On Friday, an appeals court is Alabama struck down a law that banned consensual oral and anal intercourse between unmarried people.
The law mandated that a person was guilty of “sexual misconduct” if they engage in “[a]ny act of sexual gratification between persons not married to each other involving the sex organs of one person and the mouth or anus of another”. Under the law, consent of both parties was no defence against prosecution.
Under these provisions, the law was effectively banning gay sex. Any combination of someone’s genitals with another’s mouth or anus between unmarried partners was illegal, and since gay people are not legally able to wed in Alabama, gay sex was, by law, “sexual misconduct”.
The decision to remove the law came in the case of Dewayne Williams vs Alabama. Williams was sentenced to a year in prison for engaging in anal sex with another man and sentenced to a year in prison. However, the appeals court decided on Friday that the conviction was due to be reversed as the statute banning consensual anal sex between unmarried people was unconstitutional in light of a law established by the United States Supreme Court in the case of Lawrence versus Texas, 2003. In Lawrence versus Texas, the Supreme Court ruled that criminalizing private sexual activity between consenting adults violated the 14th amendment.
Susan Watson, director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Alabama supported the lifting of the ban in the following statements:
” “Aiming to ban consensual sex is flat out wrong,” she said.
“A person’s sexual orientation shouldn’t matter. Consensual sex is consensual sex.”
