Jamaican Activist Fears Reprisals, Ends Legal Challenge To Anti-Sodomy Law

A gay rights activist has withdrawn a legal challenge to Jamaica’s anti-sodomy laws after growing fears of violent backlashes, reports WTOP.com.

Last year, Javed Jaghai initiated a constitutional challenge to an 1864 law that bans sex between men. He argued that the law fuels homophobia and violates a 2011 charter of human rights that guarantees a right to privacy.

Jaghai is the Education and Outreach Officer at the Jamaica Forum for Lesbians, All-Sexuals & Gays (J-FLAG).

As it stands, the law bans anal sex and sets a maximum sentence of 10 years imprisonment and hard labor. Anything interpreted as "gross indecency" between men is punishable with two years in prison.

When Jaghai initiated the legal challenge in 2013, several church pastors led crowded revival meetings to oppose overturning the anti-sodomy law.

However, Jaghai has issued a statement saying he is no longer in a position to continue pursuing the case because of fears of a backlash against his family.

Janet Burak of New York-based advocacy group AIDS-Free World said the fear that pushed Jaghai to end his court challenge is "the same fear that keeps gay men in Jamaica underground, away from effective HIV testing, prevention treatment, care and support interventions.”

Although Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller spoke in favor of gay rights in 2012 and has vowed to put the anti-sodomy law to a "conscience vote," there has as yet been no movement in that area.

LOUISIANA VOTES TO KEEP UNCONSTITUTIONAL LAW CRIMINALIZING SODOMY

The Louisiana House voted 66-27 to reject a bill that would have repealed the state's unconstitutional law criminalizing sodomy, the Times-Picayune reports:

A House Committee passed the legislation onto the body's floor by a vote of 9-6 last week. But one of the state's most powerful lobbying groups, the conservative Christian Louisiana Family Forum, opposes striking the sodomy ban.
The law remaining on the books came under national scrutiny last summer when East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriffs' Deputies used the statute to arrest men who agreed to have sex with undercover male law enforcement officers. The District Attorney declined to prosecute the men, and the sheriff, Sid Gautreaux, under intense criticism, later apologized for the arrests.

Rep. Patricia Haynes Smith, a Democrat who represents Baton Rouge, said she brought the bill, in part, because of those arrests, which drew negative national attention to her community.

The Supreme Court invalidated all anti-sodomy laws with its Lawrence v. Texas decision in 2003 but 17 states have still not formally repealed or revised their laws.

Virginia Repeals Unconstitutional Sodomy Ban

Virginia’s House of Delegates on Thursday unanimously passed in a 100 to 0 vote a bill that would eliminate the state’s unconstitutional ban on sodomy that criminalized oral and anal sex since 1950, ThinkProgress reports. Previously approved by the Virginia state senate in a similar unanimous vote, the bill now awaits Democratic Governor Terry McAuliffe’s signature or veto. 

The statute in question, Virginia’s Crimes Against Nature law, technically should have been made defunct after the Supreme Court ruling in Lawrence v. Texas which found that the state could not infringe on the rights of adult individuals to have consensual sex. However, many Republican legislators in Virginia, including former gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli, fought to keep it in place. The sodomy ban was battered in the courts and the Supreme Court made sure to keep clear of the case. Court rulings have also caused additional complications for those backing the law:

Last year, the federal courts overturned the conviction of a man charged, under Virginia’s Crimes Against Nature law, of soliciting a 17-year-old female for oral sex — a felony under the statute. Because that law — first enacted in 1950 to prohibit oral and anal sex, as well as bestiality — had not been updated, the court ruled it was unenforceable, putting the convictions of other sexual offenders and child predators at risk.

In response, Sen. Thomas A. Garrett (R) filed a bill in December that would have eliminated the ban on adult consensual sodomy, but would have made oral sex between 17-year-olds a felony, even if they were legally married. After ThinkProgress reported on this possibly unintended consequence, Garrett and the Senate Courts of Justice Committee agreed on a substitute version that generally treats all sex equally.

More than a decade after the Lawrence decision, several other states still have sodomy bans on the books, including Alabama, Florida, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, and Utah.

Cucccinelli's Sodomy Ban Gets a Smackdown from SCOTUS!

Ken Cuccinelli, the VA Republican running for governor, is obsessed with outlawing sodomy and oral sex in his state. The Supreme Court struck down anti-sodomy laws in 2003. But — driven by his conservative ideology — Cuccinelli refuses to let his dream die. His efforts reached a dead end on Monday, when the Supreme Court basically told the VA Republican to go f**k himself.

