The Extinction of Gay Identity

I will be sailing today at the Hampton Yacht Club where I am a member. 

I "came out" about 16 and a half years ago in mid-life (hence the name of this blog).  During that period the world has changed much for the better:  the nation's remaining sodomy laws, including Virginia's were struck down in 2003, thereby removing would be felon status for even otherwise law abiding gays, public acceptance of LGBT individuals has soared - even in relatively conservative Tidewater Virginia gay couples are now welcomed as members of yacht clubs and country clubs - and in 2015 sames sex couples finally won the right to be married.  In Norfolk, where gays were once treated as somewhat radioactive and the pride event was a small event hidden in the back of a city park, Pride Fest is now the second largest festival of the year and the City of Norfolk provides significant funding and support because of the tourism and spending the event brings with it.  (Sadly, thanks to Republicans in Richmond all too willing to prostitute themselves to Christofascists, LGBT Virginians lack employment and housing non-discrimination protections).

Along the way, however, some things were lost.  At least half of the gay bars have closed and younger LGBT residents mix freely with their straight friends with no need to seek refuge in a gay bar where they can feel safe. On a Friday night now, the husband and I are more likely to dine with friends at the Hampton Yacht Club than go to one of the remaining gays bars with restaurant facilities.  In many ways - at least in Virginia's urban crescent - gays and lesbians have become mainstream.  All of this is a positive, yet a one time sense of belonging to a special tribe is gone.  When I first came out, I felt a certain level of safety walking into "The Wave" in Norfolk on a Saturday night.  I knew I could simply be myself.  Last night, the husband and I attended a wonderful wedding at the Ford's Colony country club and not a soul batted an eye at a gay couple in attendance.   

A column in the New York Times looks at this sense of lost that at times I suspect that many of us in the LGBT community nonetheless feel.  Here are column highlights:

Mart Crowley, the author of the groundbreaking gay play “The Boys in the Band,” lives in a Manhattan apartment building that he used to visit frequently, for parties, in the late 1960s, when “Boys” had its theatrical debut. It’s on East 54th Street, No. 405, and its nickname, he told me, used to be “four of five,” because that was supposedly the ratio of gay residents.

That is not the ratio now. “It’s all yuppies and kids in strollers and all of that — and a few old codgers,” Crowley, 82, said over a recent lunch. The gays have scattered, not just from that building but from others, and we’ve distributed ourselves throughout the city — and throughout society. Gay sanctuaries are vanishing.

Is that true of gay culture and gay identity, too? I increasingly get the sense that gayness itself has scattered, becoming something more various and harder to define. “Gay” tells you about a person’s lusts and loves, but it used to tell you more — about his or her boldness, irreverence, independence. It connoted a particular journey and pronounced struggle, and had its own soundtrack, sartorial flourishes and short list of celebrity icons. Not so anymore. These thoughts came to mind as “Boys” comes back into view. For its 50th anniversary, it’s getting its first-ever Broadway production, with an all-gay, all-star cast including Jim Parsons, Matt Bomer and Zachary Quinto. The play is a postcard from an era that we have thankfully moved past, a point of reference for our hard-won success over the last half-century and our arrival in an infinitely better place. But it’s also a reminder of a glue that has gone missing among many gay men. Among many lesbians, too, . . . . We were tribes in a way that we no longer are, with rituals that we no longer have, and with a shared story. [T]he gay theatrical canon — or, rather, the gay male theatrical canon — ends in 1993, with Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America.” That play followed “The Normal Heart,” “Torch Song Trilogy” and, decades earlier, “Boys.” All were born of the bigotry that gays endured and the grace that they forged in the face of it. . . . . Sometimes, to judge from what’s onstage, I have to conclude that Crate & Barrel is sponsoring the new gay agenda,” Green writes . . . . "Boys"  . . . captures the flair for melodrama, appetite for mischief and exaggerated sense of humor — alternately self-lacerating and self-lionizing — that constituted a gay armor, worn because we lived in a sort of exile. I donned it myself in the 1980s, from my late teens through my mid-20s, as I took the temperature of the country around me, wondering exactly how cold to me it would be. Crowley said that if someone had told him then that the United States Supreme Court would someday legalize same-sex marriage, he would have responded, “That’s rather insane.” It happened in 2015. But there had been enough progress toward the acceptance and integration of gays by 2005 that Andrew Sullivan wrote an essay in The New Republic titled “The End of Gay Culture,” which he imagined would “expand into such a diverse set of subcultures that ‘gayness’ alone will cease to tell you very much about any individual.” We’re there.

Gays aren’t yet on an equal legal footing with straight people. We’re frequently derided (I’m looking at you, Mike Pompeo) and assaulted. How gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender people are treated hinges on where we live, what color we are, how much money we have and whom we work for.

I’m 53, I came out a few years later than she did, and I remember that simply telling someone that I was gay made me interesting at a time when most gay people weren’t forthcoming about that. I remember that visiting a gay bar or resort had an electric charge, because I was traversing forbidden ground. No matter how open I was about it, being gay felt a bit like belonging to a secret society.

“Everything costs something,” Crowley told me. “Gay culture is so diffuse now, where it was once so cloistered and clandestine. It was like our own world — the world was inside out.”

“I wouldn’t trade any of the progress,” I said to him. “And yet.”  “And yet,” he agreed. But, he added, with no equivocation, “You wouldn’t want that world back.”

“Boys in the Band” makes that clear, while also making sure that a lost world is remembered.

