Supreme Court Refuses To Hear Cuccinelli's Anti-Sodomy Law Appeal

UPDATE: Josh Israel of ThinkProgress weighs in, noting: "This is not Cuccinelli’s first high-profile legal defeat as attorney general. His legal challenge to the Affordable Care Act, his attempt to block EPA regulation of greenhouse gases, and his fishing expedition into a former University of Virginia climate scientist have all been defeated by the courts." Bottom line: the guy's not just corrupt and an extremist, he's utterly incompetent at his job. 

Maintaining his unbroken losing record of cases filed in federal court for the purpose of furthering his extremist agenda, Ken Cuccinelli's appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court to save the twice struck down Virginia sodomy statute - a statute near and dear to the hearts of the Christofascists who would seek to rule out all sex except between heterosexual married couples utilizing the missionary position - went down in flames today as the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear appeal.  It's yet another instance of Cuccinelli refusing to accept the plan language of a Supreme Court ruling (in this case the 2003 ruling in Lawrence v. Texas) when the ruling doesn't comport with Cuccinelli's extremist views. Anyone with even a modicum of a command of the English language can read the unconstitutional statute and understand that it does NOT say what Cuccinelli has tried to say it says under a bizarre and twisted construction.  Moreover, Cuccinelli knows full well that the real historic application of the law has been against gays so as to charge them with felonies rather than mere misdemeanors as required by the solicitation/prostitution statute. The Washington Post has coverage.  Here are excerpts:

The U.S. Supreme Court declined Monday to take up an appeal of a lower-court ruling that struck down Virginia’s anti-sodomy law, halting state Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II’s long-standing legal efforts to preserve the statute.

Cuccinelli is the Republican nominee for governor on the Nov. 5 ballot, and Virginia’s “crimes against nature” law — which bans oral and anal sex — has become a flash point in his contest against businessman Terry McAuliffe (D), who has portrayed Cuccinelli as an extremist on social issues.

The McAuliffe campaign has previously called the sodomy law defense an example of Cuccinelli’s “extreme agenda and uncompromising approach,” and Cuccinelli said in 2009 he believed “homosexual acts are wrong and should not be accommodated in government policy.”

McAuliffe has called for the law to be updated so it could still target predators without violating the 2003 Supreme Court ruling. Cuccinelli’s campaign sought to use the issue against McAuliffe, accusing the Democrat of “playing politics instead of protecting our children.”

James Parrish, the executive director of the gay rights organization Equality Virginia, said the General Assembly has had 10 years since the first Supreme Court ruling to update its law and has not done so. As a state senator in 2004, Cuccinelli voted against a bill that would have made clear that the law no longer covered private consensual acts between adults.  “In our view, this was already decided, and the Supreme Court just echoed that” Monday, Parrish said. “I’m sure most Virginians would like to see the General Assembly clean up our code.”

The New Civil Rights Movement has these additional on target comments:

He was so close to reopening Lawrence V Texas, the case that said laws prohibiting sodomy were unconstitutional, that he could taste it. Campaign or not, he didn’t trust anyone else to take over as the battlefield commander in the Holy War for Missionary Position Only in America! 

That the Supreme Court was not interested in hearing the Virginia case of MacDonald V Moose, is not a surprise to anyone, save perhaps Cuccinelli. The “Crimes Against Nature” statute under which the conviction was rendered makes all kinds of common sexual acts illegal, including oral sex between heterosexual couples. 

When the Supreme Court handed down their decision in Lawrence V Texas in 2003, the Virginia legislature recognized their Crimes Against Nature statute was unconstitutional, and tried to bring it into compliance by adding a consenting adults exception. Newly elected State Senator Ken Cuccinelli led the resistance and killed the changes in committee, so all these years, if you have had so much as a blow job in Virginia, you have been guilty of a felony.

I hope the Supreme Court's bitch slapping of Cuccinelli gets plenty of media coverage.  Cuccinelli cannot even pick winning court challenges, yet he wants to be Governor and drag Virginia decades if not centuries backward in time.