SCOTUS brings the hammer down on the VA Republican’s sodomy obsession.

In March, the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the state using anti-sodomy laws to prosecute cases involving minors. But Cuccinelli wants the law exempted from their 2003 ruling. He appealed to the Supreme Court, but they rejected the case on Monday. Thus ends Cuccinelli’s quest to outlaw oral sex and sodomy.

Ken Cuccinelli’s Law Would Outlaw Sodomy And Oral Sex Among Consenting Adults.

The VA Republican’s now-invalid law is known as the “Crimes Against Nature Act.” Here’s the part that outlaws oral sex and sodomy between consenting adults:

“If any person carnally knows in any manner any brute animal, or carnally knows any male or female person by the anus or by or with the mouth, or voluntarily submits to such carnal knowledge, he or she shall be guilty of a Class 6 felony.”

Cuccinelli claims his law only applies to minors. But the wording clearly applies to all people engaging in oral or anal sex, including adults. The VA Republican unveiled a website for this law in July, and admitted he planned to put it back on the books. Virginia’s legislature had a chance to change the law and conform to SCOTUS’ 2003 ruling, but Cuccinelli blocked those changes. He clearly wanted to keep the law intact, in hopes of one day arresting consenting couples, especially same-sex couples. Was Cuccinelli trying to pull a fast one on the court system, and fool them into reinstating anti-sodomy laws across the nation? If so, his ploy didn’t work.

A Setback For The VA Republican’s bid for governor.

Ken Cuccinelli isn’t having a very good October. On top of having his dreams of a world without oral and anal sex stolen from him, he’s under fire for his close relationship with GOP Senator Ted Cruz, who helped instigate the unpopular government shutdown. He’s also in trouble because of a recent ad from his Democratic opponent Terry McAuliffe, which provides damning evidence of Cuccinelli’s role in shutting down the government. This unfortunate series of events mean bad news for the VA Republican’s political aspirations. Americans do not approve of the shutdown, like delusional Republicans thought they would. In fact, Americans overwhelmingly blame the GOP. This, combined with the Supreme Court’s decision, puts Virginia more in play for Democrats than ever before.

But which ever direction the governor’s race goes, at least consenting adults in Virginia won’t have to worry about Republicans regulating what they do in their own bedrooms.

Supreme Court Denies Request From Virginia's Ken Cuccinelli To Stay Ruling On Sodomy Law

Previously, this past March, the Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Richmond issued a ruling that declared the state of Virginia's Crimes Against Nature Law to be unconstitutional, citing the decision issued by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2003 during Lawrence v. Texas. The state's blatantly anti-gay attorney general, Ken Cuccinelli, took it upon himself to appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court. The court has yet to decide whether it will hear the appeal. In the meantime, however, Cuccinelli submitted a request for a stay, postponing the Fourth Circuit Court's decision until after the appeal. 

This past Friday, according to the Washington Blade, Chief Justice John Roberts, acting on behalf of the entire court, denied Cuccinelli's request. The Supreme Court is expected to announce its decision of whether or not to hear the case either later this year or in early 2014. Until then, Virginia's "Crimes Against Nature Law" will remain un-enforcable. 

The Fourth Circuit Court's decision comes after attorneys attempted to place William Scott MacDonald, a 47-year-old man, behind bars for soliciting oral sex from a 17-year-old girl. Since no sexual acts actually took place, the state attempted to use its "Crimes Against Nature Law" to do the job. Cuccinelli and others argue that the U.S. Supreme Court's decision during Lawrence v. Texas does not apply in cases where one of the (potential) participants is a minor and the other is an adult. The Fourth Circuit Court disagreed, saying that "while the Lawrence decision prohibited Virginia from applying the sodomy law in cases of consensual sex with someone between 15 and 18, it did not prevent the state legislature from enacting laws banning all sex between adults and people in that age range."

A Grandmother on -- Gasp -- Sodomy

Never in my 79 years, nearly 59 of them married to the only man I have ever known, did I imagine being able to say -- much less write -- this:

I am guilty of sodomy.

For that matter, so is my husband, pleasurably so. (Our youngest would have me use more graphic terms; they apply, but I am a 'reticent' white-haired grandmother, moderate in my speech, sometimes.)

