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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Transit officials said Friday they blocked cell phone reception in San Francisco stations for three hours to disrupt a planned demonstrations over a police shooting.

Officials with the Bay Area Rapid Transit system, better known as BART, said they turned off the electricity to cell phone towers in four stations from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. Thursday. The move was made after BART learned that protesters planned to use mobile devices to coordinate a demonstration on train platforms.

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In 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court, deciding Lawrence et al. v. Texas, 206 reversed Texas courts207 and, explicitly overruling the 1986 Bowers v. Hardwick decision, struck down the state’s “homosexual conduct” statute. Similarly to the Bowers case, John Lawrence and his lover, Tyron Garner, were discovered engaging in consensual sexual activity in their own home via a police visit for an unrelated matter. In their appeal, Lawrence and Garner asked the Court to overrule Bowers, as well as to find the subject statute in violation of both privacy and equal protection provisions of the Constitution. By a vote of 6-3, the Court did strike down the law, though there was not unanimity among the majority.

Speaking for the Court, Justice Anthony Kennedy (joined by Justices Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer) took little time to get to the substance of the case. Reiterating the string of Court decisions involving the right to privacy, which he noted were not limited to married couples, Kennedy silently paid homage to Justice Harry Blackmun’s dissent in Bowers in which he noted the great magnitude of rights at stake with sodomy laws. Kennedy said the “penalties and purposes” of the laws “have more far-reaching consequences, touching upon the most private conduct, sexual behavior, and in the most private of places, the home.” He added that sodomy statutes “seek to control a personal relationship that, whether or not entitled to formal recognition in the law, is within the liberty of persons to choose without being punished as criminals

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In 1979, Texas enacted a law that outlawed the sale or possession for sale of dildos or artificial vaginas. This law did not outlaw purchase or use of them.

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A new Human Rights Watch report has termed ‘sodomy’ laws an oppressive legacy of the British colonialism and Victorian morality. Many erstwhile colonies of Britain still retain the laws, including India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Myanmar, Pakistan and Sri Lanka in South Asia.

New York: More than half of the world's remaining "sodomy" laws – criminalising consensual homosexual conduct – are relics of British colonial rule, Human Rights Watch showed in a report published earlier this week.

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Texas. On an annual basis, no state arrests and criminally prosecutes more of its citizens for pot than does Texas. Marijuana arrests comprise over half of all annual arrests in the Lone Star State. It is easy to see why. In 2009, more than 97 percent of all Texas marijuana arrests—over 77,000 people—were for possession only. Those convicted face up to 180 days in jail and a $2,000 fine, even upon a first conviction.

Despite Texas’ dubious distinction as the #1 pot prosecuting state in America, police and lawmakers have little interest in exploring alternatives. In 2007, Gov. Rick Perry signed legislation (HB 2391) into law granting police the option of issuing a summons in lieu of an arrest in minor marijuana possession cases. Yet aside from police in Austin, long considered to be the state’s lone bastion of liberalism, law enforcement have continued to fervently make arrests in even the most trivial of pot cases.

In 2011, Houston Democrat Harold Dutton introduced House Bill 458, which sought to reduce penalties for the adult possession of one ounce or less of marijuana to a Class C misdemeanor, punishable by a fine not exceeding $500 and no criminal record. Within weeks, over 2,500 Texans contacted their House members in support of the measure. Nonetheless, House lawmakers refused to even consider bringing the measure to a vote.

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Anyway - this discussion is rather pointless. Had there been a demonstration and had there been "incidents", all would have cried, why the hell the autorities wasn't doing something to prevent the forseeable riots.

Now, what a wicked move by the authorties - switching off transmission towers for cell phones, how DARE they?
If people are not able to organize a legal demonstration without using their cell phones in bus and train terminals, they should ask themselves how people did it before the age of the cellphone. That's a somewhat pitiful display.

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Anyway - this discussion is rather pointless. Had there been a demonstration and had there been "incidents", all would have cried, why the hell the autorities wasn't doing something to prevent the forseeable riots.

Now, what a wicked move by the authorties - switching off transmission towers for cell phones, how DARE they?
If people are not able to organize a legal demonstration without using their cell phones in bus and train terminals, they should ask themselves how people did it before the age of the cellphone. That's a somewhat pitiful display.

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Anyway - this discussion is rather pointless. Had there been a demonstration and had there been "incidents", all would have cried, why the hell the autorities wasn't doing something to prevent the forseeable riots.

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If it stops crime from happening then what is the problem.

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I'd much rather have no mobile phone than for businesses to potentially be looted and/or burnt down because people are using mobile phones to get their mates to potential target places.

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william: You say that until you need to call some emergency service, and the entire cell network is turned off due "lol lets stop riots".

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