn't do the show -- it
wasn't a religious issue. So he called back and said, "We got rid of Falwell,
but you'll have to do the whole show by yourself." "Okay." So I flew up there
and did that, and that was probably the hardest thing I've ever done in my
life. But it went very well, and everyone who saw the program said I was a
good spokesman. That started something I had never anticipated. I did a lot of
talk shows after that, a lot of newspaper interviews.

They told me after Donahue that in a month I'd be old news, but this has been
the most hectic year of my life. Just about the time the whole thing died out,
we started on the two-hundredth birthday of the Constitution. I did a special
with Bill Moyers on PBS, and one with Peter Jennings. And I've been speaking
at a lot of rallies.

Because of my personal perspective in life, I have a tendency to dwell on the
positive instead of the negative. I feel very fortunate I was given the
opportunity to do it. Speaking and coming out nationally was a very healthy
experience for me, because it made me develop a confidence I never would have
had if I had gone along with my individual life. It also gave me a sense of
importance, because right now there is a very strong need for the gay
community to pull together, and also for the heterosexual community to pull
together, against something that's affecting both of us. I feel that no matter
what happens, I gave it my best shot. I will continue to give it my best.
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