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High court refuses to challenge

N.C. on ban of homosexual acts

WASHINGTON (AP) The Supreme Court refused yesterday to hear an appeal on the authority of states to outlaw homosexual acts between consenting adults.

The court, with two justices disagreeing, left untouched North Carolina's sodomy law despite arguments that it violates the privacy rights of homosexuals.

In the sodomy case, Eugene Enslin of Jacksonville, N.C., was convicted in 1974 of having oral sex with a U.S. Marine from nearby Camp LeJeune. He was sentenced to one year in prison and served nine months before being paroled.

A city police detective testified at Enslin's trial that he asked the Marine's help in running Enslin, owner of a combination massage parlor-adult bookstore,

out of town.

Enslin's lawyers argued, "This case involves the question whether the government may constitutionally prohibit private consensual homosexual activity be tween adults."

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'The nation's highest court has not considered a case involving the rights of

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homosexuals since 1967, when it ruled that homosexual aliens could be deported as "persons afflicted with a psychopathic personality."

That finding was later questioned by the American Psychiatric Association, which in 1974 eliminated homosexuality as a mental disorder and reclassified it as a "sexual orientation disturbance.”

Justices Thurgood Marshall and William J. Brennan Jr. voted to hear Enslin's appeal.

Returning from its last two-week recess of a term scheduled to end June 19, the court handed down hundreds s of orders and several decisions. In other matters, the court:

Agreed in a New York case to decide whether states may refuse to hire resident aliens as public school teachers. Past Supreme Court decisions have barred states from discriminating against aliens in various occupations, but last March 22 the court said states may refuse to hire aliens as state police officers.

• Ruled 6-3 that state courts may intervene in labor disputes involving al-

leged illegal picketing on private property. Since 1959, state courts have had little authority to intervene in such matters if the National Labor Relations Board might become involved.

• Split 7-1 in a major decision on Indian tribal sovereignty that tribes are immune from civil suits alleging sex discrimination.

• Told a Moylan, Pa., Quaker who from 1969 to 1972 withheld portions of his federal income taxes as "war crime deductions" that he has to pay those back taxes.

• Rejected the fourth and most likely last attempt by 60 House members to scuttle the Panama Canal treaties. The House members argued that the treaties' ratification is unconstitutional because it was voted on only by the Senate.

• Turned down an attempt by a Gulf Oil affiliate to escape from a billion-dollar uranium lawsuit pending before a New Mexico state judge.

Let stand two state court orders requiring reporters to identify sources of information.