In an unusual move, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II (R), his party's nominee for governor, launched a new campaign website Wednesday highlighting his efforts to reinstate Virginia's unconstitutional Crimes Against Nature law. The rule, which makes felons out of even consenting married couples who engage in oral or anal sex in the privacy of their own homes, was struck down by federal courts after Cuccinelli blocked efforts to bring it in line with the Supreme Court's 2003 Lawrence v. Texas ruling.
The new site, vachildpredators.com, highlights 90 people identified "sexual predators" in Virginia who have been charged under the law since the 2003 ruling, which held that states could not ban private, non-commercial sexual relations between consenting adults. Cuccinelli warns that these offenders "could come off Virginia's sex offender registry if a Virginia law used to protect children is not upheld," and identifies the sodomy law as only the "Anti-Child Predators Law." While it is true that many sex offenders are charged under the Crimes Against Nature law, it is far from the only tool prosecutors have to punish child predators.
The law states, "If any person carnally knows in any manner any brute animal, or 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 guilty of a Class 6 felony…" Cuccinelli claims that the law "is only applied to sodomy committed against minors, against non-consenting adults, or in public," but fails to mention that what he wants to keep on the books criminalizes the private behavior of consenting grownups.
In fact, Cuccinelli is a major reason that the provisions of this particular law governing non-consensual sex were left vulnerable to court challenge. In 2004, a bipartisan group in the Virginia General Assembly backed a bill that would have brought the law in line with the Supreme Court's ruling. They proposed to eliminate the Crimes Against Nature law's provisions dealing with consenting adults in private and leaving in place provisions relating to prostitution, public sex, and those other than consenting adults. Cuccinelli opposed the bill in committee and helped kill it on the Senate floor.
In 2009, he told a newspaper why he supported restrictions on the sexual behavior of consenting adults: "My view is that homosexual acts, not homosexuality, but homosexual acts are wrong. They're intrinsically wrong. And I think in a natural law based country it's appropriate to have policies that reflect that. … They don't comport with natural law." As a result of Cuccinelli's homophobia, the law's text remains unchanged a decade after the Supreme Court's ruling.
While Cuccinelli tries to spin his efforts as "Virginia's appeal to preserve a child-protection statute," this amounts to little more than his attempt to restore the state's unconstitutional ban on oral sex.
rest http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2013/07/17/2315251/virginia-cuccinelli-oral-sex/
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