Let’s say, hypothetically, that you want to become Virginia’s next governor and you want to find a way to stand out and get noticed. You could run on a job-creation platform. You could promise to lower taxes. Or maybe even vow to improve public education.
But let’s face it. Those issues are boring. Voters have been there, done that. Let’s think. There’s got to be something … Wait, I’ve got it! If you really want to win, campaign on the promise to ban oral sex. Because if there’s one thing that people hate, it’s the scourge of fellatio and cunnilingus.
Ha ha. Just kidding. Who would ever run on such a platform?
Why, Ken Cuccinelli would, of course. And by Jove he will fight for your right to have only penile-vaginal intercourse, the way God intended. (And then, not incidentally, he will fight against your right to have an abortion, also because of God and Cuccinelli’s belief that he should be in charge of what goes in and comes out of Virginia’s vaginas.)
You see, Cuccinelli, who is currently Virginia’s Attorney General and is running for governor, is campaigning hard and fast to keep Virginia’s sodomy law, which makes anal and oral sex a felony, on the books. The very type of law that was declared unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court in the 2003 Lawrence v. Texas ruling.
But that is just a pesky little detail.
Granted, any politician worth his salt knows that positioning is everything. (To be clear, I’m talking “positioning” as in public relations—not um, pubic relations.) So just how do you sell the criminalization of Virginian’s own sex lives to voters?
Under the guise of keeping “kids safe,” of course! Cuccinelli would like you to believe that Virginia simply must keep “sodomy” illegal in order to protect children from child predators. Because apparently only pedophiles would stoop so low (figuratively, though also literally at times) as to have oral or anal sex.
Granted, this is coming from the man who said in 2008, “When you look at the homosexual agenda, I cannot support something that I believe brings nothing but self-destruction, not only physically but of their soul.” He reaffirmed this belief in a debate against his Democratic opponent, Terry McAuliffe, on July 20.
So it’s understandable that one might think this whole “keep the sodomy law alive” crusade is just Cuccinelli’s way of saying “go blow” (figuratively only) to the gays. But don’t worry. The sodomy law applies to everyone, equally. Now whether or not it’s enforced equally is another story. But you can rest easy knowing that just about everybody around you is a felon.
Cuccinelli claims that consenting adults are not impacted by the law, but as NBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell and others have pointed out, the law’s wording literally covers everyone or, as the law’s own language puts it, “any person.” Added bonus fact: When Cuccinelli was a state senator, he voted against exempting consenting adults from the law.
Another fun fact: In 2004, Cuccinelli claimed that homos wanted to “dismantle sodomy laws” and “get education about homosexuals and AIDS in public schools.” So sodomy-law fever is nothing new to him. Which is all the more reason to be suspicious of his “save our souls from sodomy” campaign.
If this guy gets his way, Virginia is going to have to change its motto to “Virginia is for lovers, but not the icky kind who make God puke.”
D’Anne Witkowski has been gay for pay since 2003. She’s a freelance writer and poet (believe it!). When she’s not taking on the creeps of the world, she reviews rock ’n’ roll shows in Detroit with her twin sister.