All of this said, I am thrilled that things have changed for the better.  Growing up in the closet and desperately suppressing who I was, I could never have dreamed of the life I can now live.  It's wonderful that young gays can grow up knowing that they can marry, have families, and not be haunted by a sense of being "other."  Hopefully, the Trump/Pence regime does not take that away. 

Message to Business Groups: Oppose Anti-Gay AG Candidate John Adams

Herring supports equality, Adams opposes it and wants special rights for Christofascists

Four years ago we saw right wing, anti-gay GOP extremist Ken Cuccinelli running for Governor of Virginia.  Thankfully, he went down to defeat and the Commonwealth dogged a very serious bullet. This year we have a slightly more polished but no less extreme candidate running as the Republican candidate for Attorney General.  Like Cuccinelli is largely driven by one thing: his religious extremism and animus towards LGBT citizens.  His ads falsely talk about "taking politics" out of the office of the Attorney General, yet, if elected, his agenda would amount to granting special rights to Christian extremists and persecuting Virginia's LGBT citizens. Adams would become ayatollah in chief for Christofascists organizations like The Family Foundation, Virginia's leading hate group. Compounding Adams' unfitness for office is his affinity for pandering to special interests.  Indeed, much of his legal career has, in my view, been devoted to protecting big banks and ruthless corporations and white collar criminals.  A piece in MetroWeekly looks at an appeal being made to business organizations to reject Adams.  Here are highlights:  

Equality Virginia Advocates, the political action arm of Equality Virginia, is calling on the political action committees of various pro-business groups not to endorse Republican Attorney General candidate John Adams in his bid to unseat AG Mark Herring.

Specifically, EVA wants the Northern Virginia Business PAC, the Hampton Roads Business PAC, and the Northern Virginia Technology Council PAC to weigh and carefully consider whether the anti-LGBTQ statements made by John Adams would send a hostile message to LGBTQ Virginians and their families.

In a letter to the three political action committees, EVA argues that Adams’ on-the-record statements not only opposing marriage equality but LGBTQ rights in general — as well as his urging the Virginia General Assembly to impeach Mark Herring for refusing to defend the commonwealth’s ban on same-sex marriage — are inconsistent with the groups’ purported claims of supporting candidates that will foster a “pro-business” environment.

LGBTQ advocates say, any perceived hostility towards LGBTQ people may make businesses second-guess relocating to or expanding operations in the commonwealth, particularly in light of the backlash that North Carolina received after it passed its controversial HB 2 law, complete with provisions that encouraged discrimination against LGBTQ people.

“Groups supporting Adams for Attorney General will be sending a hostile message to LGBT employees and hurting Virginia’s business-friendly reputation,” EVA writes in the letter to the political action committees. “It is our belief that Adams would use the Attorney General’s office to pursue his own personal anti-equality agenda.”

Given Virginia’s longstanding reputation as a low-tax, business-friendly state (with Democrats and Republicans generally towing the line), the PACs’ decisions on who to endorse are always a politically contentious issue. 

In 2013, the Northern Virginia Business PAC endorsed Herring, Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam (now running for governor) and Gov. Terry McAuliffe, all Democrats, for office. However, the Northern Virginia Technology Council PAC eagerly endorsed gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli, whose LGBTQ record was well-publicized from his stint as both state senator and as Attorney General. Both decisions were roundly criticized by partisans on both sides.

Nonetheless, EVA wants to make its opposition to Adams clear to any business PACs that would think about endorsing him, rather than endorsing Herring, or refusing to issue an endorsement altogether.

Adams has made clear that he will pursue efforts to undermine equal rights as Attorney General. He has continued to vocally oppose marriage equality, even after the Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges,” the letter reads. “He has aggressively criticized efforts to protect the rights of transgender individuals, including his apparent support for the widely criticized ban on military service.

“And earlier this year in a speech, he argued for allowing archaic state sodomy laws. These laws, which have been rejected by most Republicans and Democrats for many years, would make it a crime to be gay in Virginia,” EVA writes. “Adams is not just opposed to advancing gay rights, he wants to allow government to actively persecute gay Virginians simply because of who they are. An Attorney General with this type of discriminatory and outdated agenda would send a terrible message about Virginia’s business climate.”

Yes, that's right, Adams wants to bring back the sodomy laws as a means to prosecute Virginians for being gay. 

Could Jamaica End Colonial-Era Gay Sex Ban?

Years ago I traveled to Jamaica on business when I was in-house counsel for an oil company.  I found the country to be gorgeous (on one trip I stayed here), the people friendly and a place I'd love to visit again were it no so homophobic.  Indeed, because of the rabid homophobia in Jamaica and its sodomy laws that date back to the imposition of British penal law against same sex relations - which calls for punishment of up to 10 years in prison with hard labor for those convicted of the "abominable crime of buggery" - in my view, one would have to be crazy to visit Jamaica if you are gay.  It's simply too dangerous.  Now, a legal challenge has been launched to have the law repealed.  It goes without saying that ignorance embracing "Christians" and parasitic pastors are opposed to bringing the nation into the 21st century.   Interestingly, the nation's largest newspaper, The Gleaner, has come out in favor of repeal of the law.  First highlights on the legal action from The Advocate:

Human rights activist Maurice Tomlinson filed a constitutional challenge to Jamaica's 1864 law banning "buggery," a.k.a. sodomy, on Thursday, the Associated Press reports — and some are seeing it as a first step at tackling the Caribbean nation's deep animus toward LGBT people.

