Ken Cuccinelli's gubernatorial campaign claims that Cuccinelli, a/k/a Kookinelli, is focused on jobs and issues that matter to most Virginians. You'd never know that based on his request filed today for the U. S. Supreme Court which struck down for a second time recently by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, the most conservative Circuit Court of Appeals in America (it was struck down the first time by the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Lawrence v. Texas in 2003 that ruled a similar Texas statute to be unconstitutional).
In his ludicrous explanation for his appeal, Kookinelli claims that the sodomy statute is key to prosecuting sex crimes even though numerous other statutes give prosecutors plenty of bases for prosecuting wrongdoers. No what's special about the sodomy statute is that it criminalizes any form of sex that isn't engaged in via the so-called missionary position. It is part and parcel with the Christofascist agenda that sex should never be enjoyable and certainly should never depart from their rigid - might we also say frigid if we think of sodomy statute supporter, Victoria Cobb, president of The Family Foundation? - views that sex is only for procreation and one had better not like it. The other reason Kookinelli lusts to keep the sodomy statute on the books is that it imposes far higher penalties on "deviant" sex crimes than the rest of the panoply of laws available to prosecutors. Here are details from the Virginian Pilot on Kookinelli's appeal (which will no doubt send the far right crowd into near orgasms since they can't have them during sex):
Attorney General Kenneth Cuccinelli on Tuesday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold Virginia's anti-sodomy law, arguing that a lower court misinterpreted the scope of the justices' 2003 decision invalidating a similar law in Texas.
In a 2-1 decision in March, a panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declared that Virginia's law against oral and anal sex is unconstitutional. [The 4th Circuit also refused Kookinelli's request for a rehearing en banc]
Virginia's so-called "crimes against nature" law was the basis for a 47-year-old man's conviction of criminal solicitation for allegedly demanding oral sex from a 17-year-old girl. In the appeal, Cuccinelli claims the Supreme Court's Lawrence v. Texas decision applied only to sex acts involving consenting adults, not those between an adult and a minor.
Claire Guthrie Gastanaga, executive director of the ACLU of Virginia, said she was disappointed that Cuccinelli chose to appeal the ruling. "I think that's a waste of the state's resources," she said. "By appealing, he's trying to breathe life into a law that is clearly unconstitutional."
The appeals court's ruling came in the case of William Scott MacDonald, who was convicted of violating a Virginia law making it a felony for any adult to order a person under age 18 to commit a felony. MacDonald claimed his conviction for that offense was improper because the underlying felony was based on an unconstitutional law. The appeals court agreed.
Gastanaga said that rather than appeal the 4th Circuit's decision, Cuccinelli should work with the General Assembly to draft a constitutional law protecting older minors.
The decision to appeal is certain to provide campaign fodder for Democrats who already have accused Cuccinelli and his GOP ticket mates of pursuing an anti-gay, socially divisive agenda.
Cuccinelli led a group of 19 Republican attorneys general in filing a 55-page brief with the court in late January opposing legal recognition of gay marriage. In one passage, their brief seeks to undermine the notion that if same-sex couples can be parents, they should also be legally allowed to get married:
"Responsible parenting is not a justification for same-sex couple marriage, as distinguished from recognition of any other human relationships. It is instead a rationale for eliminating marriage as government recognition of a limited set of relationships. Once the natural limits that inhere in the relationship between a man and a women can no longer sustain the definition of marriage, the conclusion that follows is that any group of adults would have an equal claim to marriage."
Kookinelli is a flaming asshole and, based on the rumors that come my way, a hypocrite. My offer stands: If someone will come forward with reasonable proof that Kookinelli is another Ed Schrock or Larry Craig and sign a sworn affidavit affirming the information, I will happily do all I can to take his sorry ass down. If you don't believe me, ask Ed Schrock or former "ex-gay" poster boy Michael Johnston, if you can find either of them. All it will take is believable evidence and a detailed sworn affidavit.
