Laws criminalizing sodomy between consenting adults might have been ruled unconstitutional in the 2003 Lawrence v. Texas Supreme Court case, but that didn’t stop a prominent Virginia politician from taking an aggressive measure to preserve his state’s controversial anti-sodomy law.
Virginia Attorney General and Republican gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli launched a new website Wednesday urging the Supreme Court to uphold the recent anti-sodomy ruling nationwide. He claims that if kept on the books, the state’s anti-sodomy law will reduce the number of sexual predators on the state’s sex offender registry.
The law “has very real implications for public safety,” reads the site, vachildpredators.com.
The website criticizes Cuccinelli’s Democratic opponent, former DNC chairman Terry McAuliffe, accusing him of failing to take a stance on whether the federal appeals court’s ruling against Virginia’s anti-sodomy statute should be overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Though Cuccinelli attributed his support of this legislation to his hardline stance against child molestation, LGBT advocates in the state –which President Barack Obama won by a narrow margin in 2012--have called the law unconstitutional and anti-gay.
A spokesperson for McAuliffe told The Washington Post earlier this year, “This is just another example of Ken Cuccinelli ignoring the economy and instead focusing on his divisive ideological agenda.”
Cuccinelli's views on LGBT issues are no secret. He, along with the attorney general of Indiana, wrote an amicus brief opposing gay marriage in the Hollingsworth v. Perry--also known as the Proposition 8 case--which was struck down in a 5-4 decision in June.