Posted on 03/29/2002 7:02:01 AM PST by chance33_98
NEW ORLEANS -- The Louisiana Supreme Court has refused to strike down the state's 200-year-old law against sodomy.
The justices ruled the ban does not violate privacy rights spelled out in the state constitution.
The ruling comes in a civil lawsuit filed by a Louisiana gay rights group.
The plaintiffs' attorney said the Louisiana high court has upheld a law that invades the privacy of all consenting adults, including heterosexuals.
According to Merriam-Webster, sodomy is "copulation with a member of the same sex or with an animal noncoital, and especially anal or oral copulation with a member of the opposite sex."
Louisiana also does not have a law prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation; however its hate crimes laws does include sexual orientation.
The punishment for sodomy in Louisiana is five years in prision and/or a fine of $2,000.
That's not as strict as Mississippi, North Carolina and Puerto Rico, which can send you away for 10 years for sodomy, according to the ACLU.
In Michigan, sodomy is a felony that carries 15 years. And in Massachusetts, you can be behind bars for 20 years for sodomy, according to the ACLU.
First, why couldn't Clinton and Monica have happened there?
Second, why would you want to live in a place like that-- it's hard enough getting a wife to agree to it without allowing her to use the law as an excuse? : )
Sodomy as a felony, ranking oral sex right up there with armed robbery and murder. Making you and your sweetie the legal equivalent of Al Capone.
I can't think of a better way to foster disrespect for the law.
so they can have lots more sodomy!
for the cost of $50k per year for room and board, at least I'm secure in knowing these freaks and misfits are isolated with their own kind
Think about it. Is anyone going to stop having oral sex because some legislator says so? No. They'll go on just like they have been. If it ever occurs to them that what they're doing is not only illegal but a felony, it will only be to smirk and laugh at the nitwits who made the law.
It makes a joke of the law and the people who make laws.
When people later encounter laws like running red lights or littering, any respect for those laws won't be based on the respect for the judgment or the authority of the people who passed the laws, since their wisdom of how they exercise their authority is clearly in question.
Rather, they'll make up their own mind about laws, observing them only if they personally think they're a good idea. When they do decide to break one, the feeling won't be a new one.
As they run into enough of these absurd laws, a pattern emerges: Those in government have lost their mind, and they are only to be feared, not respected. Indeed, there are so many laws on the books that the average person breaks several of them every day, most times not even knowing it. People start to get used to being criminals, and the word criminal begins to lose its meaning.
The only practical effect this law has is to make criminals out of otherwise law-abiding citizens and to teach people to embrace anarchy. That's no way to run a government.
Massachusetts, the home of Gerry Studds (former congressman who confessed to sex with a 16-year-old page), Barney Frank (whose boyfriend ran an "escort service" operation out of his Washington residence), a governor who looks the other way as state funds are used for teaching teenagers about the pleasures of sliding hands up other teens' anuses, and judges who rule that state troopers don't have the right to arrest gay men who meet at roadside rest stops for anonymous outdoor sex.
Yeah, Massachusetts a safer place for gays is a high-priority.
Good for you! Go for it.
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