US: Police use invalid anti-sodomy law to arrest gay men for ‘crimes against nature’

Police officers from the Sheriff’s office in Baton Rouge, Louisiana have made at least a dozen arrests of gay men since 2011 using an anti-sodomy law despite it being struck down ten years ago.

Arrests have been made as recently as July, with gay men being charged with “attempted crimes against nature” for discussing having consensual sex in a private place with an undercover police officer.

The most recent was made on 18 July when a deputy sheriff approached a 65-year-old man in a car, denied being a police officer, and after moving to a park bench, discussed having “some drinks and some fun”, at his apartment.

The man was arrested and charged with attempted crime against nature, despite no sex-for-money exchange being discussed, and despite not having intended to have sex in a public place, reports the Advocate.

According to the report, District Attorney Hillar Moore III, said his office had not prosecuted in any of the cases, because it had found that no crime had been committed.

The Sheriff’s Office’s intentions are all good,” said Moore. “But from what I’ve seen of these cases, legally, we found no criminal violation.”

He also agreed to meet with the Sheriff’s office to discuss the Supreme Court ruling on the issue.

A Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman, Casey Rayborn, denied that the law had been misapplied by officers, as it remains among the state’s criminal statutes.

“The issue here is not the nature of the relationship but the location,” she said. “These are not bars. These are parks. These are family environments.”

Advocates of LGBT rights expressed shock at the application of the law in these cases,

“It is frustrating that the police are using their resources to pursue issues like this and arrest people for attempting to pick someone up and go home with them,” Bruce Parker, of Equality Louisiana told the Advocate. “It’s perfectly legal, and we would have to close down every bar in Baton Rouge if that weren’t the case.”

Andrea J Ritchie, a civil rights attorney said: “It’s really unfortunate that police are continuing to single out, target, falsely arrest and essentially ruin the lives of gay men in Baton Rouge who are engaged in no illegal conduct.”

Other legal officials, and LGBT rights activists spoke out against the arrests, some even going as far as saying that the actions of the police constituted entrapment. Some noted that many of the arrested men were aged 40+, and had not come out as gay to their families yet.

http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2013/07/28/us-police-use-invalid-anti-sodomy-law-to-arrest-gay-men-for-crimes-against-nature/

I have to keep thinking outside of the box and i need to get my head around the fact that the USA is a very big country and not just a tiny island like the Britain is.

I was thinking that if you get married in one state and then you move to another that doesn't accept the equality laws then your marriage would not be recognized and you wouldn't be able to enjoy in the same rights afforded to straight people etc..

To me that sounds like segregation and i'm glad that Obama is up for ending all of that!

That's the next step, Catman, and legal proceedings are already under way to make the point that it's bullshit to have one state refuse to recognize the rights of a married couple from another state. I think maybe even before the decade is over, we'll see marriage equality throughout the 50 states, or at least most of them.

There was a huge hissy-fit thrown by one of our right-winger Supreme Court Justices, Antonin Scalia, that basically said that overturning the same-sex marriage ban that California voted in back in 2008 would lead to marriage equality through the whole nation. He said that like it would be a bad thing

Ben_Reilly wrote:That's the next step, Catman, and legal proceedings are already under way to make the point that it's bullshit to have one state refuse to recognize the rights of a married couple from another state. I think maybe even before the decade is over, we'll see marriage equality throughout the 50 states, or at least most of them.

There was a huge hissy-fit thrown by one of our right-winger Supreme Court Justices, Antonin Scalia, that basically said that overturning the same-sex marriage ban that California voted in back in 2008 would lead to marriage equality through the whole nation. He said that like it would be a bad thing

Well i hope that we will all see full equality in the USA before too long