Louisiana is gradually wheezing its way into the 21st century in spite of itself. This week a committee recommended that the state finally repeal its sodomy laws, which have been unconstitutional for 11 years but still used by police to illegally arrest gay men.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2003 that sodomy laws violate the Constitution. That’s great! But some backwater parts of the country simply pretended that it didn’t happen. In Baton Rouge, police ran an entrapment scheme in which they’d meet gay men at parks, and then arrest them for “attempted crimes against nature” even if the victim proposed that they retire to a private residence for sex.
Obviously, it’s not OK to arrest grownups for meeting, forming a relationship, and then scurrying off to the bedroom, since that is how the species gets propagated. And in the wake of Lawrence v. Texas, the stings were clearly illegal. An outrage followed, and now finally the Louisiana house is talking about repealing the “carnal copulation” bill.
But incredibly, even though it violates the US Constitution, some lawmakers want to keep it on the books, including Governor Bobby Jindal. Why do you hate the Constitution, Bobby Jindal?
A House committee passed the bill on a vote that was much closer than it should have been: 9 to 6. And the matter attracted a lot of attention from ignorant hill folk who apparently traveled here from the 1950s. Various citizens spoke out in favor of the anti-gay law, saying that legalizing sodomy will make parks unsafe, that being gay is a death sentence, and that if the law is overturned then the next thing the gays will want is a home-invading sexy-dancing parade. We are not joking about this. These are all actual things that people said.
Now the bill goes the the full House and then on to the Senate, and lord knows what crazy horse shit those people will come up with. Please deal with your nuts, Louisiana, they are embarrassing you! And then once that’s taken care of, come join us in the year 2014.
Dakotahgeo
The entire Southern Tier of States is infected and toxic to human beings. Being the prodigy of swamp monsters, there isn’t much doubt about their genetic make-up!
Dakotahgeo
@Dakotahgeo: Correction: Possibly only the Central and southeastern Southern States. Arizona and Texas may yet shape up!California and Colorado seem to be well ahead of the game! Kudos to them!
courthousedoc
Doesn’t General Sherman have some relatives who can return to the south and finish what he obviously didn’t complete.
davidP.
Playing Devil’s Advocate, let me pick out a few things in this article.
“Obviously, it’s not OK to arrest grownups for meeting, forming a relationship, and then scurrying off to the bedroom, since that is how the species gets propagated. ” um, two men will not “propagate” the species! LOL I get the point of this, but how it is worded is really funny. The Anti-gays will easily use that against you.
Some of the stuff that ignorant commenters had said may be out of context to make it all the more idiotic, but the one about making parks unsafe, I think I know where that comes from. Recently there have been parks in the USA where POLITICIANS even were caught having sex, not in a bedroom. In the DC area, I won’t say where exactly, a girl who lived here a long time pointed out as we passed by the area of a park where gay men will meet to fuck, who do not know each other. She is Queer, and SHE is disgusted by this, and will not use that park at all.
There is no reason for anyone gay or straight to use public property, or property of others such as workplace or church for example, to do sexual acts that others may see….except for the excitement of maybe being caught. That is a kink not gayness itself, but it is gay men in particular who have been reported and caught doing it, and I am sure that is part of what the comment was referring to.
Wiki explains more about the Supreme Court decision, which says if both people consent to sex, it cannot be punishable. This makes me wonder if it could be used to make prostitution legal if they both were doing it consensually? This decision clearly said not for “commercial” reasons, but I would think it does set a precedent if they wanted to pursuit it.
Being arrested is not so bad as what used to occur, castration and death. This is what Wiki said about our nation’s origins of anti-gay laws:
” In 1779, Thomas Jefferson wrote a law in Virginia which contained a punishment of castration for men who engage in sodomy,however, what was intended by Jefferson as a liberalization of the sodomy laws in Virginia at that time was rejected by the Virginia Legislature, which continued to prescribe death as the maximum penalty for the crime of sodomy in that state.
Prior to 1962, sodomy was a felony in every state, punished by a lengthy term of imprisonment and/or hard labor. In that year, the Model Penal Code (MPC) — developed by the American Law Institute to promote uniformity among the states as they modernized their statutes — struck a compromise that removed consensual sodomy from its criminal code while making it a crime to solicit for sodomy.”
Also…to view how bad it was just a few years ago…
“At the time of the Lawrence decision in 2003, the penalty for violating a sodomy law varied very widely from jurisdiction to jurisdiction among those states retaining their sodomy laws. The harshest penalties were in Idaho, where a person convicted of sodomy could earn a life sentence. Michigan followed, with a maximum penalty of 15 years imprisonment while repeat offenders got life.”
