In an unusual move, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II (R), his party’s nominee for governor, launched a new campaign website Wednesday highlighting his efforts to reinstate Virginia’s unconstitutional Crimes Against Nature law. The rule, which makes felons out of even consenting married couples who engage in oral or anal sex in the privacy of their own homes, was struck down by federal courts after Cuccinelli blocked efforts to bring it in line with the Supreme Court’s 2003 Lawrence v. Texas ruling.
Today’s Republican Party (whom no reasonable person could mistake for the party of Ronald Reagan) seems to have lost any semblance of connection to the definition of Conservatism, a noun that means
- opposition to change and innovation
- a political philosophy advocating the preservation of the best of the established order in society and opposing radical change.
Nor is it the party of “small government,” defined by so many on the Right as “getting government off the backs of Americans.” It’s become the party of banning abortions, disenfranchising the poor and minorities, and now in its piece de resistance attempting to regulate private sexual conduct between consenting adults. Ken Cuccinelli has become the poster boy for a Republican Party working to create government small enough to be installed in a woman’s vagina, regardless of her feelings on the matter.
It’s interesting that Republicans like Cuccinelli see no conflict with demanding “small government” while simultaneously working to insert that small government into the sex lives of Americans. For a party sworn to defend freedom and liberty, this strategy seems nothing if not inconsistent and more than a little hypocritical. The unconstitutional Crimes Against Nature law Cuccinelli is flogging is something he disingenuously cloaks in the battle to protect children against sexual predators. That’s certainly a laudable and worthwhile goal, but what he’s loathe to mention is that the law contains language essentially criminalizing all non-missionary position and non-procreative sex acts.
The law states, “If any person carnally knows in any manner any brute animal, or carnally knows any male or female person by the anus or by or with the mouth, or voluntarily submits to such carnal knowledge, he or she shall be guilty of a Class 6 felony…” Cuccinelli claims that the law “is only applied to sodomy committed against minors, against non-consenting adults, or in public,” but fails to mention that what he wants to keep on the books criminalizes the private behavior of consenting grownups….
Right; the language is in the law but, and here’s where Cuccinelli asks us to trust him, it would NEVER, EVER be used against adults engaged in consensual behavior (At least not until he’s able to install a dominionist theocracy with him as its not so benevolent dictator).
In 2009, he told a newspaper why he supported restrictions on the sexual behavior of consenting adults: “My view is that homosexual acts, not homosexuality, but homosexual acts are wrong. They’re intrinsically wrong. And I think in a natural law based country it’s appropriate to have policies that reflect that. … They don’t comport with natural law.” As a result of Cuccinelli’s homophobia, the law’s text remains unchanged a decade after the Supreme Court’s ruling.
While Cuccinelli tries to spin his efforts as “Virginia’s appeal to preserve a child-protection statute,” this amounts to little more than his attempt to restore the state’s unconstitutional ban on oral sex.
The reality is that Cuccinelli, like too many Far Right Teapublicans, is an intolerant authoritarian martinet who sees no problem with using the power of government to enforce his personal prejudices. The fact that the Crimes Against Nature law has been declared unconstitutional appears not to faze Cuccinelli, who evidently answers to a Higher Power- himself.
That Cuccinelli appears to lack the self-awareness to recognize the arrogance and hypocrisy in his position only serves to further illustrate that what he’s primarily concerned with isn’t protecting children; it’s burnishing his political prospects. If he has to lie and cheat to achieve his ends…well, honesty and integrity are for losers and Liberals, knowhutimean?
Interesting for a state whose history began with those fleeing religious persecution, isn’t it? Now Virginia has its own insidious flavor of religious persecution…and few inside Virginia seem to recognize of even care about this sad commentary on the state of Republican politics.
Remember, it’s only hypocrisy when you catch someone else doing it….
