Sex Law Is No Judging Criteria
The Daily Press,
January 16, 2003
7505 Warwick Blvd, Newport News, VA 23607
Email: letters@dailypress.com
By Jim Spencer
Got together with the wife last weekend. We thought we were expressing our
love for each other in the privacy of our bedroom. But according to the Code
of Virginia, there’s always a chance we committed a Class 6 felony.
I wanted Virginia Beach Republican Del. Bob McDonnell, chairman of the
House of Delegates courts committee, to know that, because he might want to
send the prude police to investigate.
McDonnell, a man considering a run for Virginia attorney general,
apparently has decided to warm up by appointing himself head of Virginia’s
new Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice.
If you thought such overbearing minions of morality existed only among
Afghan extremists, think again. Taliban Bob says Newport News Circuit Judge
Verbena Askew may not be fit for reappointment to the bench if she ever
violated the state’s crimes-against-nature law.
Revelations of a sex-harassment accusation against Askew by a former female
official at the Newport News Drug Court spurred Taliban Bob to this moral high
ground. Doesn’t matter that an investigator found "little, if any,
credible evidence to support the allegations and substantial credible evidence
to support the denial." Doesn’t matter that the accusation—even if
true—never involved allegations of touching or kissing, much less anything
carnal.
Taliban Bob, a graduate of Pat Robertson’s Regent University Law School
and a darling of Robertson’s Christian Coalition, assumes that the
harassment claim might mean that Askew might be a lesbian. And if she is,
McDonnell says, she may not be judicial material. Then, he defends his bigotry
by hiding behind the crimes-against-nature law.
Well, here’s what part of that law says:
It says that if you engage in oral sex—in a heterosexual or homosexual
relationship—you commit a Class 6 felony, even if you’re consenting
adults.
What’s that I hear, gentle reader?
You’re disgusted and uncomfortable with me talking about the deepest,
most intimate details of people’s personal lives?
How do you think Askew feels?
Taliban Bob opened this Pandora’s box. So blame him, not me. If Virginia’s
moronic, outdated and unenforceable crimes-against-nature law is the standard
by which Taliban Bob wants to judge judges, he certainly will have no problem
applying the same standard to every one of the judges he is about to recommend
for reappointment. Let’s get ‘em all in and make sure they never had oral
sex or anal sex or sex with animals or sex with relatives.
Taliban Bob also will want to check all the new judges he’s about to
appoint.
And, oh yeah, he’ll definitely want to put the question of crimes against
nature to himself and his brothers and sisters in the state legislature.
So let’s schedule a big, old public hearing at the state Capitol in
Richmond after the holier-than-you Republicans get through railroading Askew
out of her job. The man who would be attorney general obviously believes we
need to get our leaders on the record about their sex habits and preferences.
Step on up to the mike, senators and delegates. Let’s see who’s fit to
serve. We’re all waiting to hear.
You go first, Taliban Bob.
Ever violated the crimes-against-nature law?
"Not that I can recall," McDonnell told a reporter Tuesday.
Sorry about that, Bob. But you know what? Your prudery and your homophobia
say a lot more about your character than Verbena Askew’s.
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