Abstract:

After all, a scant thirty-six years before the U.S. Supreme Court dealt a blow to state sodomy laws in Lawrence v. Texas in 2003, it reluctantly decriminalized interracial marriage in Loving v. Virginia in 1967. Despite the Supreme Court's ruling in Lawrence v. Texas, rendering Virginia's 214-year-old sodomy law unconstitutional, the state's "crimes against nature" statute remains on the books, making oral and anal sex between consenting adults a felony. For example, one high-level university administrator, a strong ally of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer issues on his campus, worried about offending his boss's sensibilities and the potential backlash from state legislators, who control the institution's public funding.

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