Louisiana’s 198-year-old “crimes against nature” law took a crippling blow Thursday when the Supreme Court declared a similar Texas statute unconstitutional.
Louisiana’s law prohibited all anal or oral sex between any two people, regardless of gender. The law was rarely enforced, but if convicted, participants could have served up to five years in jail and paid a $2,000 fine.
Louisiana is one of 13 states affected by the Lawrence v. Texas decision. The Texas law only applied to homosexuals, as did the anti-sodomy laws of three other states. Louisiana is one of nine states that applied anti-sodomy laws to all people regardless of sexual orientation.
Obviously, the statute made very common acts felonies. Thousands of people engage in oral and anal sex in Louisiana. All of these people could have been felons. Proponents of the statute claimed it was only rarely enforced, using the “why fix it if it isn’t broken” argument, but the issue at hand was the government’s ability to prosecute someone arbitrarily for virtually harmless private acts. As the mores of our society changed as our worldviews expanded, why didn’t this law?
Last week I criticized Sen. Lynn Dean for his comments regarding the birth control pill. My opinions have since changed for the 79-year-old self-made millionaire.
In April Dean proposed an amendment to Louisiana’s sodomy laws making all private sexual acts between two consenting adults legal, short of prostitution and bestiality.
“I try to imagine myself in that position,” Dean told the Associated Press. “When you get to know some of these supposedly deviant people, they’re really good people. If we’re ever gonna have justice in this country, we’ve got to treat people fairly.”
Unfortunately, the bill failed 23-10 with little debate on the Senate floor in early June. Curiously, a state Senator who was recently arrested for committing such acts in a New Orleans business failed to vote on the issue.
How could our government enforce a law so blatantly hypocritical? How many of the 23 men who voted against the bill engage in the acts they refuse to make legal?
In his dissenting opinion Justice Scalia blasted “the homosexual agenda.” Was it the homosexual agenda that stopped the Louisiana legislature from changing the law?
The cultural ambiance of Louisiana makes the law all the more peculiar. We celebrate Mardi Gras and exaggerate our Bourbon Street reputation. So why do we have laws promoting puritanical agendas? This state has always had a vibrant homosexual community whose members have contributed many things to our state (e.g. John Kennedy Tool).
People criticize the Supreme Court’s ruling, and I am appalled. What gives government the right to play Big Brother and tell individuals in their own homes what to and not to do just because a loud minority thinks it is wrong?
I agree with Dean when he told the Associated Press in response to the ruling, “We’ve now got a little bit more freedom in this land we call the land of the free.”
Our country is about individual freedoms and not religious purity.