That remains to be seen. A bill to change the penalty for oral & anal sex in VA narrowly passed the House by a single vote: 50-49.
IMHO, it’s unlikely to pass the more conservative Senate Courts of Justice Committee, meaning that sodomy will continue to be a felony unless you’re paying for it. That’s right, prostitution is only a misdemeanor punishable by a maximum fine of $250. Do I smell politicians catering to their own interests again?
Why is this antiquated law do difficult to repeal? Are other states having any better luck?
I believe wet paint signs and I don’t need to open the mailbox flap a 2nd time to verify that my letter obeyed the law of gravity.
IIRC, sex of any kind outside of marriage is still illegal in Virginia, although I don’t have a reference for that. Pretty ironic given our “Virginia is for lovers” motto
I’d imagine that senators, etc. are reluctant to vote in favor of oral and anal sex laws, even to repeal them. They’re probably afraid of being branded the “Senator in favor of anal sex” by their opponents
Old-fart legislators, as you suspected. Nevertheless, Virginia remains one of the fairest states in the Union. (And I don’t even live there!) Do what you want in your room; the Pigs will not catch you.
I don’t know about that. Although the law is meant to apply to both heterosexuals and homosexuals, in practice I think it is probably used to crack down on gays. Even if you’re in the privacy of your own bedroom, the pigs STILL could come after you…
A year or two ago D.C. repealed their sodomy laws (which they hadn’t enforced for years). There was a big multi-page spread in the Washington Post about the contrasting laws in Maryland and Virginia. One Virginian felon’s story was told: he was in the middle of a messy divorce proceeding, when his wife’s attorney asked if he had ever performed oral sex on his wife. Without knowing the law on the subject, he aswered of course. Not only did he lose in the proceeding, but he got thrown in jail for sodomy.
There are two Virginia’s, Northern Virginia and Tidewater, vs. the (mostly rural) rest of the state. It’s the tension between these two sides that cause most of the turmoil in the Commonwealth. When most people hear the term “sodomy”, they think of gays, and in the rural part of the state there is little tolerance of that. No legislator from that part of the state wants to be smeared in a campaign as being pro-gay.
What they don’t realize is that the sodomy laws affect hetero- and homosexual alike. I think those legislators could explain themselves away with “hey, I think gay sex is an abomination against God, just like any good Christian” (the ensuing uproar would mark the guy as being not-pro-gay), “and I’m against sex outside of marriage. But the current law makes oral and anal sex between married people a felony, and that’s just crazy. Unfortunately, there’s no way to repeal the sodomy laws just for straight people.” The gay community would make token protests against the legislator for being a bigoted pig, but their anger would perhaps be tempered by the knowledge that this “pig” was doing them a big favor. It just might work. But lawmakers rarely do anything just because it’s the right thing to do, they do it because they can gain an advantage. So the trick is to find an advantage for a lawmaker who’s gutsy and smart enough to take the issue on.
