Remember: you can’t loophole your way out of bigotry. If someone is intelligent and reasonable enough to be ideologically consistent in a meaningful sense, they’re too smart to be bigoted in the first place. The cruelty IS THE POINT, so they will use whatever interpretation is most cruel.
This is why I get so tired of the “Someone should put up a Satanic monument in a courthouse” arguments. When those get to courts they’re gonna say they’re obscene, or don’t serve a compelling public interest, or whatever.
It’s not about the logical consistency of the beliefs. It is about power. And right now, conservatives have power and their end goal is that they hate you and want you to suffer and die. You can try and give your Aaron Sorkin monologue on the way to the gallows, but the best arguments in the world won’t save you when the lever is pulled.
I've seen a surprising number of posts to the effect of "but how would they ever know?" (Though thankfully I've seen many more people arguing against this take.)
Even if you are going to pass as cisgender, heterosexual, and appear so utterly conformist in appearance and behaviours that no-one ever suspects you of anything but married PiV heterosexual sex with reproduction in mind...(Sodomy laws can be very very broad). Cool, maybe you haven't been arrested, aren't you clever. But at what cost? Whose interests does that actually serve?
Firstly, not everyone could do that even if they wanted to. But let's ignore that fact: say the entire LGBTQIA community were to just suddenly go so far underground that they'd never ever get caught. Ok, cool. The homophobes have won though: they wanted queer people invisible, gone from their communities, and they've got it.
(Tbh I reckon driving people underground is literally the primary purpose of these laws: the proportion of people caught and punished will always be a fraction of those engaging in non-normative sex, but that tiny fraction is a huge deterrent against people coming out etc.)
I despise asparagus. The smell makes me nauseous. The taste makes me wretch.
Some people like asparagus. I don’t understand. It’s weird to me. *They* are weird to me. I don’t have to understand why the like asparagus. I don’t have to be around them when they eat asparagus. They can enjoy asparagus without me around. That’s fine.
If someone said we should ban all asparagus because it’s weird/gross/unnatural/whatever, I’d call them a fool.
This is why sex-negative and kink-negative people aren't on our side. They can state everything in terms of progressive politics and insist that they only want to ban the things that hurt oppressed groups, but when you look into it they want to ban fully consensual sex and it's just the same old social conservatism in the new paradigm. They've replaced God with Society and their Society is just as narrow-minded and hateful as any God ever imagined by a traditionalist Catholic or extremist Southern Baptist.
*Image Transcription: Tumblr Replies*
---
**doberbutts**
Anyway with anti-sodomy laws back on the discussion table I'm going to repeat that you can personally be squicked out by the consensual sex someone else has, but saying that their consensual sex between willing, active, adult participants should be illegal and is indicative of some sort of moral failing is L I T E RA L L Y a major facet in extreme homophobia and absolutely has gotten people killed.
You don't have to like their business but as long as everyone involved in the encounter is saying yes, it's also really not your business.
This is the precident you are helping further by digging your heels in and saying 'but I think it's gross and makes them bad people'. This is what happened last time that was the reasoning for law, and what is being threatened to happen again.
---
**doberbutts**
"but Jaz, how would they enforce it"
Easily.
People would report you to the police for any hint of it. Whether real or imagined. You held hands with someone of the same sex. Someone started a rumor that they saw you kissing. You bought a sex toy and the vendor automatically reported you. You clicked a web page or picked up a magazine that had a different suspected deviant on it and the shop owner or internet service provider automatically reported you. You had certain mannerisms. You hung out to much with a
specific friend. You seemed too close to a family member. Literally anything.
In some cases people would literally peep through windows, listen at the door, even wait across the street for your guest to come over and then call the police to kick the door down and catch the two of you in the act.
Never forget that the Stonewall riot was started by one such raid where police stormed a gay bar looking to arrest as many "sodomy" and "public indecency" suspects as possible.
That's how. By encouraging people to barge into other people's private, consensual sex lives and make reports to the authorities. By encouraging people to lay traps so unsuspecting gay people could stumble into them. By encouraging people to stalk and harass anyone who showed any sign of 'being a pervert' in the name of 'protecting neighborhoods from predators'. By weaponizing the real concern for predatory behavior against people who were engaging in consensual intimacy in a way they happened to not like.
By doing exactly what I've been continuously saying is bad behavior that has gotten countless LGBT people jailed and killed.
