1. Buchanan v. Batchelor

In 1969, Dallas police officers arrested Alvin Buchanan twice for having sex with another man in violation of the Texas sodomy law. After being sentenced to a five-year prison term, Buchanan challenged his conviction through a federal lawsuit. But could he convince a federal court that the sodomy statute violated the US Constitution? And how did Buchanan v. Batchelor contribute to the state legislature’s approval of an even more discriminatory law in 1973?

Queering the Lone Star State is funded in part by a grant from Humanities Texas, the state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Additional support is provided by the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, Willis Library’s Special Collections Division, and the departments of history and media arts at the University of North Texas. You can find more episodes, a selection of our sources, and a teaching guide at our website, https://www.queeringthelonestarstate.com/. The series is produced and edited by Sarah Lyngholm. Clare Robnett and Rodrigo Triana are our research assistants. Morgan Reese designed our website. Our theme music was composed by Nicolas Neidhardt.

Audio of Dallas County District Attorney Henry Wade provided courtesy of the University of North Texas Libraries Special Collections.

Audio of Judge Sarah T. Hughes provided courtesy of KERA-TV in Dallas.

Audio of Frank Kameny is from Before Stonewall: The Making of a Gay and Lesbian Community, directed by Greta Schiller and Robert Rosenberg (First Run Features, 1984), used by permission.

Additional music for this episode was composed by Jon Hansson.