Rep.
Edith Ajello (D)
|
Vote 49-40 Touches
Off Heated Debates Over 1896 Sex Law
Puritanical Conservatives
Say Change is a Pact with the Devil
By Warren Arronchic
GayToday Contributing
Writer
|
Following spirited debates in
which the revered names of American jurists like Oliver Wendell Holmes
and Louis Brandeis were invoked to support the concept of privacy, a law
described by Representative Edith
Ajello, (D-Providence) as “an anachronism” and a “relic of the Victorian
era” was retired Friday by a vote of 49 to 40 in the Rhode Island state
legislature.
Those adults once found guilty
of wandering from “the missionary position”, namely church-sanctioned sexual
acts— acts which involve either the mouth or the anus—could previously
have been charged in Rhode Island under the statute with committing “the
abominable and detestable crime against nature.” These “detestable”
acts, even though they are routinely performed among heterosexuals, have
always been used to “round up men engaged in homosexual sex,” said Representative
Ajello.
Sentencing punishments for
adults under Rhode Island 102-year old statute meant that those convicted
could spend between 7 and 20 years in prison.
Quoting Holmes, the Democratic
Providence lawmaker reflected that “it is revolting to have no better reason
for the rule of law than that it was laid down in the time of Henry IV.
It is still more revolting if the grounds on which it was laid have vanished
long since and the rule simply persists from blind imitation of the past.”
| Those
who wished to retain the old law relied upon quotations from the Bible
and so-called Christian” religious principles to defend their failed stance.
Prominent among these anti-gay thumpers was Representative
Harold Metts, also of Providence. |
Rep.
Harold Metts (D)
|
Metts argued that a repeal of
the law would be tantamount to sanctioning homosexual relations in the
state of Rhode Island. The legislature’s anti-gay sermonizer said he’d
reached his conclusions after much reading of the Bible, and that he’d
also fasted and prayed.
The religious/political conservative
claimed that those of his colleagues who voted to scrap the old law were,
in fact, making a pact with Satan. “When we sin we become abominable and
detestable,” he insisted.
Steve Yates of Newport, Rhode
Island, replied, saying, “Metts’ philosophizing not only violates our common
need for separating church and state, and in particularly vulgar ways,
but he and his supporters are actually the ones with a stupid pact: to
hold together in a manner that violates the privacy rights of both gay
and straight people when they make love. What a dodo.”
|
