COURT ORDER

Virginia Finally Legalizes Sodomy—Is Interracial Dating Next?

re-criminalize-sodomyA decade after Lawrence v. Texas, a federal appeals court in Virginia has finally tossed the state’s law banning anal and oral sex between consenting adults.

In a 2-1 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit maintained the ban against “crimes against nature,” need to go, because  Lawrence established that “statutes criminalizing private acts of consensual sodomy between adults are inconsistent with the protections of liberty” in the Fourteenth Amendment’s right to due process.

Ironically, Texas still has a sodomy ban on the books. As Think Progress notes, it would take an act of the full Legislature to repeal that statute, and the Republican supermajority has blocked any attempts at repeal. In all, 14 states still ban consensual sodomy, four them specifically between two people of the same sex.

Photo: Bilerico Project 

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