The High Court of Botswana ruled on June 11 that three provisions of the country’s Penal Code that collectively make soliciting or participating in gay sex a crime violate several provisions of the Constitution. The 2.4-million person republic, a member of the British Commonwealth of Nations, is centrally situated north of the border with South Africa. Formerly known as the British “protectorate” of Bechuanaland, it achieved independent rule in 1965 and formally became the Republic … <Read More>
sodomy law
Federal Court Says Old Sodomy Conviction Cannot Be Basis for Current Sex Offender Registration Requirement
Finding that prosecuting a man for failing to register as a sex offender on the basis of an old conviction under an unconstitutional sodomy law would be “unthinkable,” U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg granted a writ of habeas corpus to Charlton Green on December 9, directing that the State of Georgia release him from the obligations of probation to which he had been sentence.
Green, then age 20, and three friends, another young guy and … <Read More>
Georgia Supreme Court Rejects Constitutional Challenge to Solicitation of Sodomy Statute, But Reverses Police Officer’s Conviction
The Georgia Supreme Court has unanimously rejected a constitutional challenge to the state’s law making it a misdemeanor to solicit somebody to engage in anal or oral sex, but at the same time reversed a police officer’s conviction for soliciting a 17-year-old high school student, finding that the statute, narrowly construed to avoid constitutional problems, had not been violated. The case is Watson v. State, 2013 Ga. LEXIS 860 (Oct. 21, 2013).
Georgia’s sodomy statute … <Read More>
Virginia Attorney General Goes to the Mat to Save Unconstitutional Sodomy Law
Virginia Attorney General Kenneth Cuccinelli has asked the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals to reconsider and overrule a decision by a three-judge panel of that court that held last month that Virginia’s sodomy law is facially unconstitutional. Citing the dissenting opinion by one member of the panel ruling in MacDonald v. Moose, Cuccinelli emphasized that the case involving an adult man who solicited a teenage girl to have oral sex, and argued that Virginia should … <Read More>