12 States Ban Sodomy A Decade After Court Ruling
by Lauren Langlois
Tuesday Apr 22, 2014
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
A dozen states still have anti-sodomy laws on the books 10 years after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled they are unconstitutional.
One
such state is Louisiana, where gay rights groups contend police have
used anti-sodomy laws to target gay men. But state lawmakers sided with
religious and conservative groups in refusing to repeal the law last
week.
Of 14 states that had anti-sodomy
laws, only Montana and Virginia have repealed theirs since the Supreme
Court ruling, said Sarah Warbelow, legal director for the Human Rights
Campaign, a national gay rights organization.
Warbelow
says that in addition to Louisiana, anti-sodomy laws remain on the
books in Alabama, Florida, Idaho, Kansas, Michigan, Mississippi, North
Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas and Utah.
The
Supreme Court ruled in Lawrence v. Texas in 2003 that it is
unconstitutional to bar consensual sex between adults, calling it a
violation of the 14th Amendment.
Last year,
police in East Baton Rouge Parish arrested gay men for attempted crimes
against nature using the anti-sodomy law in a sting operation that
caused a national outcry. The district attorney wouldn’t bring charges
against the arrested men, saying the law was unenforceable.
This
led Rep. Patricia Smith, D-Baton Rouge, to file the bill that would
repeal Louisiana’s anti-sodomy law, saying it would make the system
fairer and more efficient.
"We don’t need inefficient laws on the books," she said.
Her fellow representatives, however, disagreed and voted 66-27 on April 15 to keep the law in place.
Gene
Mills, president of the conservative Louisiana Family Forum, said he
was not surprised the bill failed considering the state’s culture.
"It’s not a Louisiana value," he said of the repeal.
Others
argue Louisiana lawmakers are going against public opinion and sending
out a message that gay people are unwelcome in the state.
"It
just shows how out of touch Louisiana representatives are," said
Patrick Paschall, senior policy counsel for public policy and government
affairs at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.
Terry
Young Jr., a 27-year-old gay man, said he cannot understand why
Louisiana lawmakers would want to keep a law that was declared
unconstitutional.
"It’s a reflection of the overall homophobia," said Young, at the state Capitol last week.
While
social conservatism plays a role in keeping unusable anti-sodomy laws
on the books, Warbelow said lawmakers may also feel overwhelmed with
having to rewrite statutes to accommodate concerns about aggravated
sodomy.
Some anti-sodomy laws, including
Louisiana’s, use one statute to prohibit both consensual sodomy and
aggravated sodomy. Opponents of the repeal argued that it would
eliminate protections from oral and anal sexual assault.
Warbelow
said lawmakers could have addressed this concern by rewriting their
sexual-assault statutes. While doing so might have been a daunting task,
it would have been better than keeping the anti-sodomy laws and relying
on courts to uphold the Supreme Court decision, she said.
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