Last edited: February 14, 2005

Suit Filed Over Massachusetts Sodomy Law

Advocate, July 18, 2000

Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders has filed a lawsuit challenging the Massachusetts sodomy law, The Boston Globe reports. The suit asks the state’s supreme judicial court to declare the law a violation of right-to-privacy protections. "There have been very significant efforts made to try to address this issue through the legislature, and they have all simply hit dead ends," Jennifer Levi, an attorney for GLAD, told the paper. "The statute is so clearly in violation of the privacy and dignity guaranteed to all citizens of the Commonwealth that it calls out for judicial redress." Massachusetts is one of 17 states that criminalizes sodomy and is the only state in the Northeast to still do so. Massachusetts’s sodomy law applies to heterosexuals as well as gays and lesbians.

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