Sodomy Laws Are for Everyone

As has been much blogged, Georgia's Supreme Court recently upheld a 10-year sentence for Genarlow Wilson, who was prosecuted for having consensual oral sex with a 15-year-old girl. Wilson was just 17 at the time, and he’s already served almost two years. Glenn Reynolds, who thinks the punishment excessive, comments, “What's more, were the genders reversed I doubt that it would even have been prosecuted.”

Possibly, but I think Reynolds is underestimating Georgia’s enthusiasm for turning every last man, woman, and child into a convicted sex offender. I've written before about the plight of Wendy Whitaker, who was tagged an offender for giving a boy a blow job as a tenth grader. She was 17; he was 15. She’s just one of thousands on the list who are there for consensual sex crimes, and she’s not the only woman.

While it sounds like the range of serious sex crimes may be narrowing (Wilson was punished under a dated law that deemed oral sex far more egregious a crime than genital sex), the range of restrictions on convicted sex offenders is expanding. That means people like Whitaker and Wilson, who were punished under laws that have since been changed, will continue getting hit with ever more petty constraints on their daily lives and residency restrictions that keep them permanently on the move. The list of offenders is going to keep growing, and the range of places they can live shrinking.

Comments

RSDavis | December 20, 2006, 5:58pm | #

Wow. I just get more sad and disturbed by this country every day.

- R

t.j. | December 20, 2006, 6:09pm | #

how old is that 17 year old now? that's terrible.

Jamie Kelly | December 20, 2006, 6:20pm | #

I am an UNconvicted sex offender, then. Wonder what the statute of limitations is on getting head 21 years ago by a 15-year-old girl?
Ah, who cares. That shit was worth it!

El | December 20, 2006, 6:39pm | #

While we don't (seem to) know the girl's identity, one has to wonder if she's white.

RSDavis | December 20, 2006, 7:10pm | #

That question never even occurred to me. Why do you wonder?

- R

Al Swearengen | December 20, 2006, 7:13pm | #

Cocksuckers!

Scott Morgan | December 20, 2006, 7:22pm | #

Kerry,

Could you post a link to this database of high school chicks that give blowjobs?

Akira MacKenzie | December 20, 2006, 7:28pm | #

Jesus H. Christmas! Where was all this hot oral sex going on in my high school? Not that I would get any, mind you. I was just as fat, ugly, and unfuckable then as I am now.

plunge | December 20, 2006, 7:44pm | #

All the individuals (victim/accused) are African American.

Kerry left out the worst of it though, which is that if this kid had had VAGINAL sex with the girl, it would have only been a misdemeanor. Unfortunately, until they changed the law, Georgia was one of those states that was so out of touch with reality that it actually believed that a teenager getting a young girl pregnant or giving her a genital STD was somehow no big deal, but a blowjob was the end of the world.

GILMORE | December 20, 2006, 8:05pm | #

1)
I have a question = is it really 'statutory rape' when it's 2 underage kids?? I didnt think that was the law ; i thought it was an OVER 18 kid screwing a 15yr old. aka 'jailbait' Is it that in some states you're an "Adult" at 17 instead? I really am confused here.

I thought when 2 underage kids got caught humping, their parents just either a) beat the shit out of them and send them to military school, or b) secretly not give a crap and just tell them to use a rubber...or the permutations in between. And the state generally didnt care as long as no babies are made? I dont see how consensual acts between 2 technical minors get classified this way.

Someone please clarify

2)
Akira, did you not at least try hitting up the fat, ugly, and (well,why not)fuckable? You might have been very surprised.

My little brother, who has been severely schizophrenic for 8 years now, gets very laid. CRAZY-laid you could say. I cant keep track. And they're almost all...funky. Not good. Many are big. I can't guess, but big. 200+ lbs? more? ...and not uh, tall. I'm like, where do you even MEET these girls? And he's like, "dude, different hospitals"

What?

