Michigan 'Dog Bill' Proposes Steep Jail Time for 'Sodomy'

In 2003 the Supreme Court stuck down state laws punishing same-gender couples for consensual sex under the broad rubric of "sodomy." Even so, some states have retained laws that, if enforceable, would criminalize sexual relations between people of the same gender -- and, in some cases, propose that similar sex acts would still be illegal if enjoyed by heterosexuals.

Michigan's penal code still retains out-of-date and unenforceable -- because they are now unconstitutional -- laws prohibiting sexual contact along the lines of oral or anal sex, whether it's between same-sex or mixed-gender couples. Rather than scrubbing its books of unconstitutional and unenforceable laws, however, the Michigan state senate doubled down on such putative sex crimes this week by passing a bill that links "sodomy" with bestiality, refers to such acts as "detestable crime[s] against nature," and prescribes jail sentences ranging from 15 years to life.

The language is part of a broader bill designed to protect animals from abusive pet owners, a February 5 article at The New Cicil Rights Movement reported. That framing language makes the bill hard to stop, according to the state lawmaker who came up with the legislation.

The bill, authored by Republican State Sen. Rick Jones, injects anti-gay language into the "dog bill" that updates an older law criminalizing non-approved forms of sexual intimacy.

"A person who commits the abominable and detestable crime against nature" -- i.e., "sodomy" -- "either with mankind or with any animal is guilty of a felony punishable by imprisonment for not more than 15 years," the revised language spliced into the bill, SB 219, reads, "or if the defendant was a sexually delinquent person" -- another way of saying sex offender -- "at the time of the offense, a felony punishable by imprisonment for an indeterminate term, the minimum of which shall be 1 day and the maximum of which shall be life." If such a law could be enforced, a husband gifted with oral sex by his wife as a birthday gift could find himself legally branded just such a "sexual delinquent." If the same gift were bestowed on his next birthday, he could face the slammer -- and the prospect of similar sexual services, though not necessarily in a loving or consensual context -- for all his birthdays to come. In other words, two... er... strikes, and you're out.

Fortunately, Michigan taxpayers won't be faced with the prospect of footing the bill for warehousing such "sexual delinquents" in the near future -- not unless and until the Supreme Court reverses the 2003 decision that essentially found that Americans have the right to get it on with a willing partner of legal age, whether of the same gender or not, in ways not necessarily limited to the missionary position. Until then, the state law remains unconstitutional. That being the case, the question becomes why such language found its way into the bill in the first place.

Moreover, "This might seem like a great opportunity to finally remove the unconstitutional sodomy ban from the books, by simply striking the words 'either with mankind or' from SB 219," the article at The New Civil Rights Movement noted. "However, Sen. Jones told The New Civil Rights Movement that such an amendment would jeopardize the whole bill."

"If we could put a bill in that said anything that's unconstitutional be removed from the legal books of Michigan, that's probably something I could vote for," Jones was quoted as saying, "but am I going to mess up this dog bill that everybody wants? No."

Mainstream media focused on the cute and fuzzy aspects of the package of bills to which SB 219 belongs, a package called Logan's Law after a husky that died after being attacked with acid. The Detroit Free Press reported in a Feb. 3 article only that the legislation seeks to protect pets and require animal shelters to run criminal background checks on people looking to adopt animals. Shelters would not be allowed to place animals with people who have run afoul of the law within the last five years, which raises the theoretical possibility that, were the law enforceable, our theoretical man convicted of receiving oral sex for his birthday would then be legally prevented from acquiring a canine best friend for half a decade. (The bill only applies to nonprofit shelters, though, leaving pet stores run for profit free to sell puppies to whomever comes through the door.)

In principle, this legal mashup makes for strange bedfellows when it comes to various crimes and their punishments, but Jones defended keeping the bill's language intact by saying that "people [would]... go ballistic" if the bill were to be revised in a way that removed the part about consenting humans being prosecuted for an episode of oral sex or other verboten forms of sexual contact.