Tomlinson's challenge follows a similar lawsuit that was brought last year, but was later withdrawn after the plaintiff faced threats against himself and his family. The initial challenge prompted a homophobic rally that brought 25,000 people to the streets.

The current law calls for punishment of up to 10 years in prison with hard labor for those convicted of the "abominable crime of buggery." Tomlinson's attorney say the law violates the Jamaican constitution by conflicting with the nation's Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms. Activists say the law legitimizes discrimination and encourages violence against LGBT people, of which there is no shortage in Jamaica.

"The law is a gross violation of my human rights and those of all LGBTI people in my country," Tomlinson said in a statement. "It directly infringes numerous rights guaranteed by Jamaica's Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms, and also fuels horrific violence."

As for The Gleaner's editorial, here are excerpts:

[W]e, like Mr Tomlinson and many other rational Jamaicans, know instinctively that not only are those laws offensive to the universal principles of individual rights and freedoms, but they are probably contrary to guarantees afforded by Jamaica's Constitution.

Under Jamaica's anachronistic sections of the Offences Against the Person Act, anal penetration, even between consulting adults, including husband and wife, and conducted in utmost privacy, is illegal, for which people can be sent to jail. But this criminalisation of anal sex is a cudgel used primarily against males in a still largely homophobic society, despite the pockets of increasing tolerance for male homosexuality.

These old attitudes, underpinned by the law, have consequences, some, while perhaps unintended, painfully severe. Not least of these being the assault on the dignity and emotional well-being of that significant proportion of the Jamaican society, male and female, that is homosexual. They are denied the right to openly display affection, or, in privacy, engage in acts of physical intimacy with persons they love or with whom they wish to have sexual relations.
If the State doesn't get you, the vigilantes might.

Little wonder that Jamaica has among the hemisphere's highest rates of HIV-AIDS among men who have sex with men. So, there is a public-health problem that is exacerbated by this silly old law.

Further, as we often argue, this newspaper sees no logic to the Jamaican State setting itself up as a kind of voyeuristic commissar of sexual practices. It certainly has no right in people's bedrooms to determine the acts in which they engage, whatever the gender or status of the participants.

The fundamental argument in favour of the buggery law is framed in a fundamentalist Christian and biblical construct of morality, to which probably the majority of Jamaicans subscribe. However, the Constitution prescribes freedom of religion, which we believe means not only the Judaeo-Christian variety. Importantly, also implied in this construct, we believe, is freedom from religion. Religious people have no greater right than others to be final arbiters of moral principles.

Louisiana House Votes to Retain Unconstitutional Law

Here in Virginia the Republican Party of Virginia is little more than an arm of the extreme Christofascists at The Family Foundation which disingenuously pretends to be a "family values organization" rather than an organization which seeks to subvert the U.S. Constitution.  Based on a vote in the Louisiana House of Representatives, things are not much different in Louisiana where the Louisiana Family Forum (which like The Family Foundation is an affiliate of Focus on the Family and the hate group, Family Research Council) carries more weight than the United States Constitution and the rulings of the U. S. Supreme Court.  The proof?  The Louisiana House of Representatives voted 67 to 27 to retain Louisiana's unconstitutional sodomy statute.  A statute that was ruled unconstitutional under Lawrence v. Texas and which is similar to Virginia's now former sodomy statute which was struck down a second time by the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals.  Think Progress looks at the batshitery reigning in Louisiana:

The Louisiana House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly — 27–67 — to retain a law banning “crimes against nature,” including oral sex and all forms of same-sex sexual contact. The law has been unenforceable for over ten years, since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Lawrence v. Texas that laws criminalizing consensual private sexual behavior are unconstitutional. The 67 lawmakers who opposed the repeal thus violated their oath of office, in which they swore to support the Constitution of the United States.

Repeal of the unconstitutional law was opposed by the Louisiana Family Forum, a state affiliate of Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council. In a letter to lawmakers, the group argued that “Louisiana’s anti-sodomy statute is consistent with the values of Louisiana residents who consider this behavior to be dangerous, unhealthy, and immoral.” The Louisiana Family Forum also alleged that the law was essential to protect children from sodomy, even though several other laws account for such protections.

The group also claimed that the law was necessary for punishing crimes against nature in public places. The law, however, was still being used as of last year to entrap gay men who consented in public places to have sex in private places.

As Joe.My.God. points out, though Louisiana’s unenforceable ban on oral sex and same-sex relations will remain on the books, necrophilia — sex with dead people — may remain legal there.

As the piece correctly notes, every legislator who voted to retain this law breached their oath of office by which they swore to uphold the United States Constitution, not some set of hate and fear based religious beliefs held by religious extremist.  Technically, every one of them should be removed from office.

Virginia Finally Repeals it Sodomy Statute

There must be wholesale mourning going on at The Family Foundation following a vote in the Virginia General Assembly which finally repealed Virginia's sodomy statute which had twice been ruled unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court and the 4th Circuit.  The heinous statute had long been supported by the Christofascists and theocrats who wanted gays charged with felonies rather than mere misdemeanor charges like others engaging in inappropriate sex.  Now, there will be uniformity across the board - I'm sure Victoria Cobb must have sobbed and torn her clothing on hearing the result of the vote.  Here are details from Think Progress (note that other states, mostly in the South, have yet to repeal such statutes):

The Virginia House of Delegates passed, 100 to 0, a bill Thursday that will finally eliminate an unconstitutional sodomy ban than made oral and anal sex — even between consenting married couples — a felony. The legislation, which passed the Senate unanimously last month, will now go to Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) for his signature.

