News - No sex please

Why is it that conservatives (otherwise known as Republicans) are so addicted to big government? Oh, I know they’ve made an industry out of smearing liberals (otherwise known as Democrats) with the “big government” label. But they lie. It is the American right wing that is obsessed with expanding government to ever-larger proportions.

Case in point: Early next year, the Supreme Court of the United States will hear arguments in the case of Lawrence v. Texas, involving the criminal convictions of two men under Texas’ “homosexual conduct” law. In Texas, it’s OK to be homosexual — but not if you ever want to have sex, because the state has declared consensual sodomy between homosexuals to be illegal. Heterosexual Texans, however, are permitted to legally sodomize each other until the longhorns come home.

Big-government groups associated with the Republican Party are declaring their support for Texas’ discriminatory position. Right-wing organizations such as the American Family Association, Focus on the Family and the Christian Coalition have flooded the airwaves with the usual calls for donations to defend America’s “traditional values.” “Government has a legitimate interest in regulating such behavior” due to public health concerns, says Ken Connor of the Family Research Council. He cites AIDS as one of the horrors for which sodomy is responsible, conveniently ignoring the fact that heterosexual intercourse is a primary method by which the disease is spread.

But the big-government Republicans aren’t content to simply outlaw consensual sodomy between gays and lesbians. They also believe government stormtroopers should police the bedrooms of heterosexuals. At the heart of the Texas case is the landmark 1986 Supreme Court decision Bowers v. Hardwick, which upheld Georgia’s archaic 19th-century prohibition against consensual sodomy, even between hetero married people. Georgia’s Supreme Court struck down the law in 1998 as a violation of the state constitution, but the federal Bowers ruling still allows nine other states to classify acts of oral or anal sex between two consenting adults — gay or straight — as a crime punishable by jail sentences ranging from one to 20 years.

The Bowers case is the unseemly legacy of former state Attorney General Michael Bowers, who most Georgians remember for his humiliating admission of a 15-year adulterous relationship during his failed campaign for governor (incidentally, adultery is also illegal under Georgia law). In 1997, Bowers’ mistress informed me (in the presence of her attorney, Lin Wood) that the affair was ongoing during the time Bowers v. Hardwick was heard in D.C. She also admitted that the two had engaged in “a lot” of sodomy during their affair. She admitted the same in a George magazine article published a year later.

Hypocritical, ain’t it? The very man whose name is attached to the most famous anti-sodomy case in American history was himself engaging in illegal sodomy even as he argued to criminalize such behavior for everyone else. One can only imagine how the justices would’ve decided the case in 1986 if they’d known of this duplicity. Of course, by his own admission, Bowers’ defense of the sodomy law was mainly rooted in the desire to use the power of the state to harass gays and lesbians.

One of the key questions in the Texas case is whether Bowers v. Hardwick should be overruled. The answer to that question would seem rather obvious considering Bowers’ motivation for defending the archaic Georgia law, which was little more than a wanton animus toward homosexuals. His own hypocritical conduct only reinforces the fact that the consistent enforcement of such statutes is absolutely hopeless.

Considering the important matters that affect our nation, it is seriously distressing that Republicans are wasting time on pointless issues like outlawing oral and anal sex. But we should’ve known they’d behave like this. This is the same crowd that cheered four years ago as more than $100 million in tax money was wasted on an investigation into the details of a presidential hummer.

Yes, friends, in the new Republican America, the government wants to eavesdrop on your phone and e-mail conversations, review your credit card and movie rental records, and spy on your Internet and travel habits — all in the name of preventing terrorism. Now the right-wing minions are pleading with the Supreme Court to retain the authority to send police officers into your bedroom to arrest you for engaging in consensual sex acts that the government deems to be “deviant.” Remember that the next time you hear a right-winger refer to Democrats as the “Party of Big Government.”

jeff.berry@creativeloafing.com

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Jeff Berry thinks Republicans have a deviant and perverted obsession with sex.??