Rob Tisinai of Box Turtle Bulletin has a question related to the Supreme Court rulings in our favor a month ago. Where's the backlash? France legalizes marriage equality and there are protests, some of which turn deadly. In America, rulings on abortion (no matter the outcome) are protested. But marriage equality rulings this time? Well, we get the professional bloviators trying to stir up a backlash, but there haven't been protests.
Maybe not big (or even small) public protests, but it looks like there is a backlash. It was reported yesterday that over a couple years the sheriff of East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana has been entrapping gay men using a law that the Supremes said was unconstitutional ten years ago. The law is unenforceable, but still on the books. And because it is on the books, the sheriff says it is appropriate to try to enforce it anyway. The gay men are arrested and hauled before a judge, who dismisses the case for lack of a crime. But because it is still legal in Louisiana to fire someone for being gay the arrest has big consequences.
Ken Cuccinelli, Attorney General and candidate for governor in Virginia, has been saying he will ask the Supremes to reinstate the sodomy law those Supremes said was unconstitutional. Good luck with that.
But these two cases are enough for Terrence Heath to ask an important question: Why? Or in a bit more detail: Why do conservatives want to resurrect the laws that criminalize sex between men?
Heath thoroughly reviews why the stated reasons are bogus. Then he discusses one of those men in Louisiana who was arrested back in 2011. Though the charges were dropped (no actual crime) the man described being taken to jail as "intimidation."
Precisely.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment