Lawrence V. Texas Lawyer Hoisted On His Own Cheating, Racist Petard

In Lawrence Vs. Texas, the landmark 2003 case that overturned sodomy laws nationwide, Houston District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal argued that gays have no right to privacy to "engage in extramarital sexual relations."

Last month Rosenthal resigned in disgrace after emails he'd attempted to delete showed that he is an adulterer and a racist. Rosenthal is being sued for "official misconduct" by Lloyd Kelley, his last election opponent. Kelley's suit led to the uncovering of the emails.

Rosenthal's attempt to purge emails that may have been related to the suits from his government email account before turning his hard drive over to federal investigators. Even though he'd dragged much of the offending correspondence – "thousands of emails," by one report – to the trash and emptied the trash, government technicians are currently busy reconstructing the documents, which had been the subject of a subpoena in Kelley's suit before Rosenthal attempted to destroy them.

But at the moment, what's more interesting is the stuff Rosenthal didn't destroy. Besides a cartoon depicting an African-American suffering from a "fatal overdose" of watermelon and fried chicken, Rosenthal had also retained sexually-explicit video clips and love notes to his secretary (who'd been his mistress during his previous marriage) in his "saved" mail. One interchange with the secretary had Rosenthal writing, "I love you so much" and "I want to kiss you behind your right ear," to which she replied, "Go spend time with your family."

The NY Times notes the irony: "Mr. Rosenthal has sought to keep the e-mail messages sealed, citing 'zones of privacy' carved out by the United States Supreme Court in Lawrence v. Texas, the 2003 ruling overturning the state’s ban on sodomy — although Mr. Rosenthal had argued the case for Texas and the legality of the anti-sodomy laws."

(Via - Towleroad.)