Sodomy Laws
Nevada decriminalized sodomy in 1993, ten years before the U.S. Supreme Court in Lawrence v. Texas struck down laws that criminalized private consensual sexual activity. Senator Lori Lipman Brown introduced Senate Bill 466 on May 13, 1993, to decriminalize what the statutes called "infamous crime against nature". At hearings, two doctors linked repealing the sodomy laws with a public health measure to combat the stigma and spread of HIV. Other supporters included including Reno, Nevada Rabbi Myra Soifer, former Senators Helen Foley and Jean Ford, gay rights advocate Lee Plotkin, and progressive activist Bob Fulkerson. Opponents included Janine Hansen of the Nevada Eagle Forum and Independent American Party of Nevada and Lynn Chapman who said that repealing the sodomy laws would increase the spread of HIV/AIDS and would "open the floodgate ... in legalizing, condoning and recognizing homosexuality to be on an equal footing with heterosexuality" and lead to "such things as homosexual marriage and adoption of children." In the course of the legislative process, the words "infamous crime against nature" were replaced by "anal intercourse, cunnilingus or fellatio in public". Other amendments, including one to require sex education in schools to provide "factual information regarding the dangers of such activities" of "a homosexual lifestyle or the infamous crime against nature", were defeated. Democratic Governor Bob Miller signed the legislation on June 16, 1993.
Read more about this topic: LGBT Rights In Nevada
Famous quotes containing the words sodomy and/or laws:
“I see not much difference between ourselves & the Turks, save that we have foreskins and they none, that they have long dresses and we short, and that we talk much and they little. In England the vices in fashion are whoring & drinking, in Turkey, sodomy and smoking.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“There can be a true grandeur in any degree of submissiveness, because it springs from loyalty to the laws and to an oath, and not from baseness of soul.”
—Simone Weil (1909–1943)