Five years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court did something that's hard for anyone, let alone for the ultimate symbol of legal wisdom: It admitted it had been wrong.

That remarkable admission — offered just 17 years after the colossal legal error it was correcting — came in a case challenging whether Texas could punish those of us who're gay for having consensual sex in the privacy of our own home.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the majority in striking down all remaining state sodomy laws, explained that the fundamental constitutional rights of liberty and privacy were at stake — and that they extend to gay Americans.

The gay men Texas had wrongly prosecuted "are entitled to respect for their private lives," Kennedy wrote, and "the state cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime."

Eloquently, Kennedy concluded that the authors of the Constitution's grand but intentionally vague promises "knew times can blind us to certain truths and later generations can see that laws once thought necessary and proper in fact serve only to oppress. As the Constitution endures, persons in every generation can invoke its principles in their own search for greater freedom."

Now, looking back at gay Americans' breathtaking legal, political and cultural progress over the past five years, it's clear that a huge amount of the credit belongs to that Lawrence v. Texas decision.

While its reverberations can be seen and felt directly, its influences are often subtle.

We can see it cited by federal and state judges in rulings respecting gay Americans as parents, soldiers and couples wanting to marry. We can see its influence in state legislatures' leaps forward. And we can feel the respectful tone it set in the most basic human contacts — the neighborly wave or helping hand.

Most immediately, the decision erased the aura of criminality that surrounded gay Americans even in states without sodomy laws.

As a result, it took away the biggest club used by legislators fighting to try to keep alive an old, but sadly familiar system that says one sort of American is better than another.

America's increasingly accepting culture — not created by Lawrence but most definitely encouraged by it — has resulted in a surge of gay Americans coming out, especially in areas such as the South and Midwest, which once were tightly closeted.

And today, more heterosexuals than ever before understand gay people have a right to full, rich private lives and that, as Justice Kennedy gently instructed, to see gay relationships just in terms of sex is demeaning, "just as it would demean a married couple were it to be said marriage is simply about the right to have sexual intercourse. ... When sexuality finds overt expression in intimate conduct with another person, the conduct can be but one element in a personal bond that is more enduring."

"Just as it would" is a legal standard of equality that evokes an ancient moral one: Treat your neighbor as yourself.

Applying the wisdom of our forefathers, Justice Kennedy didn't limit Lawrence's usefulness by getting too specific.

Expanding the reach of this golden ruling is the joyful task ahead for this and future generations of Americans.

Deb Price of The Detroit News writes the first nationally syndicated column on gay issues. To find out more about Deb Price and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2008 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.