"they're all in program" 'Program' being: fresh out the 'lock-up' loony bin, now freshmen in the 'day camp' loony bin. Have their own place in an apartment, riding a monthly Section 8 social security check. Lots of free time, and most of it spent chock-full o' psychoactive meds. bored. you do the math. My bro hits mad skins.

there is a downside, obviously, but i dont need to get into that. crazy women.

Anyway, my point was, as my grandpappy used to say, "it dont matter how ugly you are, theres always plenty out there just as ugly as you that'll love you like a puppydog."

he also said some other, really dirty stuff about how to score with dumb girls. when i was like, 7.

Seamus | December 20, 2006, 8:15pm | #

I have a question = is it really 'statutory rape' when it's 2 underage kids?? I didnt think that was the law ; i thought it was an OVER 18 kid screwing a 15yr old. aka 'jailbait' Is it that in some states you're an "Adult" at 17 instead? I really am confused here.

Well, when I was a teenager in Virginia, the law was that *any* male who screwed a girl younger than 16 was guilty of statutory rape, a felony. Even if the guy was younger than the girl. (In that case, though, prosecutorial discretion meant he'd probably be charged with a juvenile offense, if at all.) If he got a blowjob from her, both would be guilty of sodomy, also a felony (though again, either or both might be charged as juveniles, or not at all, but I'm just reporting the law as it appeared on the statute books).

Since then, many or most states have gotten both stricter and more lenient. Stricter, in that the age of consent has been raised to 18, for both sexes, and more lenient, in that some kinds of exceptions have been made for when the "offender" is close in age to the "victim." Of course, there are instances (as in Georgia), where the efforts to modernize the laws have proceeded unevenly, with bizarre and perverse results.

Yong Kim | December 20, 2006, 8:23pm | #

Yea these immoral laws regarding consensual sex make you feel like we're still living in the stone age, doesn't it? Though I bet some of those stone age societies were more advanced than us morally.

Franklin Harris | December 20, 2006, 8:38pm | #

Well, I suppose Romeo and Juliette couldn't have killed themselves if they'd been doing hard time.

I shall now ponder the justice of sentencing a 17-year-old boy to being anally raped and a 17-year-old girl to being in a women-in-prison film.

Dexter Morgan | December 20, 2006, 9:02pm | #

You frighten me, Gilmore. ;-)

GILMORE | December 20, 2006, 9:20pm | #

In that case, though, prosecutorial discretion meant he'd probably be charged with a juvenile offense, if at all

Ok, yeah. thats what i meant. Wouldnt it be a juvenile-courts issue if he was 17 and she 15? I dont recall juvenile courts routinely handing out 10+ year sentences to kids. they mostly were like, 'hey - You! Stop doing that! BAAAAAAD!' Scared-Straight style stuff.

Dexter: dont be afraid. I'm the normal one in my family. And i personally dont bump uglies with crazy fatties. I'm just sharing the universal truth that, however old you are, whatever you look like, however fucked up you are, someone out there would probably wants you to flip your pancake. Love comes in all shapes and sizes.

GILMORE | December 20, 2006, 9:27pm | #

correction: "...THEIR pancake."

that's an expression i sort of coined with my twice-removed girlfriend. Flipping one's pancake.

My brother used to say, 'aw man, that chick totally throws the cat...'

'throws the cat'???

'yeah.' (then spreads his arms and legs like he's grabbing a gigantic beachball, curling his hands and feet, and squeals insanely like cat hurled as a weapon at someone nearby)

'like that'.

that shit is funny.

plunge | December 20, 2006, 10:03pm | #

"I have a question = is it really 'statutory rape' when it's 2 underage kids??"

That's what's so messed up: if it was actual vaginal sex, it would pretty much be okay. It's only because its (gasp) ORAL SODOMY that he gets ten years.

