The N.C. Sodomy Law & Police Abuse
by Matt | October 15th, 2007 |Q-Notes has a wonderful article on the North Carolina Crimes Against Nature (CAN) law.
Q-Notes staff David Stout wrote the piece for the issue currently out on stands (the next issue comes out on Oct. 20).
It profiles the case of a Florida priest arrested in North Carolina for “soliciting a crime against nature.” The details of the case are clear and even admitted in police reports: The priest met a person he did not know was an undercover cop and asked if he wanted to go back to a private residence for sex. There was no solicitation for sex in public… only sex in private.
The United States Supreme Court ruled in Lawrence v. Texas that the state has no business policing private, consensual sex acts between two adults of legal age.
The case is a perfect one just waiting to be challenged.
Q-Notes has an online poll up on the issue: If you were cited for soliciting a crime against nature, would you fight the charge in court?
About 29 people have voted, with 93% saying they would fight the charge. A person who voted left a comment saying, “I think Q-Notes, ENC or some similar agency should send a guy wearing a wire into the areas where stings are being held. If/when the guy gets arrested for asking an undercover cop to go to a private residence for sex, the paper or group could fight the charge in court with the recording as evidence. This would be a great way to fight this issue, I think.”
I agree. If Bush can use wire-tapping on private citizens, I see no reason why private citizens (or members of the media) can’t use wires to expose the abuse of police power on a law that has been overturned (at least for the purpose for which it was used in the case against the Florida priest).
Who wants to be the guinea pig? I’ve already been arrested too many times for my own good, but I’ll do it if no one else volunteers.
7 Responses to “The N.C. Sodomy Law & Police Abuse”
Can you share with the world one American citizen that has been illegally wire tapped!
By Beau D. Jackson on Oct 15, 2007
Beau, that isn’t the point of the post. Read the thing again.
By Matt Comer on Oct 15, 2007
Matt are you surprised? Look how long it took desegregation, voting rights and race equality to get to this state. We are a very strange state indeed…in the major urban areas and out here in the OBX we are as liberal as Massachusetts but get into the smaller towns and we are still in 1961
By Paula The Surf Mom on Oct 15, 2007
Oh I don’t know of N.C. is all that bad. Yeah, some of the smaller towns can be bad, but I think the majority of our state is actually among some of the more progressive populations in the South.
In fact, I believe that integration came just a bit easier here in N.C. than in other states.
By Matt Comer on Oct 15, 2007
Bush can use wire-tapping on private citizens, I see no reason why private citizens (or members of the media) can’t use wires to expose the abuse of police power on a law that has been overturned (at least for the purpose for which it was used in the case against the Florida priest).
Your using it as a rationalization against law enforcement so therefore please give me a name of an American citizen that has been illegally wire tapped, certainly since the introduction of FISA.
By Beau D. Jackson on Oct 15, 2007
Beau… Perhaps you were taking it a bit too seriously. I tend to be a smart ass on my blog.
Either way, the rationalization isn’t one against law enforcement, it is one against police abuse and/or enforcing a law in such a way that has already been ruled unconstitutional.
I don’t know of any one instance of illegal wire-tapping by the Bush Administration. That isn’t my gig. I focus on LGBT rights. There are others focusing on the Bush wire-tapping, but I do know that Bush keeps eroding away our privacy more and more everyday, trampling on our Constitution, then eating and shitting it out again.
By Matt Comer on Oct 15, 2007
Enjoyed the article, however I disagree with the comments left by Surf Mom, who labels every small town between the (pardon me Surf Mom, IMO, decidedly not Carolinian) Outer Banks and downtown Raleigh as a throw back to 1961!? Well, hooray for that!
Honey, those small town folks don’t KNOW you from Eve as you drop off 264 for a soda. For the most part, they’ve only suffered metropolitan drugs, greed, and crime via those moving in. The days of unlocked doors and “sleeping on the front porch summer breeze evenings” are, sadly, over.
I’ve lived in several small eastern NC towns and in my experience, you get what you give. There are plenty of queer country aunts and uncles out there, believe me, and lots of straight kin who love them.
Unfortunately, yet obviously, johnny-come-lately arrivals within the beltline share your evaluation of eastern NC… nearly all arteries run north/south, shy Hwy 70 and the RDU escape hatch of 264. Thus, east of Zebulon… well, east Zebulon marks the end of charted territory. (Oddly enough, the map takes up again, just as one reaches that oft repaired and overdeveloped sandbar those within the beltline seem to be fighting nature over… and with my tax dollars as cannon fodder by the way. Pardon, I’ve strayed off subject.)
It may not be your homosexuality the country folk shy away from, but rather, your attitude.
P.S. Fyi, I’m not the Ya-hoo you may wish me to be, I’m a Research Scientist who happens to love it “down east”.
By Jeff Blue Eyes on Oct 15, 2007