After years of unsuccessful attempts to repeal the law, in 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court’s Lawrence v. Texas ruling held that states may not ban private non-commercial sex between consenting adults. Virginia’s Crimes Against Nature statute, which made oral sex (even between consenting married couples) a felony, was clearly the sort of legislation the Court was referencing. But a year later the Republican-controlled state legislature killed a bill to update the law and remove the statute’s consensual sodomy provisions. Virginia’s leading anti-LGBT forces opposed the update.

Last year, the federal courts overturned the conviction of a man charged, under Virginia’s Crimes Against Nature law, of soliciting a 17-year-old female for oral sex — a felony under the statute. Because that law — first enacted in 1950 to prohibit oral and anal sex, as well as bestiality — had not been updated, the court ruled it was unenforceable, putting the convictions of other sexual offenders and child predators at risk.

In response, Sen. Thomas A. Garrett (R) filed a bill in December that would have eliminated the ban on adult consensual sodomy, but would have made oral sex between 17-year-olds a felony, even if they were legally married. After ThinkProgress reported on this possibly unintended consequence, Garrett and the Senate Courts of Justice Committee agreed on a substitute version that generally treats all sex equally. 

More than a decade after the Lawrence decision, several other states still have sodomy bans on the books, including Alabama, Florida, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, and Utah.

 What is shocking is that even Del. Bob Marshall who is motivated by constant anti-gay animus voted for the repeal.   The vote is a major defeat for The Family Foundation.

Homophobia, not Homosexuality, Is Alien to Traditional African Culture

It drives me crazy to watch American Christofascists play blacks - both here in America and in Africa - for suckers and, worse yet, to see blacks allow themselves to be played for fools due to a lack of knowledge of true history.  Here in America, white Christofascists are the same group who used the Bible to justify segregation, bans on interracial marriage, racist views of blacks, and now back Republican Party efforts to disenfranchise blacks across the country.  Any black citizen that knows who these folks are ought to run screaming away from them.  Yet, here in Virginia, the racists and theocrats time and time again get black pastors to do their bidding like trained circus dogs.  Now we see the same thing happening in Africa where American Christofascists have been busy exporting hate and homophobia even as they see themselves losing the war against gays in America.  A piece in The Guardian looks at the fact that anti-gay violence and homophobia are NOT traditional to Africa.  It's all an import brought by colonial rule and white missionaries, many of who are Christofascists.  In my view, blacks who listen to American Christofascists would do well to have their foreheads tattooed with "I'm a cretin." Here are some story excerpts:

While the Sochi Olympics have understandably brought much needed attention to the prevalence of homophobia in Russia, the crisis for LGBT communities in African countries has only been given footnote status by comparison. Homosexuality is a crime in 38 of 54 sub-Saharan countries but even as tougher laws are being enacted in Uganda that would, for example, make it a crime not to report gay people to the police, there is a strain of cultural relativism often evident in debates on LGBT rights in Africa. This has allowed the apparent misconception among some people, both in Africa and the west, that homosexuality is an imperial import and that those opposed to the human rights of gay communities are simply reclaiming their pre-colonial cultural values.

Any person with the time to study the history of sexuality in traditional African cultures will discover that this claim is baseless. Indeed, the history of sexuality in traditional African societies has always been characterised by diversity in sexual practices and identities. Homosexual practices and identities are not new to Africa. What is new is the campaign for LGBT rights that has arisen in reaction to the revival of a homophobic legal and religious tradition inherited from European colonialism.

In the past few years, the movement against LGBT rights in Africa has brought together very strange bedfellows, African Muslim and Christian preachers with strong backing from rightwing American Christian organisations.

The dehumanisation of members of the gay community across Africa has been justified by invoking both God and traditional African culture. However, for over a century the same religious groups now claiming to be the custodians of traditional African cultures have been at the centre of programmes to systematically efface Africa's traditional cultures on grounds that, in their view, such cultures are un-Christian and un-Islamic. Thus, the position adopted by many of Africa's political and religious elites on issues relating to LGBT rights owes more to their colonial religious education than it does to their traditional African roots.

The very existence of "sodomy laws" imposed on many African cultures by British colonial rulers in an attempt to stem what they thought of as the sexual immorality of African cultures point to the presence of diversity in sexual practices among Africans prior to their encounter with Europeans.
I venture to suggest that indeed the absence of words for homosexuality in some African languages, if this is true, is in itself proof that gay people were never considered as existing outside of the norm in such traditional African societies. Thus, it is more likely that the language of "othering" now used to discuss and describe gay communities in Africa is a remnant of colonialism.

As I said, if blacks want to be true to their cultural history, it is the American Christofascists who need to be rejected and criminalized, not gays.   I'd further add another reason that American Christofascists have focused on Africa: their poisonous version of Christianity needs ignorant, uneducated populations to flourish.  African doing the bidding of these Christofascist are demonstrating their own ignorance and stupidity.  Harsh statements?  Yes, but all too true.  Fundamentalist Christianity is nothing less than a pestilence that needs to be eradicated.

Repeal of Virginia Fornication Law Fails

If one wants to know just how beholden the Republican Party is to the Christofascists in the party base, look no farther than the failed attempt to repeal a criminal statute on the books which makes having sex outside of marriage a crime. This antiquated statute is an embarrassment to Virginia, yet its repeal was killed by, you guessed it, the Republicans in the Virginia General Assembly.  The Virginia GOP has become a de facto sectarian party which takes its directions from The Family Foundation and other organizations that, if they had their way, would turn Virginia back into a modern day version of Puritan controlled Massachusetts in the 1600's.   It's the same mindset that keeps Virginia one of the most anti-gay states in America.  Here are highlights from a Virginian Pilot piece on the failed repeal effort:

Fornication is a term more often used in church than in court these days, but it still occupies space in Virginia’s criminal code and allows the state to fine anyone who has sex outside of marriage $250.

