Q Toon: In Goody Hands

I do not envy the voters of Virginia. The Republican gubernatorial candidate is their Attorney General, Ken Cuccinelli, a rabid homophobe. He still wants to enforce Virginia's anti-sodomy laws, despite their being unconstitutional under Lawrence v. Texas, on the grounds that they protect children -- the lack of any mention of age in the law notwithstanding.

Also notwithstanding is Virginia's age of consent -- 15 -- which is relevant here because the specific case Cuccinelli is upset about concerns a 47-year-old man, William McDonald, arrested for having consensual oral sex with two girls aged 16 and 17 at the time. Old McDonald may be guilty of being a creep, but not of statutory rape.

While anti-sodomy laws occasionally come into play in cases like McDonald's, they have been used much more often to persecute LGBT citizens. It's useful to note what Virginia's law actually criminalizes:

Virginia outlaws consensual sexual behavior between adults with 18.2-361, "Crimes against nature." This prohibits the making or consenting to such sexual contact a Class 6 felony, punishable by a term of imprisonment not less than one year nor more than five years, or a confinement in jail for not more than twelve months and a fine of not more than $2,500, either or both.
Virginia also bans voluntary sexual intercourse between unmarried persons with code section 18.2-344 - Fornication. ...
Lewd and lascivious cohabitation is also prohibited in Virginia and is punishable as a Class 3 misdemeanor upon a first successful conviction which carries a fine of not more than $500. ...

So anyway, Cuccinelli wanted the Supreme Court to engage in what conservatives otherwise call Judicial Activism by pretending that Virginia's unconstitutional anti-sodomy laws still apply when 16-to-17-year-olds (but why stop there?) are involved.

Cuccinelli decided to appeal the case to the Supreme Court, arguing that Virginia’s anti-sodomy statute has no constitutional problem, if—as he concedes, and only if—the high court would just interpret the terrifyingly broad sodomy law to apply only to sex involving 16- and 17-year-olds. (Justice Kennedy left the thread of that argument hanging in his majority opinion in Lawrence.) In effect, Cuccinelli’s legal appeal asks the Supreme Court and the lower courts to ignore the clear meaning and intent of the law, to interpret it in a way that advances narrow goals he wants to advance.
Of course, Cuccinelli’s problem at the Supreme Court is that Virginia’s sodomy statute doesn’t mention age, so reading an imaginary age requirement into it is not “interpreting” the statute so much as rewriting it.

In 2004, the year after Lawrence v. Texas, there was a bipartisan effort to update Virginia's anti-sodomy law by removing the unconstitutional provisions against adults who engage in consensual sexual acts in private (leaving public sex, prostitution and so forth as criminal acts). Mr. Cuccinelli, then in the state Senate, opposed the bill in committee and helped ensure its defeat. As he told the Virginian-Pilot in 2009, "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."

Still, even if you don't like Cuccinelli's obsession with gay sex, it's hard to get enthused about the Democratic alternative, party hack Terry McAuliffe. Which is exactly how Republicans get elected. Their base gets enthused about wingnuts like Cuccinelli and his running mate, E. W. Jackson. Look for a landslide Republican victory with about 92% of Virginia citizens staying home.

And bolting the bedroom door.

Q Toon: John Lawrence

John Lawrence, the plaintiff in the landmark Supreme Court case Lawrence v. Texas, died on November 20 at the age of 68. While his death was not kept secret, it only came to national attention after a lawyer in the case attempted to invite him to a commemoration of the ruling.

Tyron Garner, the other man arrested with Mr. Lawrence (and also a petitioner in the court case), died in 2006.

The arrest stemmed from a false complaint from a malicious neighbor of gunshots in Lawrence's apartment, because of which a Harris County, Texas, sheriff's deputy entered the unlocked apartment with gun drawn.

In a curious development, Dale Carpenter (who used to write for Q Syndicate in its early days) is coming out with a book in March which charges that Lawrence and Garner were not in fact engaged in any sex act when arrested for “deviate sexual intercourse with another individual of the same sex”; indeed, Lawrence had told Carpenter that the two had never had sexual intercourse before, during or since.

At any rate, the Supreme Court ruled in 2003 that Texas' antisodomy law was an unconstitutional infringement of personal liberty, overturning an earlier case, Bowers v. Hardwick. In his dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia, departing from his insistence that only the U.S. Constitution should inform a case, trotted out a parade of horrors that the court's decision would void laws defending Civilization against same-sex marriage, bigamy, prostitution, bestiality, necrophilia, and masturbation. (And what hope does Civilization have if the State can't outlaw masturbation in the privacy of one's home?)

The court's ruling voided anti-sodomy statutes in thirteen states. If you live in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Oklahoma, Missouri, Utah, Idaho or Michigan, you can thank John Geddes Lawrence for fighting for the right of you and your consenting adult partner to deviate from the missionary position without ending up on the National Registry of Sex Offenders, condemned to jail time followed by living under a freeway overpass.

Thanks to Dr. Thomas Schmeling for alerting me to this story!