Baton Rouge Is Still Charging Gay Men With ‘Crimes Against Nature’

Care2 Causes
Baton Rouge Is Still Charging Gay Men With ‘Crimes Against Nature’
Steve Williams

The police chief of Baton Rouge, La., had to apologize after it emerged that officers recently charged two men under an anti-gay law that the Supreme Court of the United States rendered unconstitutional over a decade ago.

The incident happened on Thursday night, say reports, when two men, ages 33 and 25, were caught having sex in a stationary car at a local Baton Rouge park. Officers arrested the men on a count of trespassing and also “crimes against nature” — Louisiana’s version of an anti-gay sodomy ban. 

There’s just one problem: same-sex consensual acts aren’t illegal in the U.S. and they haven’t been for over a decade. To their credit, when the police force realized this error they quickly moved to correct it. Administrators have said that no anti-gay intent was meant and that this was a simple case of those particular officers not knowing the statute was no longer enforceable:

“They were charged on counts of trespassing and crimes against nature and then we recognized that the crimes against nature  (charge) was unconstitutional,” NOLA.com quotes Baton Rouge Police Cpl. Don Coppola as saying. “(BRPD) Chief Carl Dabadie immediately contacted the East Baton Rouge District Attorney’s office to have those charges removed.”

Coppola says a memo has now been sent to all officers telling them that the crimes against nature statute is not constitutional and should never be invoked. He has also apologized to the two men involved, but has characterized this as a “simple mistake.” Taking this on good faith, we can recognize it very well might have been a simple mistake, but it’s worth stressing that this isn’t the first time East Baton Rouge’s police force have made this error.

In 2013 the Baton Rouge Sheriff’s Office garnered national attention http://www.care2.com/causes/sodomy-bans-are-unconstitutional-someone-tell-baton-rouge-police.html after an investigation by The Advocate (not the LGBT title but one that covers state news for the Louisiana region) found the Sheriff’s Office had used the unenforceable crimes against nature statute as part of a sting to trap at least 12 men who agreed to or discussed consensual sex with an undercover agent at a local park.

At the time, the department had claimed it was unaware that the Supreme Court of the United States had rendered the law unenforceable as part of  its Lawrence v. Texas ruling in 2003. Then, the court found that it was unconstitutional to regulate private consensual acts between same-sex consenting adults. This meant that every statute used to make the act of same-sex sexual acts illegal was rendered unenforceable. However, because the Supreme Court (rightly) cannot make or repeal laws, the statutes remained on the books.

Several states have repealed their anti-sodomy laws–because it’s pointless and confusing to have them written in law–but around 13 states still have those laws on the books, including Louisiana. This is how the so-called mistake came about in 2013, and apparently many of East Baton Rouge’s officers still haven’t got the message today.

“It’s outrageous that we have people in this state sitting in jail accused of a crime that’s been declared invalid,” Marjorie Esman, executive director of the ACLU in Louisiana, is quoted as saying. “The Baton Rouge Police Department needs to get the message that they can’t arrest people illegally.”

This is especially aggravating, not just because it’s the same police force that has yet again attempted to use this law (and, it appears, the only police force in Louisiana), but because Republicans in the state House last year refused to take up a simple measure that would delete the crimes against nature statute’s anti-gay provisions.  To repeat again, the Supreme Court has ruled these laws unconstitutional, but they are still occasionally being used. Simple logic dictates that the legislature must do something about this, but it continues to hold on to this anti-gay provision, as do several other states. We have to ask why?

Unfortunately, religious conservative lawmakers are on record as saying that they believe repealing the statute would amount to “condoning” or “approving” of what they believe is sinful behavior; this is another example of how someone’s private beliefs yet again are encroaching on and harming the lives of others in the secular world. Legal groups have signaled they are prepared to sue to get these laws off the books, and unfortunately it appears that may be necessary.

http://www.care2.com/causes/baton-rouge-is-still-charging-gay-men-with-crimes-against-nature.html

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