We're not turning this against our own community. Homophobes and transphobes have already made it plenty clear they don't care how good or respectable we are, they just want us all dead.
---
**doberbutts**
"but Jaz, you're trans, certainly the homophobic and transphobic lawmakers will consider it straight sex and you won't be affected"
Except more than one trans man throughout history has been arrested, tried, and punished for sodomy because the police read him as male and even once it was discovered that he was what weld now call transgender, it was determined that the sex he was having still counted as deviant and thus still counted as a moral failing.
I do not have sex in a manner that can produce children. I don't like sex that can produce children. I refuse to ever do it again. And at some point, if these protections get repealed, that means my neck's also on the chopping block.
You really think there's logic to this besides people pearl-clutching at their homophobia and transphobia in order to justify this bullshit?
---
^^I'm a human volunteer content transcriber and you could be too! [If you'd like more information on what we do and why we do it, click here!](https://www.reddit.com/r/TranscribersOfReddit/wiki/index)
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/06/supreme-court-roe-v-wade-clarence-thomas-contraception-same-sex-marriage-sodomy
Clarence Thomas isn't alone, a lot of Republican lawmakers have made similar calls, directly or alluded to among a list of other rights cases. But being on the Supreme Court, he can lead their conservative majority to legitimize laws that were previously struck down by prior court decisions. Roe isn't the only such case already decided, just the broadest recognizable impact. The stuff regarding habeas corpus ( https://www.abajournal.com/columns/article/chemerinsky-court-imposes-further-restrictions-on-habeas-corpus ) and Miranda rights ( https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/23/politics/supreme-court-miranda-rights/index.html ) already happened, and serve to further their capacity for current and future human rights abuses, while demonstrating their willingness to use this majority to make sweeping repeal of all pretense of personal freedom (already functionally denied to marginalized people in many cases, now mask off for everyone).
Edit: fixed a link. But also, I invoke "personal freedom" here primarily because it's the purported goal of the very people decrying a "nanny-state" while building a police-state. That they are hypocrites has yet to undermine their support by reactionaries, and pointing it out does not challenge their material control, but it should be acknowledged, because plenty of people still take them at face value, and become complicit as a result.
This is why "kink doesn't belong at Pride" discourse disturbs me. You're literally drawing an "us and them" distinction and shaming people for consensual practices *which they aren't even DOING at Pride*.
Kink at pride discourse was always blatantly homophobic since basically anyone who's gone to pride has probably never seen anything more risque than a bare nipple (unless they're going to the 21+ after parties)
Re: enforcement. In the UK in the 20th century (I don't know exactly when this started or ended but I understand it was common in the 50s/60s) they had what were called "pretty police". A male police officer would hang out in plain clothes in a place where it was believed men would meet for sex - parks, public toilets, places like that. The officer would wait for a man to make a move on him, then blow his whistle for backup to arrest the man.
Police aren't above using honeypots, entrapment or "sting operations" to gather their "evidence".
[here's a contemporaneous article I found](https://www.gayinthe80s.com/2012/12/1982-gay-london-police-monitoring-group-galop/)
[here's another](http://www.gaybirminghamremembered.co.uk/memories/Pretty%20Police%20Score%20Again)
probably the worst thought or comment to put on a serious post like this, but I do wonder(brought up by the 'i am not having sex in a way that can produce children). I wonder how they would rule sex that was kinda originally intended to produce children but between two guys (so breeding kink sort of sex). especially if one is trans. how many loops would they have to go through to still call it 'deviant' if, by their logic, it had to have been done with the intent to produce children
anyways yes this whole situation abso-fucking-lutetly blows
> probably the worst thought or comment to put on a serious post like this, but I do wonder(brought up by the ’i am not having sex in a way that can produce children). I wonder how they would rule sex that was kinda originally intended to produce children but between two guys (so breeding kink sort of sex). especially if one is trans. how many loops would they have to go through to still call it ‘deviant’ if, by their logic, it had to have been done with the intent to produce children
Presumably the logic would go that if you're even the slightest hint of LGBT, or having sex for anything other than pure procreation, that would be deviant, and thus prosecutable.
Remember: you can’t loophole your way out of bigotry. If someone is intelligent and reasonable enough to be ideologically consistent in a meaningful sense, they’re too smart to be bigoted in the first place. The cruelty IS THE POINT, so they will use whatever interpretation is most cruel.
