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MORE • More on Sodomy • Texas Sodomy Law Found Unconstitutional • More News, Notes, Tidbits & To Do List CHOCTAJEW says: "What all the previous posters have missed is that this is the same town where a couple of months ago a man walked into the gay bar and shot as many people as he could, and killed at least one of them! You remember the MORAL CRETIN thread? This is the same damn home town! And this response of the police to round up anyone who is meeting in a park because it's PROVEN that they could be KILLED OUTRIGHT if they went to the gay bar is outright warfare! And they are trying to protect the murderer! And the fact that the people don't have the standing to make the case they are making? It's because they were BORN FELONS in Virginia! Fumes and shakes with fury!" |
Not wanting to be unjustly accused of being ready for the 21st Century, the State of Virginia Court of Appeals upheld Virginia's sodomy statute.
The stated legal grounds may be summarized as follows:
No religious basis to the statute
Court Reasoning: The basic reasoning is that the law doesn't exist because of any religious rules. Sodomy is just icky on its face. And anyway, we have laws against murder too so taking laws from religious works is really okay so long as we agree that's not why we're doing it and it's a really good law after all.
Appellants didn't have standing (a legal right to sue based upon being personally affected by a law or decision)
Court Reasoning: The appellants contended that the statute was violative of a right to privacy. Since the persons charged with the underlying crimes had committed their acts in a public place whether the law violates any right to privacy was not relevant to their cases.
It is not relevant that the penalties for adultery and fornication are less than for sodomy and
Five year possible jail sentences are not cruel and unusual punishment
Court Reasoning: To find that a punishment is cruel and unusual punishment the Court must find that the penalty is "a punishment in quantum so severe for a comparatively trivial offense that it would be so out of proportion to the crime as to shock the conscience" (the court citing its own previous ruling in another, unrelated case). The Court went on to note that it didn't find the five-year possible sentence at all unreasonable, "We find our consciences shocked neither by appellants' sentences nor by the five-year maximum sentence provided by the statute."
You should read the entire ruling. It's language is clear ...
| Read the Entire Ruling --> |