An effort to strike that part of the law failed in a House subcommittee Wednesday over concerns it would create loopholes for related statutes dealing with incest and other sex crimes.

HB914 was one of the last of a handful of bills this session seeking to eliminate antiquated tenets of Virginia law. Lawmakers also have rejected others looking to decriminalize suicide and adultery.

While prosecutions for the latter offenses are rare, they still occur. There were eight convictions for fornication last year, said Del. David Albo, R-Fairfax County, who chairs the House Constitutional Law Subcommittee, which struck down HB914.

The laws “represent a past that not everyone’s let go of,” a past that can take a long time to change, said Claire Guthrie Gastañaga, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia.

Suicide is a common-law crime with no set penalty. Adultery is a misdemeanor, punishable, like fornication, by a $250 fine.

Prosecutors sometimes use the charges in plea agreements when the original offenses were more severe, according to the subcommittee’s legal counsel. The U.S. Supreme Court has invalidated state laws penalizing sexual behavior between two consenting adults, Gastañaga said. Adultery instead is most often used as a weapon in divorce and custody proceedings, she added.

“This is just cleaning up the code,” Gastañaga said Wednesday in support of HB914. “You put your hand on the Bible and took an oath to uphold the constitution. … You didn’t agree to uphold the Bible.”

One morality bill that is making progress is SB14, which would decriminalize sodomy between consenting adults. The Senate Courts of Justice and Finance committees already have approved the measure, which may get a floor vote as soon as Friday.  If passed by that chamber, SB14 still will have to survive the conservative House Courts of Justice Committee.

Don't hold your breath on SB14 making it through the GOP controlled House of Delegates.  Without a doubt Victoria Cobb at The Family Foundation has issued an order for the bill to be killed.  Never mind that the current sodomy statute has been ruled unconstitutional twice.  Virginia will not truly move into the 21st century until the power of The Family Foundation is broken.

Virginia Scraps Plan To Make Oral Sex Between 17-Year-Olds A Felony

Sodomy obsessed former AG Ken Cuccinelli

Apparently nationwide mockery - actually even international mockery since even British news outlets ridiculed the state - has made Virginia Republicans think twice about resurrecting the state's twice invalidated sodomy statute and instead make oral and anal sex offenses on the same level as other sexual offenses by amending other provisions of the Virginia Code.  What's left of the sodomy statute would only apply to bestiality and incest offenses.  The substitute legislation can be seen here. Its an approach that follows the argument that was made on this blog on more than one occasion.  No doubt the Christofascists at The Family Foundation and Ken "Kookinelli" Cuccinelli will be most distressed that gays will not be targeted for more severe criminal penalties than heterosexuals.  Think Progress has a summary:

Responding to concerns about a proposed bill that would have brought back much of Virginia’s infamous “Crimes Against Nature” law and potentially made felons out of 17-year-old couples engaging in consensual oral sex, the Virginia Senate Committee for Courts of Justice unanimously adopted a substitute version on Wednesday. The revised bill would generally treat prostitution, child molestation, and other illegal sex acts the same way for oral and anal sex as for vaginal intercourse. 

Claire Guthrie Gastañaga, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia and a former chief deputy attorney general of Virginia, told ThinkProgress that her group opposed Garrett’s original proposal as it would still not pass constitutional muster. “If we want true reform,” she notes, “we want clarity in the law that treats sex as sex, so the rules are the same for everybody.”

While Garrett did not respond to an inquiry from ThinkProgress about the potential impact of the bill, he later told the Huffington Post, “I have heard the concerns and have started to draft an amendment to my bill that will deal with the unintended consequences of a bill that is nothing but well-intended.”

Garrett worked with the committee to amend the bill to address the concerns. He told the Washington Post that his aim was to protect children and would support clarifying its language to make clear that “sex acts are sex acts,” adding that “we need to make sure we protect children… not from each other.”

If enacted, it would end a decades-long struggle between privacy advocates and anti-LGBT groups like Virginia’s Family Foundation. The Crimes Against Nature law, which made oral and anal sex (even between consenting married couples) a felony in Virginia, was ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 2003 Lawrence v. Texas. But the state legislature refused to update the law and as a result, federal courts ruled in 2013 that even the provisions of the law dealing with child predators were unenforceable.

It is encouraging to see that the Virginia GOP may be finally coming to fear nationwide and international mockery more than the threats of The Family Foundation's dominatrix like president, Victoria Cobb.  Ms. Cobb must be acting like someone peed in her Cheerios after this change in the proposed bill.

The Virginia GOP's anti-gay dominatrix

Times Dispatch Column Slams GOP's Latest Effort to Revive Sodomy Statute

As note many times on this blog, members of the Republican Party of Virginia are obsessed with resurrecting the twice invalidated sodomy statute a/k/a the "crimes against nature" statute.   At first blush one has to wonder why the obsession, but once one realizes that the Virginia GOP is controlled by the viciously anti-gay "family values" group misnamed as The Family Foundation ("TFF"), the obsession begins to make sense. In addition to opposing abortion in every instance and pushing for a theocracy in Virginia, TFF's number one goal is to make life a living hell for LGBT Virginians and to criminalize us in every possible manner.  Hence GOP state Sen. Tom Garrett's misguided bill to restore the sodomy statute which could again expose gays to felony charges rather than mere misdemeanor charges.  Garrett (pictured at left) may claim his goal is to protect minors from adults, but the real agenda is something different.  A column in the Richmond Times Dispatch rightly takes Garrett and indirectly the GOP to task.  Here are excerpts:

Some Virginia public officials seem to have trouble grasping an extremely simple concept: Protecting children from sexual predation does not require drawing distinctions among different types of sex.  

