How about consent and whether or not it is public or private? If sexual acts fall under consent and private, what is wrong with eliminating any laws against them? Using societies around the world in centuries past is not a good enough explanation either. Societies of the past were also often unfree, totalitarian and placed little if any value at all on individual human lives. Lawrence v Texas was about the issue that if two adults commit a sexual act with consent in a private area, then why do we need laws against it? The failure for anyone to come up with a satisfactory explanation is the reason why such laws have been scrapped in America and in the West at large over the years while remaining in nations ruled by totalitarian despots. This is about the issue of acts that fall under private and consensual. I don’t take issue with any public sexual acts being outlawed regardless of their nature.
Are you advocating for legalizing prostitution? For Any recreational drugs taken in private?
The problem with your suggestion is that the strong penchant of the legalization advocates is to cast the legalization of the illicit as making it licit. The sodomy lobby has done exactly this; in fact, they are now criminalizing those who don’t agree that sodomy is not only licit, but worthy of celebration!
You may not like the sound of this - and I suspect that you won’t - but the law serves as instructive to members of a society when it reflects society’s moral values. Having anti-sodomy laws on the books is society collectively condemning it. Not having a codified prohibition of it, or suddenly lifting a long-standing and universally accepted prohibition, creates the effect of societal approval.
When states were allowed to criminalize homosexual acts, there was a suppression effect even though these laws may have seldom, if ever, been enforced. Public sexual acts are technically illegal anyway, so it was a non-starter that no one would even know that homosexuals were engaging in such acts in private, where all sexual acts belong. In other words, these acts were virtually unenforceable unless a law enforcement official observed them, and if performed in private, that wasn’t going to happen. This helped keep homosexuality a private subculture in all but the most progressive urban areas. So what if the law was never enforced? It accomplished a desirable effect regardless.