by Calico Rudasill, Sssh.com
As the great humorist Dave Barry might say, I swear I’m not making this up.
In Michigan – yes, that Michigan, where the people of Flint paid to have brown, lead-infused water delivered to their homes for months and months – the state senate has passed a bill which, according to some observers, appears to make it a crime to have anal sex.
Oh good; for a moment there, I was worried Michigan’s legislators might get their priorities screwed up in panicked response to raging public furor over a little, trifling picayune like providing potable water to their constituents.
Read on…
What Is “The Abominable And Detestable Crime Against Nature,” Exactly? Anal?
The bill in question, SB-0219, primarily concerns animal abuse. Among other things, the bill modifies existing Michigan law to create a registry of convicted animal abusers, in large part to aid enforcement of provisions which prohibit such people from owning an animal for a designated period of time following their conviction.
Honestly, most of the bill likely won’t draw too many objections from most people (or those concerned with mistreatment of animals, at least) – but then along comes Section 158. (1) and its curious verbiage concerning “the abominable and detestable crime against nature.”
“A person who commits the abominable and detestable crime against nature either with mankind or with any animal is guilty of a felony, punishable by imprisonment for not more than 15 years, or if the defendant was a sexually delinquent person at the time of the offense, a felony punishable by imprisonment for an indeterminate term, the minimum of which shall be 1 day and the maximum of which shall be life.”
Whether or not you find this oddly-worded passage alarming, there’s no question it’s redundant as to sodomy, because Michigan already has a law against sodomy on its books. Or perhaps I should say it has such a law on its books for what it’s worth – which is just about squat, in light of the Supreme Court’s 2003 decision in Lawrence v. Texas.
So, why bother having such a law on the state’s books at all, you ask?
Well, with certain portions of the American electorate, there’s still plenty of points to be scored by taking a Godly stand against sodomy, even if you have to bullshit your way around binding legal precedent a little bit in the process.
Supporters of Michigan’s existing law against sodomy (yes, such people do exist) are fond of claiming it’s not aimed at homosexuals specifically, but at the prohibited sex acts themselves, making the law “neutral” with respect to the sexual orientation of those who are accused of violating it. Let’s not even get into Bondage and BDSM Sex!
And if you buy that little rhetorical dodge, I have several thousand miles of rapidly deteriorating lead pipes for sale in which you may be interested.
So, What Does This New Anal Sex Bill Mean, Really?
Here comes the buzzkill on the comedy gold which might have been SB-0219: It really doesn’t mean a thing with respect to the legal status of sodomy taking place between consenting adult humans in the state of Michigan.
What’s really at issue here, it seems, is an unwillingness on the part of the Michigan legislature to repeal its existing sodomy law, so the people who crafted the new bill were stuck with relying on existing statutory language in order to include a specific prohibition of engaging in sodomy with animals (as well as with “mankind,” which is where things get confusing) in the bill.
The senator who introduced bill, Rick Jones (R- Grand Ledge), said he didn’t even want to address changing the existing statutory language pertaining to sodomy, because to do so would have derailed what was an otherwise popular bill with broad bipartisan support.
“The minute I cross that line and I start talking about the other stuff, I won’t even get another hearing,” Jones said in explaining the language of the bill. “It’s because nobody wants to touch it. They say the courts have ruled, so walk away from the issue. I would rather not even bring up the topic because I know what would happen, and you’d have both sides just screaming, and you’d end up with a big fight that’s not needed because it’s not constitutional…. If we could put a bill in that said everything that’s unconstitutional will be removed from the legal books of Michigan, that’s probably something I could vote for, but am I going to mess up this dog bill that everyone wants? No.”
This sounds almost reasonable on its face, but I’m not so sure the fight Jones anticipated over the language of the existing sodomy law couldn’t have been avoided by some other means. After all, new statutory definitions are created by legislatures all the time; why not just find another set of terms to accomplish the same thing, and leave the language of the state’s (unconstitutional) ban on sodomy out of the mix altogether?
So, Is This All Much Ado About Basically Nothing?
I’m not even remotely qualified to offer a legal opinion on anything, of course – but that’s never stopped me before, so what the hell.
In my unlearned, non-lawyerly, probably-should-be-entirely-ignored opinion, it’s still just as safe for me to start up a gay porn studio in Detroit today as it would have been before this bill was contemplated – which is to say, it would still be pretty risky, but not because the cops would be likely to kick down the door and scream “Drop it buddy!” toward a male performer actively plowing the ass of another male performer.
This isn’t to say the whole story is nothing, however, because I still don’t quite buy Jones’ explanation as to why the word “mankind” needed to be in the controversial section of the bill. He says it’s there to protect minors, but I’m going to go way out on a limb and suggest (a) like sodomy, molesting children was already illegal in Michigan and (b) unlike the one against sodomy the prohibition on molesting children isn’t unconstitutional.
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