VIRGINIA
BEACH,
Va.
—
Despite
the
U.S.
Supreme
Court
decision
last
summer
overturning
sodomy
laws,
a
Virginia
judge
sentenced
a
Virginia
Beach
man
this
week
to
three
years
in
prison
for
solicitation
of
sodomy
after
he
was
arrested
for
propositioning
an
undercover
police
officer
in
a
public
restroom.
Circuit
Judge
Frederick
Lowe
suspended
all
but
six
months
of
the
sentence
he
handed
down
to
Joel
D.
Singson,
a
Virginia
Beach
native
who
entered
a
conditional
guilty
plea
last
August
after
prosecutors
charged
him
with
solicitation.
Singson’s
impending
appeal
of
the
decision
will
designate
his
case
as
the
first
to
challenge
states
to
bring
their
sodomy
statutes
in
line
with
the
Supreme
Court’s
ruling
in
Lawrence
vs.
Texas.
In
June
2003,
the
country’s
highest
court
ruled
to
effectively
eliminate
state
laws
prohibiting
sodomy
by
saying
that
states
cannot
create
or
enforce
statutes
regarding
the
private
sexual
conduct
of
citizens.
“My
client
was
charged
with
solicitation
to
commit
a
felony,
and
the
felony
he
was
to
allegedly
commit
was
sodomy,
despite
the
Supreme
Court’s
ruling
throwing
out
laws
against
it,”
said
Jennifer
Stanton,
Singson’s
attorney.
“This
is
a
statute
that
carries
five
years
in
the
penitentiary,
and
we’re
talking
about
a
criminal
sentence
for
speech.
“It’s
pretty
harsh
to
sentence
someone
to
five
years
in
jail
for
speech,
when
actual
public
fornication
receives
only
12
months.”
Singson’s
sentencing
comes
at
a
time
when
the
Virginia
Legislature
is
attempting
to
comply
with
the
Supreme
Court’s
directive
by
rewriting
its
sodomy
and
public
sex
laws.
Virginia’s
current
statute,
the
Crimes
Against
Nature
law,
deems
sodomy
between
adults
in
either
a
public
or
private
space
a
crime
punishable
by
up
to
five
years
in
prison
and
a
$2,500
fine.
Other
sex
offenses,
such
as
lewdness
or
prostitution,
receive
misdemeanor
penalties.
On
Feb.
16,
the
Virginia
Senate
voted
down
a
bill
introduced
by
Sen.
Patricia
Ticer
(D-Alexandria)
that
would
have
made
sodomy
legal
for
consenting
adults
as
long
as
the
act
did
not
occur
in
a
public
space
and
did
not
involve
prostitution.
It
also
would
have
categorized
public
sodomy
as
a
Class
3
misdemeanor,
bringing
it
in
step
with
other
minor
sex
offenses.
Instead,
the
House
of
Delegates
voted
in
favor
of
markedly
different
sodomy
legislation,
which
singles
out
public
sodomy
as
a
felony
with
a
five-year
prison
term,
but
leaves
other
forms
of
public
sexual
activity
as
misdemeanors.
Maintaining
that
the
Lawrence
vs.
Texas
decision
only
addressed
private
sodomy,
Del.
David
Albo
(R-Fairfax)
wrote
his
bill
to
clarify
that
the
court’s
decision
did
not
legalize
public
sex
acts.
Opponents
of
the
measure
have
called
it
a
new
discriminatory
law
to
replace
an
old
one.
“We’ve
been
stressing
equal
penalties
for
equal
sex
crimes,”
said
David
Lampo,
president
of
the
Virginia
Log
Cabin
Republicans.
“There
are
still
plenty
of
prosecutors
who
want
to
target
gay
men
for
prosecution
in
this
state.
Albo’s
bill
will
move
on
to
the
Senate
in
the
next
few
weeks,
while
Ticer
must
wait
for
the
next
Virginia
Assembly
to
reintroduce
hers.
Ticer’s
legislation
received
significant
support
from
the
Senate
Courts
of
Justice
Committee
before
it
was
killed
on
the
floor,
while
the
House
Courts
of
Justice
Committee
initially
stifled
Albo’s
bill,
then
surreptitiously
placed
it
on
the
House
uncontested
calendar.
Virginia
Attorney
General
Jerry
W.
Kilgore
has
resisted
changing
Virginia’s
sodomy
law
despite
the
Lawrence
ruling,
claiming
it
could
impinge
on
pending
state
cases,
such
as
Singson’s.
A
spokesperson
for
his
office
told
the
Associated
Press
in
January
that
it
was
not
imperative
for
the
state
to
rewrite
its
law
because
it
does
not
distinguish
between
public
or
private,
and
same-sex
or
opposite-sex
sodomy,
unlike
the
former
Texas
law.
Despite
the
legislative
wrangling,
a
Virginia
Court
of
Appeals
could
wind
up
ultimately
deciding
the
fate
of
the
state’s
sodomy
law,
since
Singson’s
case
pushes
all
of
the
legal
hot
buttons
addressed
by
the
Lawrence
decision.
“The
Court
of
Appeals
is
bound
by
the
Supreme
Court’s
decision
based
on
the
federal
Constitution.
In
order
for
it
to
uphold
the
conviction,
it
will
have
to
decide
if
Singson’s
case
has
a
factual
distinction
from
the
Lawrence
case,”
said
Anne
Coughlin,
a
University
of
Virginia
law
professor.
“If
what
Mr.
Singson
was
proposing
to
the
undercover
officer
was
that
the
two
of
them
have
consensual,
non-commercial
sex,
there’s
no
crime
under
Lawrence.
The
state
has
to
respect
those
private
activities
and
it
has
to
respect
whether
engaged
in
by
straights
or
gays.”
Last
March,
an
undercover
police
officer
met
Singson
online
and
persuaded
him
to
meet
in
a
public
bathroom
located
in
a
Sears
store
at
the
Pembroke
Mall
outside
of
Virginia
Beach.
While
both
men
stood
in
adjacent
stalls
with
the
doors
closed,
the
officer
claimed
a
brief
discussion
ensued
in
which
Singson
led
the
officer
to
believe
he
was
requesting
an
act
of
sodomy,
according
to
attorneys
for
the
Lambda
Legal
Defense
&
Education
Fund.