Garrett recently introduced legislation to amend and re-enact Virginia’s notorious crimes-against-nature statute, which court rulings have rendered a nullity.  The bill renews the prohibitions against oral or anal sex with minors or in public, while stipulating that such acts between consenting adults in private do not violate the law.

This marks a considerable improvement over the position taken by Ken Cuccinelli, who believes homosexuality “brings nothing but self-destruction, not only physically but of [the] soul” and that “homosexual acts . . . should not be accommodated in government policy.”

[W]hile Garrett’s bill is an improvement, it still has a lot of problems, as others have pointed out at length. Virginia law lets 17-year-olds marry. But if those 17-year-olds then had oral sex, under Garrett’s original bill they would be committing felonies. Genital sex between an adult and a 17-year-old remains a misdemeanor, but merely to solicit oral sex with a 17-year--old would be a felony.

Moreover, public sex acts would be treated differently depending on what sort of conduct they involved: as felonies for “crimes against nature,” but misdemeanors otherwise. As the Virginia ACLU’s Claire Guthrie Gastañaga told ThinkProgress, Garrett’s original measure “leaves in place discriminatory treatment and doesn’t address the underlying problem that LGBT people are treated differently than folks that have other kinds of sex.”

Like they say, this isn’t rocket surgery: (1) Grown-ups should not prey on kids, and (2) sex belongs in the bedroom, not on the boardwalk. Virginia can easily regulate those two questions of “who” and “where” without ever bringing up the question of “how.” 

Sodomy Obsessed Virginia GOP Senator Would Make Oral Sex Between 17-Year-Olds A Felony

Ken Cuccinelli II (R) and State Senator Tom Garrett (R)

 The Republican Party of Virginia - or is it the GOP's puppet master at The Family Foundation - remains obsessed with criminalizing gay sex and stamping out sex acts that do not conform to the so-called "missionary position."  How else to describe the mindset behind Senator Thomas A. Garrett's effort to save Virginia's twice invalidated sodomy or "crimes against nature" statute?  The problem with Garrett's effort is that, whether intended or not, as amended, the statute so loved by failed gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli, would criminalize high school students - both gay and straight - who might engage in oral or anal sex.  These students would be facing felony charges rather than mere misdemeanor charges.  And from past experience, we know all too well that it would be the gays who got prosecuted while a blind eye was turned on the straight couples.  Think Progress and The New Civil Rights Movement among others have piled on to Garrett and deservedly so.  Here's how I explained Garrett's effort to one reporter:

Here's the language that is at the heart of the issue (the italics represents the new language):

A.  If any Any person who (i) carnally knows in any manner any brute animal, or (ii) carnally knows any male or female person by the anus or by or with the mouth, or voluntarily submits to such carnal knowledge, he or she shall be is guilty of a Class 6 felony, except as provided in subsection B. The provisions of clause (ii) shall not apply where all persons are consenting adults who are not in a public place and who are not committing, attempting to commit, conspiring to commit, aiding, or abetting any act in furtherance of prostitution.

If applied as written, any underage couple - gay or straight - where one or both were under 18 would be looking at a Class 6 felony charge.  Contrast this with this statutory provision:

§ 18.2-346. Prostitution; commercial sexual conduct; commercial exploitation of a minor; penalties.

A. Any person who, for money or its equivalent, (i) commits adultery, fornication, or any act in violation of § 18.2-361 [This is the crimes against nature statute]or (ii) offers to commit adultery, fornication, or any act in violation of § 18.2-361 and thereafter does any substantial act in furtherance thereof is guilty of prostitution, which is punishable as a Class 1 misdemeanor.

B. Any person who offers money or its equivalent to another for the purpose of engaging in sexual acts as enumerated in subsection A and thereafter does any substantial act in furtherance thereof is guilty of solicitation of prostitution, which is punishable as a Class 1 misdemeanor. However, any person who solicits prostitution from a minor (i) 16 years of age or older is guilty of a Class 6 felony or (ii) younger than 16 years of age is guilty of a Class 5 felony.  

Garrett's revision of the Crimes Against Nature statute would criminalize non-prostitution related sex if it involves sodomy - i.e., oral or anal sex

.  Why the obsession with sodomy?  Because the Christofascists at The Family Foundation hate gays and want them to face felony charges rather than misdemeanor charges.  Instead of trying to save the sodomy statute, Garrett ought to be amending the second sentence of 18.2-346.B to cover things other than prostitution when underage individuals are involved.  That, would solve the supposed emergency.  Of course, that would not be consistent with his marching orders from The Family Foundation/Cuccinelli.

The New Civil Rights Movement summed it up well:

Garrett is attempting to resurrect Virginia’s “crimes against nature” statute. Cuccinelli, as Virginia’s AG, tried to convince the U.S. Supreme Court that the law was both necessary or constitutional. He failed.

Of course, the goal behind the bill is to make sex between two people of the same gender more consequential. The bill does not make penile-vaginal sex between minors a felony, because that’s not a “crime against nature.”

