Op-Ed: Ken Cuccinelli, Get Out Of My Mouth

Did you know that Virginia is not for all lovers? Sure, depending on your personal understanding of baseball procedure, you can safely sprint to second base. You can even take romantic bubble baths, just like in those Cialis commercials.

But you can't get or give a blow job or do it in the butt without potentially risking some sort of legal ramification, as long as state attorney general and Republican gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli has his way.

Currently, the state's sodomy statute applies to any person, male or female, who participates in any "carnal knowledge" with another male or female, having to do with the mouth or anus.

So whether you're going down or making a rear entry with your significant other, if you get caught by the Vaginal Sex Police, you could be sentenced to a year in prison under a Class 6 felony. And if the first 8 seconds of Orange Is The New Black has taught me anything, it's that prison isn't the place to reform after being convicted of giving too much oral sex.

Wait, Lawrence v. Texas is a decade in the past, right? Hasn't the Supreme Court already settled this privacy issue?

Plus, Virginia's slowly expanding acceptance of LGBT rights should make what you do in the bedroom off limits politically, at least when we're talking about adults. And it seems like a fairly libertarian state, so one would think Virginians draw the line at the government having punch-card access to their bedrooms. So why on earth has this law remained on the books?

The arguments to keep this law, of course, have become all about the children. In addition to fighting in court to keep the law around, Cuccinelli's campaign launched a website claiming that Virginia's sodomy law would help prosecute adults who engage in sex acts with minors. Even the example he uses in court to argue the law remains needed is a sordid case of oral sex between a 47-year-old man and teenage girl.

Cuccinelli claims that he's not at all obsessed with, nor does he have a problem with LGBT adults engaging in sexual intercourse in the privacy of their own homes. But if Cuccinelli really wants to protect young people from being taken advantage of sexually, he should champion a clear law that states as much: adults taking sexual advantage of minors will be prosecuted strictly. Done. Simple. Rational, and not discriminatory.

However, Cuccinelli voted against a bill proposed in 2004 that would have altered the sodomy law to no longer cover private consensual acts among adults, as MSNBC anchor Lawrence O'Donnellpointed out last week.

If the Republican Party wants to know why it has a disconnect with certain voters, Cuccinelli's tactics are a prime example. And let's face it: to the average voter outside of Virginia, he's basically known as "That guy in Virginia who is obsessed with butt sex."

We are all curious to know why Cuccinelli really feels he needs to keep this law on the books. Was there a performance issue somewhere down the line that made him fear anything that might require lubrication and lots of patience? Has he never had a decent BJ? Perhaps he had a BJ once so majestic, that he made it his personal quest to ensure that no one else could ever feel the amazingness of being orally pleasured so long as he lived, and forever after. 

The libertarian answer to most of these issues seems to be, get out of our pants, get out of our bedrooms; we all deserve the right to a free and fair orgasm. 

MICHELLE GARCIA is the Advocate's commentary editor. Follow her @GarciaReporting.

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