A surprising number of states still have anti-sodomy laws on the books, nearly a decade after the Supreme Court ruled such laws unconstitutional.
Up until March, Virginia was the 14th state to maintain the federally unconstitutional legislation. The state's "Crimes Against Nature" statute, which outlaws sodomy between consenting adults, was
struck down last month after judges found it contradicted the 2003 Supreme Court ruling in
Lawrence v. Texas.
Now the state of Virginia, led by Attorney General Kenneth Cuccinelli, has appealed to the 4th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Richmond,
asking the court to allow the statute to stand so he can prosecute a 47-year-old man who
solicited a 17-year-old for oral sex.
As various outlets have noted, Cuccinelli's appeal raises a broader question: Why do so many states continue to keep laws that contradict the federal precedent?
As Mother Jones reports,
it takes work to keep the laws. While Virginia has argued that it needs such a law to prevent sex between adults and minors, in the decade since
Lawrence v. Texas,
state legislatures have prevented efforts to repeal anti-sodomy laws in Montana, Kansas, Utah, Louisiana, North Carolina and Texas.
"Conservatives in those states know they can't enforce the laws, but by keeping them in the code, they can send a message that homosexuality is officially condemned by the government," the news outlet wrote in 2011.
Writing for
The Week, Dana Liebelson points out that
anti-sodomy laws are far from meaningless relics. In 2008, North Carolina used its statute to arrest two men who had engaged in consensual sex. (The charges were later dropped.) And in 2011, police in El Paso, Texas, kicked a pair of gay men out of a Mexican restaurant for "homosexual conduct." No citation was ever issued."If you pass a law that says no one can drive a car and that law gets struck down, you can't later use it to prosecute someone who is committing a bank robbery in a getaway car," Gregory Nevins, an attorney for Lambda Legal, told
The Week. "The cynical explanation of why these laws are still around is that
it keeps members of the LGBT community in their place."
However, while Cuccinelli has argued that protecting minors is his goal, the politician has
previously stated that homosexual sex is "wrong" and suggested it be banned, ThinkProgress notes.
"My view is that homosexual acts, not homosexuality, but homosexual acts are wrong," Cuccinelli told
The Virginian-Pilot in 2009. "They're intrinsically wrong. And I think in a natural law-based country it's appropriate to have policies that reflect that."
© Tim Murphy, motherjones.comThe distinction 'only if you're gay' is meaningless given that homosexuality and anal sex 'go hand in hand'. So, in 2014, 14 U.S. states, as a matter of official policy, consider homosexuality illegal, immoral and unnatural.
Well, actually its more of a comment. You might want to check the facts before making the claim "There you have it: legal in Russia, illegal in the USA."
The entire article shows how laws against sodomy (homosexual acts) are on the books in some US states, but are not enforceable due to US Supreme Court precedents. In laws that have been rendered non enforceable, such as sodomy laws, their prohibitions are 'de facto' decriminalized, but because they are still a law, they are 'de jure' illegal. (Reference the status of marijuana in the Netherlands where the substance is 'de jure' illegal, but because policies of non-enforcement exist, the substance has been rendered 'de facto' legal.)
The basis for saying that homosexual acts are "legal in Russia," is from the phrase, "On May 27, 1993, homosexual acts between consenting males were decriminalized."
It sounds to me like they are still illegal in Russia, but decriminalized just like in some US states. You might want to check just to be sure.