Think Progress adds:

Oddly, Virginia law permits heterosexual 16 or 17 years old to marry, with parental consent (couples can marry earlier in cases where the girl is pregnant). Under Garrett’s bill, two 17-year-olds could be legally wed but would both become felons if they engaged in oral sex — or even suggested doing so. And with Virginia’s marriage inequality constitutional amendment, a 17-year-old same-sex couple would not only be unable to marry, but would each be guilty of a felony if they engaged in any sexual relations at all.

And the law’s disparate treatment of those engaging in public sex (a misdemeanor, at most) and those engaging in public oral and anal sex (a felony under the Crimes Against Nature law) would also be a concern. A same-sex couple spotted by law enforcement in a park, engaged in oral sex, would be each be guilty of a felony — while an opposite-sex couple having vaginal sex in the same park would not.

The Virginia GOP's efforts to punish gays for not living by The Family Foundation's religious dictates are simply endless.

Down with Morality Laws

A column in the Washington Post makes the argument that striking down morality laws - i.e., laws like Virginia's thankfully dead sodomy statute and laws that made cohabiting by unmarried couples crimes - do not necessarily mean that morality has ended.  At least not outside the minds of the sexually oppressed Christofascists who feel compelled to people the sex lives of other people who might be enjoying what they are too repressed to experience.  It's a mindset that wants everyone to be as repressed and unhappy as the "godly folk."  The trigger for the piece was the polygamy ruling this past week, but it certainly applies as well for gays who were previously prosecuted with abandon to "protect morality."  Here are some column highlights:

The decision this month by a federal court striking down the criminalization of polygamy in Utah was met with a mix of rejoicing and rage. What was an emancipating decision for thousands of plural families was denounced as the final descent into a moral abyss by others.

It’s true that the Utah ruling is one of the latest examples of a national trend away from laws that impose a moral code. There is a difference, however, between the demise of morality laws and the demise of morality. This distinction appears to escape social conservatives nostalgic for a time when the government dictated whom you could live with or sleep with. But the rejection of moral codes is no more a rejection of morality than the rejection of speech codes is a rejection of free speech. Our morality laws are falling, and we are a better nation for it.

In the Utah case, I was the lead counsel for the Browns, the polygamous family featured in the TLC reality program “Sister Wives.” They are members of the Apostolic United Brethren Church, and they have one marriage license and three “spiritual” marriages among them. After the first episode of “Sister Wives” aired, state prosecutors threatened to bring charges under a Utah law that made it a crime when a married person “purports to marry another person or cohabits with another person.” The Browns were under investigation for two years and were publicly called felons before they took prosecutors to court in a challenge to the constitutionality of the law.

The case was never about the recognition of multiple marriages or the acceptance of the religious values underlying this plural family. It was about the right of consenting adults to make decisions for themselves and their families. 

Judge Clark Waddoups, a conservative George W. Bush appointee, ruled that the criminalization of cohabitation clearly violated the due process clause and the free exercise clause of the United States Constitution.

In doing so, he departed from the prevailing precedent: the Supreme Court’s opinion in Reynolds v. United States , which upheld a ban on polygamy in 1879. Waddoups wrote that courts today are “less inclined to allow majoritarian coercion of unpopular or disliked minority groups, especially when blatant racism . . . religious prejudice, or some other constitutionally suspect motivation, can be discovered behind such legislation.”

The idea that polygamy was a “barbarous practice” and contrary to democratic principles drove the demand in the late 1880s and ’90s that Utah outlaw it as a condition of statehood. And in Mormon Church v. United States (1890), the Supreme Court labeled polygamy as “abhorrent to the sentiments and feelings of the civilized world.”

The stigma attached to polygamy continued to distort legal analysis into this century. . . . . Gov. Gary Herbert objected to the court making “decisions on social issues.” (He has not yet announced an appeal.) Waddoups, however, was not dictating a decision on a social issue but rather saying that governments could not impose a single version of morality. He limited prosecution under Utah’s anti-polygamy law to cases of bigamy, where someone acquires more than one marriage license

Across the country, the era of morality codes is coming to an inglorious end. This year, the Supreme Court struck down part of the Defense of Marriage Act barring the federal recognition of same-sex marriage. And this week, the New Mexico Supreme Court and another federal judge in Utah struck down the ban on same-sex marriage in those states  . . . . . Meanwhile, Virginia recently repealed its 1877 cohabitation law and Colorado replealed a criminal adultery law from the 1850s — both relics of a time when states used their criminal codes to force citizens to comply with the religious values of their neighbors. 

Once any crimes or abuses are stripped away in cases like the Browns’, what remains is religious animus. Yet, polygamy is widely practiced around the world by millions of families and was condoned by every major religion — from Judaism to Christianity to Islam — at one time. 

In truth, 19th-century Americans were no more moral than we are today. It simply appeared that way with the imposition of official morals, including (as Santorum recalls so fondly) being told whom we could love in our own homes. 

I would argue that perhaps the least moral among us are the Christofacists who seem consumed by hatred and bigotry all the while proclaiming their godliness. 

The GOP's Problem With Unmarried Women

Given the GOP's war on women in general, it is little surprise that Ken Cuccinelli lost the women vote by at least 9 points.  The big surprise was, however, that he lost the vote of unmarried women by 42 points.  Yes, 42 points.  This loss makes Mitt Romney's deficit with these women voters look good in comparison.  Apparently, Cuccinelli's obsession with regulating women's private parts - when he wasn't obsessing about gay sex - came back to bite him in the ass big time.  A column in the Washington Post looks at the GOP's growing problem with unmarried woman voters.  Here are excerpts:

The real problem for Republicans going forward is not women broadly but single women in particular. Governor-elect Terry McAuliffe spent most of his campaign time — and money — casting Ken Cuccinelli as a zealot on social issues like abortion and contraception in the just-concluded Virginia race.