We live in Virginia, home base for all our married -- as well as courting -- years. And in Virginia, the state's anti-sodomy law is again front and center. The law describes sodomy as "crimes against nature," which include all oral as well as anal sex, even between consenting adults, and is to be prosecuted as a felony. In other words, ordinary human behavior, criminalized.

Even though the statute is still on the books, as are anti-sodomy laws in fourteen states, it has effectively been unenforceable since 2003. That year, in Lawrence v. Texas, the Supreme Court held that "statutes criminalizing private acts of consensual sodomy between adults are inconsistent with the protections of liberty" in the Fourteenth Amendment's due process clause and thus unconstitutional.

In mid-March this year, responding to a legal challenge, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit (located in Richmond) specifically invalidated Virginia's law prohibiting sodomy. The challenge involved a 47-year-old man accused under the anti-sodomy law of criminal solicitation of a minor for oral sex who contended that the "crimes against nature" statute is illegal.

Having the statute invalidated by the Appeals Court could easily have been have been the end of the matter. But it's Virginia. And it's an election year. In Virginia, it's always an election year: federal, even years; state and local, odd (in more than one sense). Because Virginia is a purple state with a tight, bellwether gubernatorial election gaining momentum, all eyes are upon us. So, the present Attorney General and Republican candidate for governor, Ken Cuccinelli, has appealed the Fourth Circuit's decision to the Supreme Court and requested a stay of the ruling pending the appeal. The Chief Justice has asked the other side for a response by next Monday. We shall see.

At Least A Dozen Men Arrested In Louisiana Under Invalid Anti-Sodomy Law

At least a dozen men since 2011 in Baton Rouge have been arrested under an unenforceable law "to ensnare men who merely discussed or agreed to have consensual sex with an undercover agent," an investigation by The Advocate magazine found.

The District Attorney said his office refused to prosecute each of the cases because no crime was found to have occurred, and a Sheriff's Office spokeswoman denied to the Advocate that investigators had been misapplying the anti-sodomy law, which is currently a state-statute. 

“This is a law that is currently on the Louisiana books, and the sheriff is charged with enforcing the laws passed by our Louisiana Legislature,” Casey Rayborn Hicks, a Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman, said. “Whether the law is valid is something for the courts to determine, but the sheriff will enforce the laws that are enacted." 

Ken Cuccinelli made a laughing stock on The View

GOP Virginia gubernatorial nominee Cuccinelli’s ongoing effort to ban BJs

Someone clearly needs a hug.  Virginia gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli, the current state attorney general, is running for governor on a platform of banning oral and anal sex between adults. Cuccinelli says such laws are necessary in order to stop child predators from sexually assaulting children.

Now, you might ask, why does Ken Cuccinelli need to make it illegal for adult men and women to perform oral sex on each other in the privacy of their own bedrooms in order to protect children?

Answer: Because Republicans in the state legislature, the Virginia General Assembly, have refused for ten years to pass a law protecting kids in the state.

Here’s the deal. In 2003, the US Supreme Court struck down state anti-sodomy laws (laws that made oral and anal sex between consenting adults illegal), which were mostly being used against gay couples.  In Virginia, anti-sodomy laws were also being used, among other things, against child molesters.  But those laws were struck down in 2003 by the Supreme Court, a good ten years ago.  So for the past ten years, what did the Virginia General Assembly, which was mostly controlled by Republicans the past decade, do to ensure that the rape of children was again against the law in Virginia?

Nothing.

In the decade since Lawrence v. Texas struck down Virginia’s anti-sodomy law, the Virginia General Assembly – which has been under GOP control collectively for 18 years, and Democratic control for 4 (if you add the state House and Senate together) – just never bothered to figure out if there was another way to make it illegal for grown men to rape small children, other than banning consulting adults from performing oral sex on each other in their own bedrooms.

So, the law was sat struck down, and now people like Cuccinelli, rather than simply asking the Republicans who currently control the Virginia House of Delegates and the Virginia Senate to pass a law, you know, making it illegal to have sex with children, wants to instead make it illegal again for adults to have sex with each other.

Next on the Cuccinelli chopping block?

And keep in mind: Cuccinelli is himself the attorney general of Virginia. The top law enforcement official. He, if anyone, was the lead person in the state responsible for making sure that children are protected from sexual predators.  What did Ken Cuccinelli do to get his own party to pass a law specifically protecting children from rape? 

Nothing.

