The U.S. Supreme Court announced Monday that it would not hear Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II’s (R) appeal of a lower court ruling that held that the state’s sodomy ban is wholly unconstitutional. Cuccinelli had made his defense of the law an issue in his campaign for governor.
Virginia’s archaic Crimes Against Nature law made oral and anal sex a felony — even between consenting adults in the privacy of their bedroom. In 2003, the Supreme Court held in Lawrence v. Texas that sodomy bans like Virginia’s violated the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment.
In 2004, a bipartisan group in the Virginia General Assembly proposed updating the law to comply with the Supreme Court’s ruling, by eliminating provisions dealing with consenting adults in private and leaving in place provisions relating to prostitution, public sex, and those other than consenting adults. Cuccinelli, then a state senator, opposed the bill in committee and helped kill it on the Senate floor. In 2009, he told a newspaper that he supported keeping restrictions on the sexual behavior of consenting adults: “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.” As a result, the law’s text remained unchanged a decade after the Supreme Court’s ruling.
So it seems that Cuccinelli’s attempt to circumvent the Supreme Court ruling has gone the way of his other attempts to advance his extremist agenda. Cuccinelli sued and lost court cases over climate change (costing UVA nearly a million dollars to defend its former employee, MIchael Mann), the ACA, EPA, just to name a few. Cuccinelli was successful when he signed an amicus on the side of Westboro Baptist in defense of the first amendment. How embarrassing.
Cuccinelli claims now that some 60 ‘sex offenders’ will now be declassified. According to thingprogress.org:
In May, a federal appeals court overturned the conviction of William Scott MacDonald, who had been charged under the Crimes Against Nature law with demanding oral sex from a 17-year-old girl. Cuccinelli argued in his appeal — and on a campaign website — that the law no longer applies to consenting adults but was still valid for “sex offenses attempted or committed against minors, against non-consenting adults, or in public.”
It sounds like someone didn’t do a good job of charging a sexual predator. What would the man have been charged with for demanding sex plain old missionary style? The old phony ‘saving the children’ just doesn’t apply here and apparently it didn’t fool too many people. Cuccinelli has held his own war against gays. As soon as he took office he removed language that protected gays from discrimination at state colleges and universities.
Two words…….OY VEY!
I tend to wonder when people are overly interested in what consenting adults do in private.
There is something of a history of Mr. Cuccinelli using his current taxpayer-funded position to undertake lawsuits designed to titillate the right wing of his party at the expense of the citizens of Virginia. Most (perhaps all, but I’m not certain of the actual tally) of these actions are unsuccessful, but it is a very effective way to use public tax monies to finance campaigns.
Those who acclaim the bringing of the suits never report their being tossed out by the court system.
It sounds to me like Virginia needs to shore up its laws involving sexual assault. We don’t have to rely on antiquate ‘crimes against nature’ laws. What do other states do? There is no reason that our laws aren’t strong enough to put anyone away who sexually assaults anyone, regardless of method. If the laws are weak, rewrite them.