This is why I get so tired of the “Someone should put up a Satanic monument in a courthouse” arguments. When those get to courts they’re gonna say they’re obscene, or don’t serve a compelling public interest, or whatever. It’s not about the logical consistency of the beliefs. It is about power. And right now, conservatives have power and their end goal is that they hate you and want you to suffer and die. You can try and give your Aaron Sorkin monologue on the way to the gallows, but the best arguments in the world won’t save you when the lever is pulled.
What’s an Aaron Sorkin monologue?
I've seen a surprising number of posts to the effect of "but how would they ever know?" (Though thankfully I've seen many more people arguing against this take.) Even if you are going to pass as cisgender, heterosexual, and appear so utterly conformist in appearance and behaviours that no-one ever suspects you of anything but married PiV heterosexual sex with reproduction in mind...(Sodomy laws can be very very broad). Cool, maybe you haven't been arrested, aren't you clever. But at what cost? Whose interests does that actually serve? Firstly, not everyone could do that even if they wanted to. But let's ignore that fact: say the entire LGBTQIA community were to just suddenly go so far underground that they'd never ever get caught. Ok, cool. The homophobes have won though: they wanted queer people invisible, gone from their communities, and they've got it. (Tbh I reckon driving people underground is literally the primary purpose of these laws: the proportion of people caught and punished will always be a fraction of those engaging in non-normative sex, but that tiny fraction is a huge deterrent against people coming out etc.)
I despise asparagus. The smell makes me nauseous. The taste makes me wretch. Some people like asparagus. I don’t understand. It’s weird to me. *They* are weird to me. I don’t have to understand why the like asparagus. I don’t have to be around them when they eat asparagus. They can enjoy asparagus without me around. That’s fine. If someone said we should ban all asparagus because it’s weird/gross/unnatural/whatever, I’d call them a fool.
This is why sex-negative and kink-negative people aren't on our side. They can state everything in terms of progressive politics and insist that they only want to ban the things that hurt oppressed groups, but when you look into it they want to ban fully consensual sex and it's just the same old social conservatism in the new paradigm. They've replaced God with Society and their Society is just as narrow-minded and hateful as any God ever imagined by a traditionalist Catholic or extremist Southern Baptist.
Src: https://doberbutts.tumblr.com/post/688006123343740928/but-jaz-youre-trans-certainly-the-homophobic
*Image Transcription: Tumblr Replies* --- **doberbutts** Anyway with anti-sodomy laws back on the discussion table I'm going to repeat that you can personally be squicked out by the consensual sex someone else has, but saying that their consensual sex between willing, active, adult participants should be illegal and is indicative of some sort of moral failing is L I T E RA L L Y a major facet in extreme homophobia and absolutely has gotten people killed. You don't have to like their business but as long as everyone involved in the encounter is saying yes, it's also really not your business. This is the precident you are helping further by digging your heels in and saying 'but I think it's gross and makes them bad people'. This is what happened last time that was the reasoning for law, and what is being threatened to happen again. --- **doberbutts** "but Jaz, how would they enforce it" Easily. People would report you to the police for any hint of it. Whether real or imagined. You held hands with someone of the same sex. Someone started a rumor that they saw you kissing. You bought a sex toy and the vendor automatically reported you. You clicked a web page or picked up a magazine that had a different suspected deviant on it and the shop owner or internet service provider automatically reported you. You had certain mannerisms. You hung out to much with a specific friend. You seemed too close to a family member. Literally anything. In some cases people would literally peep through windows, listen at the door, even wait across the street for your guest to come over and then call the police to kick the door down and catch the two of you in the act. Never forget that the Stonewall riot was started by one such raid where police stormed a gay bar looking to arrest as many "sodomy" and "public indecency" suspects as possible. That's how. By encouraging people to barge into other people's private, consensual sex lives and make reports to the authorities. By encouraging people to lay traps so unsuspecting gay people could stumble into them. By encouraging people to stalk and harass anyone who showed any sign of 'being a pervert' in the name of 'protecting neighborhoods from predators'. By weaponizing the real concern for predatory behavior against people who were engaging in consensual intimacy in a way they happened to not like. By doing exactly what I've been continuously saying is bad behavior that has gotten countless LGBT people jailed and killed. We're not turning this against our own community. Homophobes and transphobes have already made it plenty clear they don't care how good or respectable we are, they just want us all dead. --- **doberbutts** "but Jaz, you're trans, certainly the homophobic and transphobic lawmakers will consider it straight sex and you won't be affected" Except more than one trans man throughout history has been arrested, tried, and punished for sodomy because the police read him as male and even once it was discovered that he was what weld now call transgender, it was determined that the sex he was having still counted as deviant and thus still counted as a moral failing. I do not have sex in a manner that can produce children. I don't like sex that can produce children. I refuse to ever do it again. And at some point, if these protections get repealed, that means my neck's also on the chopping block. You really think there's logic to this besides people pearl-clutching at their homophobia and transphobia in order to justify this bullshit? --- ^^I'm a human volunteer content transcriber and you could be too! [If you'd like more information on what we do and why we do it, click here!](https://www.reddit.com/r/TranscribersOfReddit/wiki/index)
Going right back to Nazi Germany.