Note that this sentence was imposed mostly because the kid refused to plea bargain on a separate case in which he (drunk) slept with a another 17 year old girl who was drunk which was a rape charge (based not on her not giving consent, but doing so when drunk). He was acquitted (mostly on the basis of a videotape of the incident), but the prosecutor, I guess, really wanted to stick it to him for not agreeing to plea to it.

Lamar | December 20, 2006, 11:26pm | #

Shoulda let them jackasses secede.

The Wine Commonsewer | December 21, 2006, 12:54am | #

Al Swearengen wins the thread.

STILL LOL over that one.

No, wait, maybe Scott Morgan does. Depends upon whether or not Kerry posts the database.

Gilmore, that IS funny.

BTW, sodomy is not oral sex. I don't care what you guys say. Sodomy is, well, something else.

The Wine Commonsewer | December 21, 2006, 12:58am | #

I come from an era when an underage chick in your vehicle with bare feet could be construed as a reason to arrest a guy for statutory rape (sex with a statue as we used to say). That was tough in those days because no chicks ever wore shoes. One time I thought I was going to jail but the sheriff made Debbie call her parents and tell them exactly where she was instead. That actually was worse.

John C. Randolph | December 21, 2006, 1:29am | #

Goddamned puritans.

-jcr

Mark Borok | December 21, 2006, 8:36am | #

Also in GA, they're prosecuting a comic book store owner for giving a kid a comic book with a picture of a nude Pablo Picasso in it.

http://www.cbldf.org/pr/archives/000248.shtml

Jozef | December 21, 2006, 8:52am | #

That's what's so messed up: if it was actual vaginal sex, it would pretty much be okay. It's only because its (gasp) ORAL SODOMY that he gets ten years.

If I remember right, it was only in 1998 that Georgia abolished an anti-sodomy law that would send anybody to prison for up to 20 years for oral sex, including a married couple.

I. Self. Divine. | December 21, 2006, 9:07am | #

If I remember right, it was only in 1998 that Georgia abolished an anti-sodomy law that would send anybody to prison for up to 20 years for oral sex, including a married couple.
-----------------------------------------

Jesus, I always thought that oral was what you did before you got into the really weird twisted stuff...I wonder howmuch time I could have received for some of those acts...I shudder to think of it...hell, I shudder when I think about some of the acts themselves...

Pi Guy | December 21, 2006, 9:44am | #

Yeah, GA might be lower on the "Let's pretend it's 1803" scale than any state except KS.

In MD, the magic age is 16, applied something like this:

1) If the participants' age difference is no greater than 3 yrs 365 days, no foul EVEN if one of the participants is under 16
- In other words, a college freshman who's 19 with a fall birthday can have consensual sex with a 15 year old high school freshman with a spring birthday.

2) If the youngest of the sex act participants is at least 16, consent can be legally given.

However, MD still has some of the more antiquated sodomy laws in the US. As another poster alluded to above, no one is legally allowed to consent to or engage in oral sex - even married couples! MD was founded by Catholics and it seems as though they've never gotten around to thinking about the matter much since.

Grand Chalupa | December 21, 2006, 12:09pm | #

Are these sex offenders allowed to leave the country? They've got to be, right?

I mean this is scary shit and in case I ever touch an underage girl on the shoulder I want to have that option open.

I.Self.Divine. | December 21, 2006, 1:07pm | #

I feel kind of like an idiot, but didn't Lawrence v. Texas rule all sodomy laws unconstitutional and therefore unenforceable?

Nick Danger | December 24, 2006, 6:35am | #

"MD was founded by Catholics and it seems as though they've never gotten around to thinking about the matter much since."

Not much of an explanation -- oral sex is not against Church teachings. (Oral sex to orgasm is.)

Cunning linguist | December 24, 2006, 3:59pm | #

oral sex is not against Church teachings. (Oral sex to orgasm is)

Dontcha/they mean only male orgasm?

jim | December 25, 2006, 4:39am | #

I see a double standard here...A blowjob...illegal. But what about eating pussy. And if they had a bit of 69 would they both be in jail?