[A]ccording to exit polls, Cuccinelli only lost female voters by nine points — identical to the losing margin for Mitt Romney among women in Virginia in the 2012 presidential election. (Romney lost women nationally by 11 points to President Obama in 2012.)

Where Cuccinelli did get swamped, however, was among non-married women where he lost by a massive 42-point(!) margin, according to preliminary exit polling. While Romney didn’t fare that poorly in 2012, his 29-point loss among non-married women in Virginia was more than double his losing margin among women more broadly in the Commonwealth.

Here’s the two-pronged problem for Republicans: 1) They aren’t winning married women by nearly enough to make up for their huge deficits among unmarried women and 2) There aren’t that many more married women than single women in the electorate to make up the margins.

(Worth noting: The married/unmarried divide isn’t just among women.  Cuccinelli won married men by six points but lost single men by 25.)

But, it’s clear from the Virginia data — as well as the 2012 presidential results — that Republicans must find a way to lose single women by a far less wide margin if they want to close a gender gap that it making it increasingly difficult for them to be a majority party nationally in presidential elections.

More reseach will need to be done, but perhaps the unmarried men and women are younger and, therefore, less accepting of Cuccinelli's - and the GOP's - religious extremism and regressive approach to social issues. 

Tears and Denial In The Cuccinelli Camp

I truly do not want to appear mean spirited or even cruel, but I find it nearly impossible to feel any real sympathy for failed GOP gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli.   So far, it appears that Cuccinelli wants  to blame anyone but himself - not to mention his extremism and obsession with controlling the sexual behavior of others.  Cooch has tried to say even in his concession speech that the vote in Virginia yesterday was a "referendum on Obamacare." Never mind that other than Medicaid expansion, there is nothing that a Virginia governor has any control over in the roll out of the Affordable Health Care Act.  A piece in The Daily Beast looks at the recriminations and self-delusion gripping the failed Cuccinelli organization.   Here are excerpts:

In a brutally negative campaign, McAuliffe pulled out his narrow victory with a massive financial advantage and by painting Cuccinelli as an extreme social conservative. The Democrat also took advantage of Cuccinelli’s refusal to condemn the Republican tactics that led to the government shutdown. The issue was particularly potent in Northern Virginia, where many residents work for the government or for government contractors.

By contrast, Cuccinelli sought to focus on McAuliffe’s business deals and to turn the race into a referendum on Obamacare, which Cuccinelli has steadily opposed. While the strategy rallied ardent Republicans to his banner, it also may have energized some Democrats. Carrie Thierry of Henrico told The Daily Beast that Obamacare was one of her strongest motivations for supporting McAuliffe. Although she has always had health insurance, she said, she knows many people who are not so fortunate and said it is important they be covered.

McAuliffe’s key advantage lay in social issues such as abortion and birth control. He capitalized on Cuccinelli’s record of taking deeply conservative positions on those issues, most notably his defense of Virginia’s ban on sodomy laws. McAuliffe’s ads emphasized Cuccinelli’s absolute opposition to abortion, even in cases of rape and incest, and described him as anti-birth control.

But Steve Waters, a prominent Republican strategist in Virginia, said Cuccinelli was simply stabbed in the back by his own party. Waters said the narrow loss was the result of fellow Republicans who jumped ship to back McAuliffe or, in the case of Bill Bolling, the state’s GOP lieutenant governor, simply sat on their hands. Bolling’s actions were emblematic of moderate establishment Republicans trying to undermine conservatives in the party, Waters said, comparing the lieutenant governor to the Washington Republicans who didn’t stand by Ted Cruz and Mike Lee in the government shutdown. 

The defection of many Republicans, particularly those in the donor class, helped McAuliffe put together a whopping financial advantage. He outspent Cuccinelli by $15 million before taking outside groups such as the League of Conservative Voters and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Independence PAC into account. McAuliffe also put together a far more effective ground operation than Cuccinelli, led by veteran Democratic organizer Robby Mook.

One silver lining for the GOP in Jackson’s shambolic campaign was the optimism that the Republicans could pick off Northam’s state Senate seat in a special election. But that paled in comparison to the costs of a statewide campaign with an outlandish, gaffe-prone candidate. By contrast, the tightly matched race for attorney general between Republican Mark Obenshain and Democrat Mark Herring was too close to call on Election Night and was poised for a recount.

The contrast between the two gubernatorial candidates was never more clear than in their Election Night speeches. Both cited Thomas Jefferson and the importance of principle. Cuccinelli expressed his awe at the possibility that he might have succeeded the third president as governor of Virginia. He then went on to emphasize the importance of “first principles” of constitutional government and said his philosophy when he first ran for attorney general was “if there are enough people in Virginia who share our commitment to those first principles, we can’t lose and if there aren’t...we can’t win.”.

McAuliffe, meanwhile, cited Thomas Jefferson’s first inaugural speech in 1800, saying his own differences with Cuccinelli and the GOP were “differences of opinion, not differences of principle.”

I honestly believe that Cuccinelli needs a mental health care intervention.  It will be most telling to see how he deals with defeat and whether or not he will go even more fully over the edge.