ACLU and SC man sue state over ‘homophobic’ sodomy laws
The United State’s most powerful civil liberties group is suing South Carolina over “homophobic ‘sodomy’” law that can require people who engage in certain consensual sex acts to register as sex offenders.
The state’s sodomy laws show “how the lingering effects of centuries of homophobic ‘sodomy’ prohibitions persist,” the American Civil Liberties Union said in a lawsuit filed Wednesday. The suit asks the court “to put an end to South Carolina’s discrimination.”
The ACLU is suing in federal court on behalf of a man, identified as John Doe, who had to register as a South Carolina sex offender after he was “convicted of being gay,” the suit said. He was convicted in state court in 2001 for having consensual sex with another man. The court also convicted his partner.
In South Carolina’s code of laws, consensual oral and anal sex is a crime known as “buggery.”
A U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2003 invalidated buggery laws in Texas and Georgia. The court decided such laws violate people’s civil rights.
But the laws remain on the books in South Carolina. Those convicted of buggery before 2003 are still punished, the ACLU lawsuit says.
Despite the 2003 Supreme Court ruling and a pardon for Doe in 2006, Doe still has to register as a sex offender in South Carolina.
The state buggery law makes Doe and others similarly convicted “suffer myriad, onerous prescriptions on their everyday life,” the lawsuit says.
“Requiring Doe to register as a sex offender for a Buggery conviction serves no legitimate purpose,” the suit says, adding that making him register is “unjustifiable and unconstitutional.”
By bringing the suit, the ACLU hopes to stop South Carolina from requiring people convicted of buggery to register as sex offenders.
The suit is brought against state Attorney General Alan Wilson and state police Chief Mark Keel as enforcers of South Carolina law and its sex offender registry. Wilson and Keel’s offices did not comment on the lawsuit.
The suit references cases in Montana and Idaho in which a man convicted decades prior under of sodomy laws similar to South Carolina’s sued to not have to register as a sex offender and won in 2021.
South Carolina’s buggery laws have existence since 1712, the suit said. In the colonial period, breaking the law was punishable with death.
The law reads, “Whoever shall commit the abominable crime of buggery, whether with mankind or with beast, shall, on conviction, be guilty of felony.”
It wasn’t until 1869 that the death penalty was removed and replaced by a mandatory five-year prison sentence. In 1993, the state updated the statute to be punishable with a maximum five-year sentence.
The suit says the state buggery law has remained “essentially unchanged for two centuries” and “continues to prohibit the sex acts traditionally associated with homosexuality.”
This story was originally published December 22, 2021 at 11:58 AM.