Sex Rights

"Yeah, I'm kinky," you say. Or, "Yeah, I'm a swinger. But I'm heterosexual. So why should I care about gay rights?"

Well, friends, Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum is happy to answer that question for you. You see, the Supreme Court is going to rule soon on whether states can continue to prosecute homosexuals for having consensual sex in their homes. The actual case, Lawrence v. Texas, concerns two men arrested in 1998. Police responded to a false report of an armed intruder, but it was the residents, John Lawrence and Tyron Garner, who wound up being arrested, and charged with violating the state's sodomy law. They appealed, and the Supremes will make a ruling by June.

The anti-sodomy-law folks believe the state shouldn't have the power to kick in the bedroom door of consenting adults and arrest them for having the wrong kind of sex. That seems like a pretty basic level of privacy to me, but Sen. Santorum sees it differently. "If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home," he told an AP reporter on April 17, "then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything. Does that undermine the fabric of our society? I would argue yes, it does...." He deplores what he calls "the right-to-privacy lifestyle," and says, "I have a problem with homosexual acts. As I would with acts of other, what I would consider to be, acts outside of traditional heterosexual relationships. And that includes a variety of different acts, not just homosexual." (Italics mine.)

That means you, Straight Swinger and Straight Polyamorist. Santorum doesn't think you have any right to your private "adultery." And hey, Straight Kinkster, Santorum may not have specified BDSM, but I'm quite sure that "a variety of different acts" includes kinky sex. This guy wants the state to arrest consenting adults for having any kind of sex that offends him. That scares the shit out of me, and it should scare you, too.

So abolishing sodomy laws isn't just about gay rights. It's about your right as a consenting adult to have whatever kind of sex you want, in private, without being a constitutional outlaw.

For more information about your sexual rights, check out the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom at www.ncsfreedom.org.

matisse@thestranger.com