You know those hilarious, harmless laws from the old days that somehow manage to remain on the books for years and years even when they’re no longer applicable to society? (The ones about petticoats and carriages.)
It turns out some aren’t so funny when states take them seriously.
On Feb. 16, the Center for Constitutional Rights and its associates filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of nine plaintiffs contesting one of these laws: Louisiana Statute 14:89, Solicitation of Crimes Against Nature (SCAN).
The CCR complains SCAN is a “200-year-old statute that condemns non-procreative sex acts and sex acts traditionally associated with homosexuality, solely on grounds of moral disapproval.”
They’re dead on. SCAN is blatantly discriminatory and a blight on Louisiana’s legal system.
A double standard is obvious.
SCAN operates separately from the Solicitation of Prostitution statute. The latter deems all other (by default “natural”) prostitution punishable only by fines and time spent in jail. The former is punishable by those methods as well as being branded a Tier 1 sex offender.
The problem is apparent in the name itself. The word “nature” is vague and consequently open to interpretation, but the law takes the definition as set and implies an inherent moral certainty.
The consensus is that moral certainty is subjective, not consistent from one person to the next and most often based on religion.
Doesn’t the Constitution protect freedom of religion and equality?
If that’s so, then to punish on harsh moral grounds is unconstitutional, right?
Homosexuality isn’t explicitly protected from discrimination by the Constitution, but it should be.
Yet the statute clearly (if more subtly than before) represents the prejudices of the people who designed it some 200 years ago.
The term “unnatural carnal copulation,” which is used in the statute, is the key term. Because of cultural mores and historical precedence, the term is generally taken to refer to both oral and anal (but not vaginal) sex acts, which are historically associated with homosexuality. Louisianian courts have agreed.
Thus, the basis for prejudice is already established.
The statistics are telling: 40 percent of Louisiana sex offenders were convicted of a crime against nature, making it the single most frequent law with which sex offenders are convicted in Orleans Parish. Of those convicted, 80 percent are black and 76 percent are low-ncome and transgender women. The law purportedly also targets gay men of color.
While attempts are being made to correct the situation, abuse of power in the New Orleans Police Department is hardly a foreign concept.
Prostitutes are already the objects of negative cultural associations, easy targets for violence and discrimination. Unfortunately, being labeled a Tier 1 sex offender further marginalizes them and only makes the situation worse.
Labeling restricts options for seeking help after sentences are served, lasts for 15 or more years, limits housing opportunities and humiliates prostitutes by submitting them to the same treatment as violent, depraved criminals.
But prostitution isn’t normally those things (at least not on the prostitute’s part) and thus doesn’t deserve the same treatment, no matter what services are offered.
If anything, prostitutes are victims. They have to deal with the violent nature of the industry itself, as well as the underlying mental and socioeconomic factors which caused them to enter “the world’s oldest profession” in the first place.
Last year, lawmakers changed the statute to make first-time crime-against-nature convictions misdemeanors. However, a second conviction still has the previously stated severe consequences, which the CCR and their associates are fighting to remove altogether.
Statute 14:89 needs to go. If juries are just, it will.
Macy Linton is a 19-year-old international studies freshman from Memphis, Tenn. Follow her on Twitter
@TDR_Mlinton.
 
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Contact Mary Linton at [email protected]