What’s going on here is that the Virginia Republican party, like the national GOP, is so hell-bent on hating gays – Cuccinelli has led his own personal jihad against gays for years – and hell-bent on hating sex generally, that they didn’t want to pass a new sodomy law that didn’t ban oral sex between consenting adults.

Had the Virginia GOP passed a law banning sex with children, they’d be tacitly saying that sex between adults, including gay adults, was okay.  And the Virginia Republican party is so uptight, so intolerant, and so discriminatory, that they couldn’t bring themselves to pass a law banning child-rape, lest the absence of language banning consensual sex between adults gave a silent nod to the notion that it’s okay for adults, straight and gay, to have sex, be it oral or any other kind.

So, as a result, the Republican party of Virginia is on a jihad to ban all BJs in the state, straight and gay.

Welcome to today’s Republican party.

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Virginia Gov. Candidate Cuccinelli Asks Supreme Court to Revive Ban on Oral, Anal Sex

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, the GOP's nominee for governor, filed an appeal on Tuesday asking the Supreme Court to revive the state's law banning oral and anal sex. In a statement, Cuccinelli claimed that the law, which the US Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit ruled unconstitutional earlier this year, is "an important tool that prosecutors use to put child molesters in jail." Cuccinelli warned that the appeals court's decision to strike down the statute "threatens to undo convictions of child predators that were obtained under this law" since 2003, when the Supreme Court ruled in Lawrence v. Texas that laws criminalizing oral and anal sex—sometimes referred to as sodomy bans—are unconstitutional.

As the Huffington Post reported:

Cuccinelli wants the court to reconsider a March 2013 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit striking down the state's "crimes against nature" statute. The 4th Circuit ruled that the law did not pass muster in light of the Supreme Court's 2003 Lawrence v. Texas decision, which struck down the latter state's anti-sodomy law as an unconstitutional criminalization of Americans' sexual conduct. The Virginia law, however, remained on the books.

The 4th Circuit ruled in favor of William Scott McDonald, who was convicted in 2005 at age 47 under the Virginia statute for soliciting a 17-year-old girl to commit sodomy. That law broadly makes oral and anal sex a Class 6 felony. While such laws historically targeted gay men, they have also been used against heterosexual activity.

The three-judge panel ruled that an unconstitutional law could not be used to convict McDonald. It added that the Virginia Legislature could pass another law to criminalize sexual conduct specifically between a minor and an adult. The Lawrence ruling applied only to consensual adult conduct.

Virginia has a notably low age of consent, which means, in effect, that vaginal sex between a 47-year-old and a 17-year-old is legal, but oral and anal sex between the same two people is not. Cuccinelli claims he will only use the sodomy law to bring cases involving minors or sexual assault, and argues that Virginians need not worry about him prosecuting "consenting adults," because the part of the law that would enable him to do so was defanged by the Supreme Court's Lawrence decision. But in 2004, when a bipartisan group of state Senators was trying to fix the sodomy law so that it would only apply to cases involving minors and non-consensual sex, Cuccinelli, then a state Senator, blocked the effort. And in 2009, as my colleague Andy Kroll has noted, Cuccinelli made clear that he objected to oral and anal sex (at least between gay people) on principle, telling the Virginian-Pilot, "My view is that homosexual acts—not homosexuality, but homosexual acts—are wrong. They're intrinsically wrong. And I think in a natural law-based country it's appropriate to have policies that reflect that...They don't comport with natural law."

I think someone forgot the Supreme Court declared sodomy laws unconstitutional 10 years ago!

Ben Wolfinger, the sheriff of Idaho's Kootenai County, says he may drop the Department's Boy Scouts of America charter because in dropping the ban on gay scouts the organization is promoting a lifestyle that is against state law, Coeur d'Alene Press reports:

"It would be inappropriate for the sheriff's office to sponsor an organization that is promoting a lifestyle that is in violation of state law," Sheriff Ben Wolfinger said.

Sodomy is against the law in Idaho, he added.

"I have talked with Chris Peterson about this and sent him a copy of the law," Wolfinger said.

Peterson, who works in the Hayden office of the Inland Northwest Council of Boy Scouts, could not be reached for comment on Friday, and Tim McCandless, CEO of the Inland Northwest Council, said he wanted to talk with the sheriff before commenting specifically to his concerns.

"I would encourage you to read the resolution that was passed, however." McCandless said. "Sodomy is not allowed in scouting and is not an issue in this discussion."

Somebody's been listening to too much Bryan Fischer.