Montana gov. signs bill decriminalizing gay sex

AP ^ | 4/18/2013 | KATHRYN HAAKE

[markomalley]

An obsolete law deeming gay sex as deviant — akin to bestiality — was stricken from Montana code Thursday, prompting gay rights activists to say they hope that full legal equality may be close at hand.

When Montana Gov. Steve Bullock signed Senate Bill 107 decriminalizing gay sex, cheers erupted in the Capitol's Rotunda. It had been 16 years after the state Supreme Court ruled the law unconstitutional and 24 years after gay rights activists began their fight to take government out of the bedroom.

"I am not going to speak too long because, frankly, the longer I talk, the longer this embarrassing and unconstitutional law stays on the books," Bullock said.

The victory, though a powerful one for the gay community in Montana, is highly symbolic with no tangible benefits aside from striking the obsolete law condemning gay sex from Montana code. The outdated code has not been used to prosecute individuals for years. And previous efforts to offer gays and lesbians protection under the law, including a push to prohibit civil discrimination, have been thwarted by a GOP-controlled Legislature.

[fwdude]

I guess some people want a law that will never be enforced to remain on the books anyway.....

Yes, it would have been much better to leave this law on their books. It would remain as a societal censure against homosexual behavior, even if unenforceable. The law was hardly enforceable anyway. But it said that homosexuality is WRONG.

The result of this law being remove will be that the most radical activists will take this as their cue that homosexuality must now be AFFIRMED in the public square, by the state. They will use every resource by the profligate federal government to FORCE homosexual curriculum in schools, in workplace rules, and in state and local governments.

Remember the rule of moral anarchists: "That which is not forbidden shall be mandatory."

[C. Edmund Wright]

Well, I agree with you about the act itself...but I am more ambivalent on what you say the effects are of keeping it, not keeping it. I think the cue about the public square was given a long time ago. I see this as a yawner, and a waste of their time and treasure.

[Artcore]

Two men sodomizing each other; it's just so loving and beautiful. /sarc

I'm so sick of politicians bending over (No pun intended) to every whim of these perverts.

And to think that only 2% of our population are fagots and dykes; yet they get the red carpet treatment from these A$$wipe politicians. Pfft!