Date: Tue, 25 Feb 97 18:33:22 EST From: ngltf@ngltf.org Subject: D'Emilio OP-ED: Sodomy Law Repeal ********************************************************************* National Gay and Lesbian Task Force OPINION-EDITORIAL Contact: John D'Emilio 202/332-6483 x3302 jdemilio@ngltf.org 2320 17th Street NW, Washington, DC 20009 http://www.ngltf.org ********************************************************************* The following is an opinion/commentary written by Dr. John D'Emilio, the director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force's Policy Institute. This month's commentary, "Back to Basics," is a discussion of sodomy law repeal and its continuing importance as a key movement goal. Dr. D'Emilio is a noted historian and author. His works include "Making Trouble: Essays on Gay History, Politics and the University" (Routledge, 1992), "Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities: The Making of a Homosexual Minority in the United States, 1940-1970" (University of Chicago Press, 1983), and he is the co-author of "Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America" (Harper and Row, 1988). He is currently working on a biography of the late Bayard Rustin. D'Emilio's monthly column is available the last week of each month. Please publish or distribute this piece. Photos of Dr. D'Emilio are available by contacting Tracey Conaty at 202/332-6483 x3303. ...................................................................... Back To Basics: Sodomy Law Repeal By John D'Emilio Director NGLTF Policy Insitute The military ban . . . the freedom to marry . . . the Rainbow curriculum . . . workplace partnership benefits . . . As our movement grows stronger, as more of us come out earlier and stay out for decades, our vision of equality for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people expands. We can see farther than we could a generation ago, and we expect more. The cutting-edge issues that seem to beckon us toward new frontiers are the ones that grab our attention and our energy. Viewed from that perspective, what could be less interesting or more tired than sodomy law repeal? The police, after all, are not regularly barging into our bedrooms and leading us away in handcuffs. Aren't the remaining sodomy laws merely relics of a distant past, technically enforceable but meaningless in practical terms? Don't kid yourself. Even if not a one of us ever again got arrested for violating the sodomy statutes, they would weigh like a ton of bricks on our shoulders. Getting rid of them has to be a top priority. The movement for sodomy law repeal got started in the 1950s. The impulse came as much from a legal profession interested in modernizing the penal code by eliminating "victimless" crimes as it did from a gay and lesbian movement still in its infancy. In 1961, eight years before the Stonewall Rebellion, Illinois became the first state to repeal. A couple of other states did so in the 1960s; the repeal movement accelerated in the 1970s; and then it slowed considerably in the 1980s. Today, twenty-nine states and the District of Columbia are "free" states without sodomy laws; the remaining twenty-one states still criminalize all homosexual sex. The pattern of repeal is interesting. In the 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s, virtually all of the repeals came through a rewriting of a state's entire penal code. In other words, sodomy law reform was hidden beneath an avalanche of changes in the criminal law and was not the focus of public controversy. To my knowledge, only two states repealed the law as a freestanding measure after full legislative debate. As the extremist right got organized in the 1980s, it became harder to repeal these statutes legislatively. Then, in 1986, in the infamous case of Bowers v. Hardwick, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of sodomy statutes. Since then, sodomy laws have fallen not through legislative repeal but because energetic queer lawyers have challenged them based on the provisions of state constitutions. Even though the remaining laws are not often enforced, they function as an excuse for other oppressive measures. Here are some recent examples: ù Judges in custody cases, as with Sharon Bottoms in Virginia, use the criminality of homosexual behavior as the basis for declaring a mother or father unfit. ù at George Mason University last fall, a crusading member of the governing board forced the elimination of a line item in the budget to fund a resource center for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender students. The reason? The state's sodomy law. ù in Arizona this January, a legislator introduced a bill to ban the use of school facilities by any group that supports illegal activity. His target: gay, lesbian, and bisexual student groups. His rationale: the state sodomy statute. ù for years, the criminality of homosexual acts has restricted the ability of AIDS activists to use public monies for effective AIDS educational efforts. Whether or not a state has a sodomy law also seems to affect how far it goes in other areas of concern to us. For instance, one out of five "free" states include sexual orientation in their civil rights statutes, but only one out of seven sodomy states do. One out of five free states have executive orders from the governor banning sexual orientation discrimination, but only one out of ten sodomy states do. Almost half of the free states punish hate crimes based on sexual orientation in contrast to only one-quarter of the sodomy states. And, the contrast is most dramatic in the area of child custody. The National Center for Lesbian Rights found courts supportive of granting us custody rights in more than one out of four free states in comparison to only one out of twenty sodomy states. The existence of a sodomy law in a state thus tends to be a good marker of a hostile climate. It also serves as a barrier making other kinds of change more difficult to achieve. Until we eliminate them entirely, we run the very real risk of a right-wing effort to recriminalize homosexual acts in today's free states. And, as long as these laws exist anywhere in the United States, the stigma of criminality remains heavy in our culture, hanging like an albatross around our necks. .............. The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force is a progressive organization that has supported grassroots organizing and pioneered in national advocacy since 1973. Since its inception, NGLTF has been at the forefront of virtually every major initiative for lesbian and gay rights. In all its efforts, NGLTF helps to strengthen the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender movement at the state level while connecting these activities to a national vision for change. ### _________________________________________ This message was issued by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Media Department. If you have any questions regarding this post, please direct them to one of the contacts at the top of this message If you wish to UNSUBSCRIBE from this list, please send an email with "UNSUBSCRIBE PRESSLIST" in the subject and body of your email message to .