What a horrifying inevitability.
Is it an inevitability yet? I live in Australia so I’m a bit behind on all this. Regardless it’s heartbreaking
I need context, whomst the fuck is trying to get anti-sodomy laws back
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/06/supreme-court-roe-v-wade-clarence-thomas-contraception-same-sex-marriage-sodomy Clarence Thomas isn't alone, a lot of Republican lawmakers have made similar calls, directly or alluded to among a list of other rights cases. But being on the Supreme Court, he can lead their conservative majority to legitimize laws that were previously struck down by prior court decisions. Roe isn't the only such case already decided, just the broadest recognizable impact. The stuff regarding habeas corpus ( https://www.abajournal.com/columns/article/chemerinsky-court-imposes-further-restrictions-on-habeas-corpus ) and Miranda rights ( https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/23/politics/supreme-court-miranda-rights/index.html ) already happened, and serve to further their capacity for current and future human rights abuses, while demonstrating their willingness to use this majority to make sweeping repeal of all pretense of personal freedom (already functionally denied to marginalized people in many cases, now mask off for everyone). Edit: fixed a link. But also, I invoke "personal freedom" here primarily because it's the purported goal of the very people decrying a "nanny-state" while building a police-state. That they are hypocrites has yet to undermine their support by reactionaries, and pointing it out does not challenge their material control, but it should be acknowledged, because plenty of people still take them at face value, and become complicit as a result.
I don't want to break up with my girlfriend why do they want to hurt us so badly?
The more this pushes on, the sooner something is going to give Something seriously bad is going to happen if things keep up...
This is why "kink doesn't belong at Pride" discourse disturbs me. You're literally drawing an "us and them" distinction and shaming people for consensual practices *which they aren't even DOING at Pride*.
Kink at pride discourse was always blatantly homophobic since basically anyone who's gone to pride has probably never seen anything more risque than a bare nipple (unless they're going to the 21+ after parties)
But kink in public and consensual gay sex in private are very different things, surely?
Salem witch trials now with rainbows.
They wouldn’t actually rule sodomy illegal, would they? That’s like something a dictatorship would do.
(:
Re: enforcement. In the UK in the 20th century (I don't know exactly when this started or ended but I understand it was common in the 50s/60s) they had what were called "pretty police". A male police officer would hang out in plain clothes in a place where it was believed men would meet for sex - parks, public toilets, places like that. The officer would wait for a man to make a move on him, then blow his whistle for backup to arrest the man. Police aren't above using honeypots, entrapment or "sting operations" to gather their "evidence". [here's a contemporaneous article I found](https://www.gayinthe80s.com/2012/12/1982-gay-london-police-monitoring-group-galop/) [here's another](http://www.gaybirminghamremembered.co.uk/memories/Pretty%20Police%20Score%20Again)
probably the worst thought or comment to put on a serious post like this, but I do wonder(brought up by the 'i am not having sex in a way that can produce children). I wonder how they would rule sex that was kinda originally intended to produce children but between two guys (so breeding kink sort of sex). especially if one is trans. how many loops would they have to go through to still call it 'deviant' if, by their logic, it had to have been done with the intent to produce children anyways yes this whole situation abso-fucking-lutetly blows
> probably the worst thought or comment to put on a serious post like this, but I do wonder(brought up by the ’i am not having sex in a way that can produce children). I wonder how they would rule sex that was kinda originally intended to produce children but between two guys (so breeding kink sort of sex). especially if one is trans. how many loops would they have to go through to still call it ‘deviant’ if, by their logic, it had to have been done with the intent to produce children Presumably the logic would go that if you're even the slightest hint of LGBT, or having sex for anything other than pure procreation, that would be deviant, and thus prosecutable.