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Upheld by State Supreme Court Law Allows Up to Five Years in Prison for Oral/ Anal Sex Consenting Sex in Private Called 'Injury Against Society' |
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Compiled By GayToday
Writing for the 5-2 majority, Judge Chet Traylor wrote, "Simply put, commission of what the Legislature determines as an immoral act, even if consensual and private, is an injury against society itself." The decision was issued late Thursday.
Scarborough, who helped defeat the Georgia law as an unconstitutional privacy invasion, noted that such laws often are used to discriminate against lesbians and gay men in employment, housing, and child custody. The Louisiana ruling concludes four separate cases involving the 195-year old law that bans private consensual oral and anal sex between partners of the same or different sex. Lambda filed an amicus brief in one of those cases, Smith v. State, on behalf of religious groups and clergy opposed to criminalizing such acts in the name of public morality. "The Court declined to second guess the legislature's determination of what is constitutional," said Lambda Legal Director Beatrice Dohrn. "While that logic defies the American principle of having checks and balances, it also obligates the citizens of Louisiana to make sure that their representatives move to end this gross invasion of their privacy." Lambda joined the ACLU's Lesbian and Gay Rights Project in committing to end laws like Louisiana's. "This decision is obviously disappointing, but we have never looked at eliminating sodomy laws as short-term work," said Michael Adams, associate director of the ACLU Lesbian and Gay Rights Project. Lambda Cooperating Attorney Jeffrey Reader, a solo-practitioner from New Orleans, assisted in Lambda's friend-of-the-court brief. (State v. Smith, No. 99-KA-0606) |
