Once thought to have been designed to bar consensual gay sex, the Crimes Against Nature law has resurfaced in Virginia once again after Virginia’s attorney general and Republican gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli asked the Fourth Circuit to reconsider the case.
Up until March of this year, the state of Virginia had an anti-sodomy law, which a three-judge panel of the Richmond-based Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned, stating that the state’s “Crimes Against Nature” provision was unconstitutional, even as the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated sodomy laws related to actions occurring in private between consenting adults in 2003.
“It is shameful that Virginia continued to prosecute individuals under the sodomy statute for 10 years after the Supreme Court held that such laws are unconstitutional,” said Rebecca Glenberg, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Virginia.
“This ruling should bring an end to such prosecutions,” she added.
Brian Gottstein, a spokesman for the Virginia Attorney General’s office, said the Attorney General’s office would review the decision and consider their options.
Cuccinelli says he wants the court to reinstate the laws prohibiting consensual anal and oral sex for both gay and straight people, citing that anti-sodomy laws are not about sexual orientation, but said he wants to use the law to catch sexual predators.
But in the past, Cuccinelli has commented that he views sexual acts involving two people of the same sex as being crimes against nature, and has been a leader in the movement attempting to get the state back into the bedroom.
“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,” he said. “I happen to think that it represents — to put it politely, I need my thesaurus to be polite — behavior that is not healthy to an individual and in aggregate is not healthy to society.”
In 2004, Cuccinelli shared his concern with the Washington Times that “gays and lesbians want to ‘dismantle sodomy laws’ and ‘get education about homosexuals and AIDS in public schools.’”
Since the Supreme Court is currently discussing whether or not gay marriage should be legal, and has already ruled that anal and oral sex is OK, many believe his case won’t go far. But it’s Cuccinelli’s stance on issues like this that caused the Tea Party radical to encourage lawmakers to implement policies that support his far-right extremist views.
In an interview with Vermont’s Democratic Gov. Peter Shumlin, BuzzFeed reported that Shumlin said Cuccinelli makes Mitt Romney’s “47 percent” remark look moderate. “There is no more extreme example of a Tea Party candidate for governor than Cuccinelli,” Shumlin said.
“Look at moderate Republicans like the Virginia lieutenant governor Bill Bolling,” Shumlin said. “He knows what Ken Cuccinelli is. Go to Virginia and ask him how comfortable he is with Ken Cuccinelli.”
For example, as attorney general, Cuccinelli worked with Virginia’s current Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell to pass laws that would shut down almost every clinic offering abortion services, and he endorses implementing a law requiring women seeking an abortion to have a transvaginal probe first.
In 2009 he said that “most women who have abortions feel pressured into having them.”