Sodomy Law Remains Official in Kansas
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Kansas Law on Sodomy Stays on Books Despite a Cull
By A.G. SULZBERGER of The New York Times
January 20, 2012KANSAS CITY, Kan. — Gov. Sam Brownback created the Office of the Repealer to recommend the elimination of out-of-date, unreasonable and burdensome state laws that build up in any bureaucracy over time. For gay men and lesbians, there seemed one particularly obvious candidate: Kansas Statute 21-3505. That would be the “criminal sodomy” statute, which prohibits same-sex couples from engaging in oral or anal sex. The law was rendered unenforceable nearly a decade ago by a United States Supreme Court ruling, but it remains enshrined in the state’s legal code.
But on Friday, when Mr. Brownback, a conservative Republican, released a list of 51 laws to recommend to the Legislature for repeal, the sodomy statute was not among them. The decision, despite public and private lobbying, has angered gay leaders here. “We were pretty much the first in line with our request to have this unconstitutional ban on gay and lesbian relations repealed,” said Thomas Witt, chairman of the Kansas Equality Coalition. “This isn’t just some archaic law that’s sitting on the books and isn’t bothering anyone,” Mr. Witt continued. “It’s used as justification to harass and discriminate against people, and it needs to go.”
Mr. Brownback, who is a vocal opponent of same-sex marriage on religious grounds, declined to comment, and his spokeswoman would not say whether he would support repealing the law against same-sex sodomy, a misdemeanor that officially carries a prison sentence of up to six months. Dennis Taylor, the secretary of the State Department of Administration, which assembled the list, declined to discuss why the law was not included. “What we’ve proposed is what we proposed,” Mr. Taylor said.
Though declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in the 2003 case of Lawrence v. Texas, which struck down an antisodomy law in Texas as an invasion of privacy in a ruling viewed as a crucial victory by gay rights organizations, these types of laws still exist throughout the United States. Susan Sommer, director of constitutional litigation for Lambda Legal, a national gay rights advocacy group, said that more than a dozen states had antisodomy laws at the time of the ruling, but she did not know how many were subsequently repealed. Those that remain, said Ms. Sommer, have a stigmatizing effect on same-sex relationships and can sometimes be wrongly cited by law enforcement officers unaware that they are no longer enforceable. “Keeping these laws on the books can still do a lot of mischief and cause a lot of harm,” she said.
Mr. Brownback has moved aggressively to push this Republican-dominated state further to the right since he was elected after serving in the Senate. He has made the Office of the Repealer a popular part of his small-government pitch. “Nothing is ever subtracted from the system,” he said after he proposed the office. The first list of recommendations, culled from more than 500 suggestions after a listening tour was conducted around the state, represented the most obvious candidates for repeal, Mr. Taylor said. Many include eliminating regulations the administration has deemed unnecessary, such as a requirement for physical copies of county assessor rolls that are now often stored electronically. In the anachronism category: rules for reinstating a sheriff removed from office because a prisoner in his custody was lynched.
A second list of recommendations for repeal, to be introduced as soon as this year, Mr. Taylor said, “will be more interesting and probably a little controversial.” The antisodomy law, he added, remained under review with many others. Paul Davis, a Democrat and the house minority leader in the State Legislature, said he supported repealing the law but thought it was unlikely that Mr. Brownback would make such a recommendation.
“He’s trying not to run afoul of a very socially conservative constituency,” he said.
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sucks
