In 1986 when the Court ruled in Bowers v. Hardwick that the constitutional right of privacy does not extend to homosexual behavior, Justice Blackmun wrote in dissent:
The fact that individuals define themselves in a significant way through their intimate sexual relationships with others suggests, in a Nation as diverse as ours, that there may be many “right” ways of conducting those relationships, and that much of the richness of a relationship will come from the freedom an individual has to choose the form and nature of these intensely personal bonds.