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In concurrence with my brother, I'm back-posting an entry for yesterday that's even nearer and drearer to me than to ![[livejournal.com profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
eloquentwthrage, since I live in the District of Columbia but work in Northern Virginia. As recently as last November the Commonwealth of Virginia put the question of gay marriage to its voters, 57 percent of whom approved a statewide ban on gay marriage.
As seen on sodomylaws.org, Virginia STILL has sodomy laws against anal and oral sex, male of female, same or opposite sex. (It is not clear whether autofellatio violates the sodomy law.) Virginia has a great history w/r/t criminalizing all kinds of sex acts that most of the rest of the human race find perfectly normal and acceptable. In 1812 Virginia was the first state in the Union to rule, via its Supreme Court, that semen is not an essential component to sodomy; in other words, as soon as a cock goes in my mouth, I'm guilty of Class 6 felony.
Virginia originally enacted the oral piece of its sodomy law to be male-male only (in 1916, prior to which sodomy had for centuries been construed as anal sex, and usually only between men), but later amended that to be equally Puritanical re heteroslurping.
The 2003 U.S. Supreme Court decision Lawrence v. Texas "found sodomy laws to be an unconstitutional violation of liberty when applied to non-commercial, consensual sex between adults in private. Virginia's fornication and cohabitation laws are also unconstitutional as a result of this opinion." Nonetheless, throughout the more primitive wilds of Virginia, people continue to get arrested for sodomy—and, not surprisingly, they are disproportionately gay people.
Side note: Today in 1926, Paul Lynde was born. Oh, Sammy!
eloquentwthrage, since I live in the District of Columbia but work in Northern Virginia. As recently as last November the Commonwealth of Virginia put the question of gay marriage to its voters, 57 percent of whom approved a statewide ban on gay marriage.As seen on sodomylaws.org, Virginia STILL has sodomy laws against anal and oral sex, male of female, same or opposite sex. (It is not clear whether autofellatio violates the sodomy law.) Virginia has a great history w/r/t criminalizing all kinds of sex acts that most of the rest of the human race find perfectly normal and acceptable. In 1812 Virginia was the first state in the Union to rule, via its Supreme Court, that semen is not an essential component to sodomy; in other words, as soon as a cock goes in my mouth, I'm guilty of Class 6 felony.
Virginia originally enacted the oral piece of its sodomy law to be male-male only (in 1916, prior to which sodomy had for centuries been construed as anal sex, and usually only between men), but later amended that to be equally Puritanical re heteroslurping.
The 2003 U.S. Supreme Court decision Lawrence v. Texas "found sodomy laws to be an unconstitutional violation of liberty when applied to non-commercial, consensual sex between adults in private. Virginia's fornication and cohabitation laws are also unconstitutional as a result of this opinion." Nonetheless, throughout the more primitive wilds of Virginia, people continue to get arrested for sodomy—and, not surprisingly, they are disproportionately gay people.
Side note: Today in 1926, Paul Lynde was born. Oh, Sammy!
I've long been on the mailing list of the American Family Association, one of many, many organizations in the country founded and run by politico-religious fascist assholes hellbent on legislating and browbeating everything they consider to be non-Christian out of society. These guys are unabashedly theocratic—like the twisted, evil humans appearing in Jesus Camp, which I finally saw last night, they believe that no government can be valid except one directly authorized and run by God Almighty (or, one assumed, designees, whoever they might turn out to be... can't even guess...). They do everything in their logistical and fiscal power to put like-minded politicians in office. They are scary and vile.
But this is a fun post. AFA's particular head dickwad is Donald Wildmon... Don often sends me friendly warnings about what them homasexules is up to, and I thank him for it. Because it's always worth a good chuckle what the fundies considered "shocking," "offensive," or "depraved." In today's mailing Don deplores the specter of Hate Crimes Legislation, because it will explicitly protect the shocking, offensive, depraved behaviors seen in queer pride parades across the country. What are those behaviors? See subject line, and here.
BTW, this footage is from the Dallas pride parade... I've not been to pride in Dallas but I have been to a Halloween parade and street festival, which was remarkable for the intermingling of a ton of unmistakably gay people/content on the one hand (fabulous drag, sailor uniforms and hairdos, gymbots and muscleboys in what amounted to lingerie) with a ton of nuclear families on the other. Maybe it's just the Halloween thing where you get to be whoever once a year with impunity, but I saw absolutely no anti-gay sentiment* demonstrated among the straight folk there.
So what's most offensive to the American Family Association? I'm guessing it's parents who practically buy their queer children's passage to eternal damnation by loving and supporting them instead of institutionalizing or disowning them. The shame of it all.
Still, I wonder how many of Wildmon's intended "flock" look at this kind of video and go, EEEEWWWW, pervert freaks! and how many go, What up? That's just a bunch of regular people celebrating? (And for that matter, how many go, OMG, I MUST have those boots!) I also wonder what AFA's videographer could have been thinking at 3:46 - 3:44 on this video.
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*As opposed to Tysons Corner, Virginia, where yesterday a guy in the passanger's seat of a panel van hollered either "You gay shit!" or "You're gay as shit!" to me as I was crossing Spring Hill Road. I must have mistakenly worn my boa instead of a scarf.
But this is a fun post. AFA's particular head dickwad is Donald Wildmon... Don often sends me friendly warnings about what them homasexules is up to, and I thank him for it. Because it's always worth a good chuckle what the fundies considered "shocking," "offensive," or "depraved." In today's mailing Don deplores the specter of Hate Crimes Legislation, because it will explicitly protect the shocking, offensive, depraved behaviors seen in queer pride parades across the country. What are those behaviors? See subject line, and here.
BTW, this footage is from the Dallas pride parade... I've not been to pride in Dallas but I have been to a Halloween parade and street festival, which was remarkable for the intermingling of a ton of unmistakably gay people/content on the one hand (fabulous drag, sailor uniforms and hairdos, gymbots and muscleboys in what amounted to lingerie) with a ton of nuclear families on the other. Maybe it's just the Halloween thing where you get to be whoever once a year with impunity, but I saw absolutely no anti-gay sentiment* demonstrated among the straight folk there.
So what's most offensive to the American Family Association? I'm guessing it's parents who practically buy their queer children's passage to eternal damnation by loving and supporting them instead of institutionalizing or disowning them. The shame of it all.
Still, I wonder how many of Wildmon's intended "flock" look at this kind of video and go, EEEEWWWW, pervert freaks! and how many go, What up? That's just a bunch of regular people celebrating? (And for that matter, how many go, OMG, I MUST have those boots!) I also wonder what AFA's videographer could have been thinking at 3:46 - 3:44 on this video.
---
*As opposed to Tysons Corner, Virginia, where yesterday a guy in the passanger's seat of a panel van hollered either "You gay shit!" or "You're gay as shit!" to me as I was crossing Spring Hill Road. I must have mistakenly worn my boa instead of a scarf.
