I haven’t really followed conservative Charlottesville weekly The Observer since it changed hands, but things certainly have gotten different when I wasn’t looking. A few weeks ago, they actually had a pro-sodomy-law editorial. For those that don’t know, we have a wicked severe sodomy law in Virginia. §18.2-361, our “Crimes against nature” statute. It reads, in part:
“If any person carnally knows in any manner any brute animal, or carnally knows any male or female person by the anus or by or with the mouth, or voluntarily submits to such carnal knowledge, he or she shall be guilty of a Class 6 felony.”
This is one of those laws that everybody hates, yet somehow it continues to exist. I never thought that I’d see a newspaper come out in favor of the sodomy law, yet, somehow, The Observer has managed. First, they belittle Charlottesville’s gay community as “either disorganized or non-existent” (I wonder…is the city’s straight community non-existent because we haven’t organized?), and then they go on to explain that the law is OK, because it’s really not enforced against people that, you know, “knows any male or female person by the anus or by or with the mouth,” but only as “a useful tool for prosecuters.”
Morons.