[3] The Court ruled that on the basis of Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965) and Stanley v. Georgia, the above sexual actions, when consensual, should fall under the right to privacy alluded to in the US Constitution.

Specifically, the Court opined: The People are in no disagreement that a fundamental right of personal decision exists; the divergence of the parties focuses on what subjects fall within its protection, the People contending that it extends to only two aspects of sexual behavior - marital intimacy (by virtue of the Supreme Court's decision in Griswold) and procreative choice (by reason of Eisenstadt and Roe v. Wade).

[1]The Court concluded its ruling by stating: In sum, there has been no showing of any threat, either to participants or the public in general, in consequence of the voluntary engagement by adults in private, discreet, sodomous conduct.

Personal feelings of distaste for the conduct sought to be proscribed by New York Penal Law § 130.38 and even disapproval by a majority of the populace, if that disapproval were to be assumed, may not substitute for the required demonstration of a valid basis for intrusion by the State in an area of important personal decision protected under the right of privacy drawn from the United States Constitution - areas, the number and definition of which have steadily grown but, as the Supreme court has observed, the outer limits of which it has not yet marked.

[1]The 5-2 majority opinion was written by Judge Hugh R. Jones, who wrote that "it is not the function of the penal law to provide for the enforcement of moral or theological values.