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640 sodomy through its broad police power. He contends that the prohibitions of the statute are justified by the State's legitimate interest in protecting public morality. Appellees counter that long-standing, negative views about a group of people do not amount to proper justification for differential treatment. Citing Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967), they assert that illegitimate disapproval, biases, and stereotypes, no matter how firmly ingrained, must fall to constitutional requirements once an equal protection challenge is mounted. The U.S. Supreme Court in Loving struck down Virginia's anti-miscegenation statute, concluding that, although the prohibition on interracial marriages precluded either race from marrying a member of the other race, the anti-miscegenation statute rested "solely upon distinctions drawn according to race." Id. at 11.

[34] Though homosexual citizens do not constitute a protected class, they are a separate and identifiable class for purposes of equal-protection analysis. Under well-settled equal-protection analysis, any legislation that distinguishes between two groups of people must be rationally related to a legitimate governmental purpose. Romer v. Evans, 517 U.S. 620 (1996); City of Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Ctr., 473 U.S. 432 (1985). In Ester v. Nat'l Home Centers, we set out our rational-basis test as follows:

The party challenging a statute's constitutionality has the burden of proving that the act lacks a rational relationship to a legitimate objective of the legislature under any reasonably conceivable set of facts. ''Arkansas Hosp. Ass'n v. Arkansas St. Bd. of Pharmacy'', 297 Ark. 454, 763 S.W.2d 73 (1989); Streight v. Ragland, 280 Ark. 206, 655 S.W.2d 459 (1983). See also Smith v. Denton, 320 Ark. 253, 895 S.W.2d 550 (1995); Winters v. State, 301 Ark. 127, 782 S.W.2d 566 (1990). It is not our role to discover the actual basis for the legislation. ''Arkansas Hosp. Ass'n, supra; Streight v. Ragland'', 280 Ark. 206, 655 S.W.2d 459 (1983). We merely consider whether there is any rational basis which demonstrates the possibility of a deliberate nexus with state objectives so that the legislation is not the product of arbitrary and capricious government purposes. If we determine that any rational basis exists, the statute will withstand constitutional challenge. ''See Arkansas Hosp. Ass'n., supra''.

335 Ark 356, 364-65, 981 S.W.2d 91, 96 (1998) (emphasis added).