Army Ruling Deals Blow to
Sodomy Law
PlanetOut
Network, December 8, 2004
By Ann Rostow
SUMMARY: An unpublished ruling by the U.S. Army’s
top court may herald the beginning of the end for the military’s sodomy law.
An unpublished ruling by the
U.S. Army’s top court may herald the beginning of the end for the
military’s sodomy law.
The military has long outlawed sodomy under Article 125
of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, a prohibition on “unnatural carnal
copulation with another person of the same or opposite sex, or with an
animal.” The rule, otherwise translated into a ban on oral and anal sex,
even applies to private conduct off the military base, allowing the long arm
of military law to stretch a little further than might be constitutional.
LGBT advocates challenged the military sodomy earlier
this year in a case that went all the way to the highest military court, the
Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces. In that case, Air Force Technical Sgt.
Eric Marcum challenged his court martial, which was based on a number of
Article 125 violations with other men. Since some of Sgt. Marcum’s
activities were possibly coerced, the court was not able to absolve him in the
specific incident under review, a consensual episode with a subordinate.
In its ruling however, the high court took no position on
the key question of whether the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2003 ruling in Lawrence
v. Texas effectively gutted the military’s sodomy ban along with
that of the Lone Star State. In fact, the court suggested that Lawrence
could govern a military case under different circumstances.
Now, that case may have arrived. Basing its ruling on Lawrence,
the U.S. Army Court of Criminal Appeals overturned the guilty plea of an Army
specialist who had oral sex with a female civilian in the barracks. According
to the Washington Post, the decision is the first to uphold a right to
sexual privacy that trumps Article 125.
The fact that the man involved was accused of a
heterosexual violation is irrelevant to the legal principles at issue. Oral
sex is oral sex, and if Article 125 no longer applies to straight sex, it no
longer applies to gay sex, either.
If the Pentagon appeals the ruling to the Court of
Appeals for the Armed Forces, the high court will have another chance to
consider the impact of Lawrence on the armed services.
The ruling coincides with a new lawsuit challenging the
1993 “don’t ask, don’t tell” ban on gay speech in the military. The
issues of sodomy and “don’t ask, don’t tell” are separate, but
related, since the ban on gay speech is supported by the more fundamental ban
on gay actions. Taking away that support could weaken “don’t ask” and
could affect the outcome of Monday’s challenge to the policy, brought before
a federal court in Boston by a group of 12 ousted gay and lesbian service
members.
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