For the states that changed their laws AFTER 2003, because of this ruling:
” In 2005 Puerto Rico repealed its sodomy law, and in 2006 Missouri repealed its law against “homosexual conduct”. In 2013, Montana removed “sexual contact or sexual intercourse between two persons of the same sex” from its definition of deviate sexual conduct, Virginia repealed its lewd and lascivious cohabitation statute, and sodomy was legalized in the US armed forces.
In 2005, basing its decision on Lawrence, the Supreme Court of Virginia in Martin v. Ziherl invalidated § 18.2-344, the Virginia stature making fornication between unmarried persons a crime.”
Florida is not the only state needing to do some revising of their laws.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodomy_laws_in_the_United_States
Naja
Louisiana already has sex parades. In fact, they put them on the brochure every year. It’s called Mardi Gras.
Aires the Ram
@davidP:
Has it ever occurred to you that men have been having sex in parks, rest rooms, rest areas, behind the barn, out in the woods, etc etc etc for CENTURIES, all because male homosexuality was tabu, and many if not all states and countries had laws outlawing homosexual sex? To this day, in the South, do you seriously think a gay male couple could buy a home in a small town/rural area and not draw so much hatred that they’d be vandalized and most likely burned out, perhaps killed?
When you spout off about gay men having sex in public spaces, take a frigging break for a hot minute and understand the history behind why they do.
I grew up in a rural part of the upper Midwest, and it wasn’t really all that many years ago that parks and public spaces were a gay mans only place to meet other “Friends of Dorothy”.
Mezaien
@Naja: I wanted to say something about it! but I cannot. Queerty, run by fucked up Christian.
litper
The only thing that should be banned is propaganda of hetero-transgenderism like on that picture. Men in makeup looking like women – that’s trans anti-gay activists dream to turn all gay men into straight women to celebrate heterosexuality!
Larry
I guess they dont realize that other than condoms and pills, sodomy is the most effective way of preventing pregnancy but heteros. And they use it in every state of the union.
BabyGurlJessi
@litper: There go’s another gay man attacking trans women again
Guillermo3
@Naja: Right!! Even Time magazine noted over 30 years ago that Mardi Gras is the gay equivalent of the Harvard/Yale game.
randeman
Conservatives support the Constitution only if it says what they want it to say.
NiceNCool1
“saying that legalizing sodomy will make parks unsafe”
Straight people have sodomy all the time, and if you’re so worried about parks, then how about encouraging gays to marry one another and have some marriage equality there?
“that being gay is a death sentence”
‘Life’ is a death sentence. It never stopped heterosexuals from cranking out one kid after the next sentencing those children to have to deal with the fact that life is finite. [I don’t care about how you use your stupid religion to escape that fact.]
“and that if the law is overturned then the next thing the gays will want is a home-invading sexy-dancing parade.”
That hasn’t happened anywhere else, so…
ShowMeGuy
Heck, walking home from work one day last month, I caught the view of a nasty man/woman couple engaged in heterosexual fornication…..right there in the edge of the woodline….on top of some homeless drifter’s skanked out blanket and deflated air mattress. Right out in the open, in front of G*D and everybody. It was disgusting.
davidP.
@Naja:
XD funny! And good point!
davidP.
@litper: You do not mean Transgender people are out to get Gays do you? That cannot be what you meant. But if it was, you need to meet more Trans people.
If you meant do the media mix up transvestites, transgender women, and effeminte Gays, yes, yes they do. It sells papers and gets straights to watch the TV news, which advertisers pay a lot of money to place ads on.
SteveDenver
I’ve been to Louisiana several times.
It sounds like state legislators are frightened gays will behave like HETEROSEXUALS.
davidP.
@NiceNCool1: Yeah I am unsure what the context or who the person was that commented about “home-invading” that just does not make sense at all. One thing I always have learned whether I read conservative or liberal media that is an “outrageous story” is try to see if I can find the original documents or original newspaper story, because a lot gets lost in translation. I have no clue if the person had said something prior to that snippet that would explain what they really meant, or if they were just mentally ill or had no clue what Gay was. It is so odd to know that state, the one Pat Robertson blamed as deserving the hurricane, seems to blame all their problems exclusively to Gay men and women. I had always thought their culture has in general been very odd and unlike the rest of the nation, and yet they cannot accept Gays? Must be the final throwback to Old South. Go figure!
davidP.
@ShowMeGuy: Maybe next time take a few photos and submit to a newspaper and have them write a story line showing how it is bias that targets only Gay men and not focus the laws upon every couple equally.
davidP.
@Aires the Ram: You need to address your concerns to Louisiana buddy, you read my post wrong. I was clear that I was playing Devil’s Advocate, does not mean I am the one uninformed, it means I am explaining how Heteros are likely reading all this, how their thinking works. BTW: The girl who pointed out the park in this area she will not go into for a run happens to be gay herself.