Louisiana Sodomy Law Upheld
Advocate,
Weekend, July 8-10, 2000
The Louisiana supreme court upheld the state’s sodomy law on Thursday, saying the
state had the right to ban "an immoral act." The 5-2 ruling came in the case of
a man convicted of having oral sex with a woman. The man’s conviction had been
overturned by a lower court that ruled the sodomy law unconstitutional. Louisiana’s
law punishes consensual oral or anal sex for heterosexuals as well as gays and lesbians
with a prison term of up to five years. "Simply put, commission of what the
Legislature determines is an immoral act, even if consensual and private, is an injury
against society itself," Justice Chet Traylor wrote in the majority opinion. In a
dissent, Chief Justice Pascal Calogero Jr. and Justice Harry Lemmon said the state had no
right to intrude on private matters. "The only apparent purpose of the prohibition is
to dictate the type of sex that is acceptable to legislators," Lemmon wrote. A civil
lawsuit filed by gay rights supporters challenging the law on other legal grounds is still
pending in the state courts.
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