photo: politico
Ken Cuccinelli has been in the news before for his orthodox stance on a number of hot button issue, but his call in the past few days for a re-hearing of the ruling that deemed the law against oral sex and sodomy in the state of Virginia unconstitutional is raising quite a few eyebrows.
As the nation awaits the ruling from the Supreme Court of the U.S. on the issue of same-sex unions, Mr. Cuccinelli seems to have missed the boat entirely by ignoring the general consensus that favors such unions.
The sodomy law and oral-sex laws was ruled unconstitutional by the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals. It is interesting to notice that the law itself applies to the practice of anal sex and oral sex by any individual, be that person straight or gay.
A spokesman for the office of the Atty General declared that Cuccinelli's stance is not about the sexual orientation of the person 'committing' the act, but that his intent is to withhold the law to protect underage girls from older predators.
The law is within a wider frame of crimes called 'Crimes Against Nature' statute, and is being applied to a case that was documented in the New York Times in January of 2011 in which a man was charged for having consensual oral sex with two young women who where ages 16 and 17. In Virginia however, the age of consent is 15 years old. That would have made the case moot.
Enter the Crimes Against Nature interpretation of the law, and voila`, the consensual sex become not only a crime, but a felony. In fact, the man could only be charged with 'causing' the delinquency of a young woman, if the woman was between 15 and 18 years of age, but that crime was a misdemeanor. Enter Cucinelli, who never misses an opportunity to use laws indirectly for his own political purposes.
Since Virginia still has its sodomy laws firmly in place, the state, wanted to use it to charge the man with a felony. That is an unusual and gratuituos interpretation of the law, since regular sex is ok, but oral sex is not. When the case was brought to the 4th circuit, it was struck down on the basis that the Supreme Court of the United States had ruled such laws unconstitutional in 2003.
But therein lies the hypocrisy of the Atty General, who wants to hide his efforts to keep the sodomy laws in place to ostracize and persecute gay people, behind a case that truly has little to do with the law in question.
If he wanted to make a bona fide effort to stop underage sex, he should have asked for a stricter law on the age of consent limit, and raise it to say 17 or 18.
Cuccinelli, however, has made himself quite clear on his stance about homosexuality in 2004, when legislators tried to modify the law so that the Crimes Against Nature would only apply to public sex, sex with minors and prostitution. In that case Cuccinelli was happy to block that effort, and he further added that "my view is not that homosexuality is wrong, but that homosexual acts are wrong." The statement, made by a man of the law, is unusually disingenouos, since a parsing of the act, cannot exclude the actor, nor viceversa. However, he did add, for good measure that "they're intrinsically wrong, and I think in a natural law based country, it's appropriate to have policies that reflect that. ....they don't comport with natural law."
Op-Ed
Partial Souce: Mother Jones 4.5.13
Politico 3.14.13/2.26.13
No comments:
Post a Comment