The last time I checked, I lived in the same country as the good people of Louisiana, but sometimes it doesn’t seem like this is possible.
Some Louisiana state Republicans are pushing back against a measure in the Baton Rouge legislature to toughen bestiality laws over fears that it could lead to the repeal of the state’s unconstitutional ban on sodomy.
The measure would separate bestiality laws from the sodomy ban in the state’s “crime against nature” statute, leading some conservatives to view the law as an attempt to undermine the anti-sodomy measure, the Associated Press reported.
Ten GOP lawmakers voted against the bill earlier this month. Still, it passed the Senate and is now being considered by the state House of Representatives.
“This bill was written because the far left wants to undermine our other laws that protect family and traditional values that the people of Louisiana hold dear,” said state Sen. Ryan Gatti (R), who opposed the bill.
“That was our concern, that it most likely will be used as a Trojan horse to delete the sodomy law,” he added.
I live in bucolic Chester County, Pennsylvania in a hilltop cabin in the woods. Below me on all sides are horse farms that were first developed to provide stock to the Conestoga company’s teamsters who were pushing our citizens westward on newly laid roads. We still have plenty of livestock in this area, but it would occur to no one that we need to “strengthen our bestiality laws.” And if some incident or another were to change our minds about this, I don’t think anyone would interject that the whole effort was a trojan horse to legalize sodomy.
I don’t know what goes on down in Louisiana, but this whole conversation strikes me as insane on almost every level, including that this just doesn’t seem to be something responsive to the concerns of the people. In 2003, the Supreme Court invalidated Louisiana’s anti-sodomy laws in their Lawrence v. Texas ruling, so the legislature in the Bayou state is debating a dead letter.
It’s hard for me to understand why this debate is happening at all.
The horse, err, cat is out of the bag.
Oh, just another opportunity (however cretinous) for “conservatives” to demonize the Satanic “far left”, who obviously never sleep in their determination to destroy “family and traditional values that the people of Louisiana hold dear”. There are no “dead letters” in that struggle, ha-ha.
Also, too, Christianists never forget the continuing existential crisis presented by modernity. Thus they must defend and maintain to their dying breath an (unconstitutional) reactionary law and keep it gathering dust on the statute books–so God knows who to “favor” in the cosmic battle to the death. He can read, after all!
…trojan horse…
Nice one Martin!
Our daughter did her MD at Tulane Medical School (2013-2017). We visited New Orleans several times during those years.
Specifically, NOLA’s rich diversity of music and food was what sustained her (and us on our short visits). As well as the natural beauty of the bayous, the uniqueness of the swamp communities (think Beasts of the Southern Wild territory), the bygone era evoked only in rear view mirror of the genteel plantations – all make that part of Louisiana unique!
But our daughter had to go to a rural area for part of her MD rotations, and encountered a lot of issues related to the cultural mores of the rural folks. While they were all respectful, since she was a MD student, she did feel something different than she had encountered in California, and New Jersey/New York (during her UG stays).
Also what she found is another Indian-American – Bobby Jindal – had devastated medical care in rural LA. By giving huge tax advantages to the companies, there was a significant degradation of medical facilities in the hinterland. Also since HIV/AIDS cases are huge among the AA population, in contrast to San Francisco – where she had worked before at the Berkeley Free Clinic, and now as a resident at UCSF – the state provided very poor services to this population in most need of state care.
There is something definitely different about LA!
Virtue signaling?
Of what though? That they’re secretly sheep fuckers? The GOP pretty much everywhere at state level is bringing up bills that no one really asked for, unless you donate bigly to them. It’s basically all just lame attempts to “own the libs.”
Au contraire, that they aren’t. It’s a cost free symbolic gesture to send a message.
It’s like pardoning a black boxer who has been dead for many years. Cui bono?
It’s like pardoning a black boxer who has been dead for many years.
Yeah. I just find it funny that he’s doing it at the asking of Stallone and giving McCain the middle finger. Anyway, isn’t pardoning basically admitting guilt though? I thought Johnson was framed.
I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again:
Conservatives have never met a projection they didn’t like.
I can only infer that the strengthening the prohibition is necessary because bestiality is rampant in Louisiana.
I dunno about Louisiana but apparently it is a thing with the far right.
“
Georgia candidate for governor admits to bestiality
In Georgia, the Creators’ Rights Party candidate for governor is creating quite a stir by admitting to the fact that he’s had sex with a mule, men, and a watermelon, among other things. He has done these things even though he advocates a strongly anti-gay agenda. Here is an excerpt from the candidate, Neal Horsley, appearing on the Alan Colmes Show:
“Hey, Alan, if you want to accuse me of having sex when I was a fool, I did everything that crossed my mind that looked like I…”
AC: “You had sex with animals?”
NH: “Absolutely. I was a fool. When you grow up on a farm in Georgia, your first girlfriend is a mule.”
AC: “I’m not so sure that that is so.”
NH: “You didn’t grow up on a farm in Georgia, did you?”
AC: “Are you suggesting that everybody who grows up on a farm in Georgia has a mule as a girlfriend?”
NH: It has historically been the case. You people are so far removed from the reality… Welcome to domestic life on the farm…”
Also, too, Thad Cochran.
C’mon Booman. Isn’t it obvious that this so-called debate is designed to distract the knuckle draggers from the opioid crisis that’s killing them, to distract from the fact that their “allies” in the legislature vote for bills that cut taxes for the wealthy while cutting their services?
This is what Republicans run on. Stuff like this keeps people from even considering a vote for those evil Democrats. They’ve got it down to a science.
Mary had a little sheep,
And with this sheep
She went to sleep.
The sheep turned out To be a ram
And Mary had a little lamb!
“The Other” is certainly alive and well in the minds of Louisiana lawmakers. And they fear The Other is always waiting in the shadows to snatch their kids and to defile their spouses. I certainly have no way of knowing the root of these kinds of fears that people in Louisiana have. To wrap your mind around it one has to remove their logical hat and put on……what? I don’t know.
In most cases, we all have enough sense and experience to know what it means when someone says they want to “protect family and traditional values that people hold dear”. History is rife with all sorts of horrific examples of the end game of that argument. Fear is a tremendous motivator. And it seems to be present in abundance down in the Bayou State. And it probably always will be.
one has to remove their logical hat and put on…..
TINFOIL.
What’s the matter with Louisiana? Just about everything. I’ve been here for 25 years and am still amazed by the dysfunction, stupidity, and outright malice of state politicians. As bad as Bobby Jindal was, the Republican Party is even worse. As far as sexual perversity goes, you should know that its still legal to have sex with a corpse in Louisiana.
It’s the matter with everywhere.
We can make fun of this issue and the legislators behind it, but I see the real problem as trivialization and sensationalism.
There must be roads to fix, hospitals to build, and schools to staff in that state, but instead let’s talk about some crazy sex acts that 0.0001% of the population might be indulging in. Issues are hard, boring, and require math. It’s not like this kind of showboating doesn’t happen in Democratic California, either.
Making local issues look like a tabloid journal story probably makes it more difficult for people to take local politics seriously, but that’s where a lot of their tax money goes, and it deals with things that touch their lives every day.