Today's New York Times reports that Brownback created an Office of the Repealer "to recommend the elimination of out-of-date, unreasonable and burdensome state laws that build up in any bureaucracy over time." Guess which law, disabled by a 2003 decision of the Supreme Court, hasn't been sent to the Office of the Repealer for elimination.
Can't guess?
As the article goes on to say:
For gay men and lesbians, there seemed one particularly obvious candidate: Kansas Statute 21-3505.That would be the “criminal sodomy” statute, which prohibits same-sex couples from engaging in oral or anal sex. The law was rendered unenforceable nearly a decade ago by a United States Supreme Court ruling, but it remains enshrined in the state’s legal code.
Brownback submitted 51 bills, and this one isn't on it. There will be another round later in the year, but, as Paul Davis, the Democratic minority leader of the lower house in the state legislature, suggested that Brownback is "trying not to run afoul of a very socially conservative constituency." Yes, the gay and lesbian groups in the state have offered this law as one that should be repealed, but so far, crickets.
Amazingly, Kansas is one of eighteen states that as of last year had not taken their sodomy laws off the books. The others? Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Utah and Virginia (Most of these laws make sodomy a misdemeanor, but the ones in bold have felony laws). In Kansas, it's a misdemeanor, but, as Thomas Witt, chairman of the Kansas Equality Coalition, says
“This isn’t just some archaic law that’s sitting on the books and isn’t bothering anyone. It’s used as justification to harass and discriminate against people, and it needs to go.”
I live in a state where these laws were eliminated in 1975. If you don't, I think you know what to do, especially in Massachusetts and Minnesota. The Equality Matters blog has a lot more on this from a posting dated August 8 2011. It's interesting reading.