As if all Eugene’s child-pornography posts weren’t enough.
Both of the following via Radley Balko.
Someone has finally slipped down a slope that I’ve been mentioning (awkwardly) for a few years. A Georgia bill to ban female genital mutilation (already a federal crime, by the way, and I’d argue that the cases we really want to prevent could already be prosecuted as child abuse) has been amended to ban female (only) genital piercing.
The bill would make such mutilation punishable by two to 20 years in prison…. Amendment sponsor Rep. Bill Heath, R-Bremen, was slack-jawed when told after the vote that some adults seek the piercings.
“What? I’ve never seen such a thing,” Heath said. “I, uh, I wouldn’t approve of anyone doing it. I don’t think that’s an appropriate thing to be doing.”
Between “slack-jawed,” the obvious comic potential of “I’ve never seen such a thing,” and the odd fact that he sponsored an amendment specifically about piercings without understanding that piercings are a consenting-adult kind of thing and not a screaming-Somali-child kind of thing this would almost appear to be a joke. I certainly think the AP reporter viewed it as such. But it’s not.
Just so everyone’s clear: the most common forms of female genital cutting are not morally, or physically, analogous to genital piercing. But, as I’ve discussed before, there’s a form of cutting imprecisely referred to as “sunna circumcision” (though sometimes other things are called that, too) that involves making a single small incision on the clitoral hood. In both the U.S. and Italy, at least, there has been talk about doctors perfoming this procedure, in the hope that it would forestall the horrific infibulations and excisions that many of the girls in question will otherwise get; in both cases opponents have said that any form of female genital cutting should be off-limits. It seems to me that these incisions have to be on the same legal footing as piercings, and really ought to be on the same legal footing as male circumcision as well. In any event, it seems to me that any statute that forbids the incisions either has to forbid piercings as well (at least in the same age category), or is an illegitimate singling out of a practice just because of its cultural and religious meaning to those who practice it. The piercing amendment makes that fact apparent, but sometime someone was going to get prosecuted under one of these statutes for performing piercings.
As I read the federal statute, by the way, it properly prohibits infibulations and excisions but not incisions. But Patricia Schroeder, the author of the statute, has said otherwise.
Radley’s other story: A Virginia woman is being prosecuted for the felony of “crimes against nature” for having received oral sex.
On Monday – under an agreement with prosecutors – the man pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of indecent exposure. The woman was offered the same plea, said Newport News Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Jill Schmidtke. If convicted of the felony charge, the woman could face up to five years in jail.
But her attorney, David M. Lee, says the charge against his client is unconstitutional. He points to a 2003 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Lawrence v. Texas, which struck down state sodomy laws while saying the government can’t regulate the sexual behavior of consenting adults in private.
As a result of the ruling, Lee argued that the state law has already been nullified, and felony charges against his client should be dropped.
Stating that it was beyond the boundaries of his job to rule on the constitutionality of a statute, Newport News General District Court Judge Bryant L. Sugg denied Lee’s motion at a preliminary hearing Monday. Lee said he would continue to argue his case when it goes to trial…
Schmidtke also said that the constitutionality of the statute “is a matter for the legislature.”
Judge Sugg, of course, doesn’t have to rule de novo on the constitutionality of the statute; that’s already been done for him by the Supreme Court. He appears not to have gotten the memo. I’d like to have seen the complete Schmidtke quotation to know excatly what it is he said was a matter for the legislature. As the passage stands, he seems to lacka working familiarity with the whole concept of judicial review.
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