Man challenges sex offender status and outdated sodomy conviction
Out with the old – especially if the old is bigoted and homophobic!
A man in South Carolina is filing a lawsuit to challenge an outdated conviction, according to The Advocate. Under the state’s now invalid anti-sodomy law, the man was convicted of having consensual sex with another man and forced to register as a sex offender.
The American Civil Liberties Union of South Carolina says that the man – who is identified as “John Doe” in the suit – stated in the South Carolina newspaper The Post and Courier that he and his partner were charged and forced to register in 2001, two years before the ant-sodomy law was abolished by the United States Supreme Court after a decision in the 2003 Lawrence v. Texas case. Before the ruling was passed, anti-sodomy laws were often used as a form of persecution against queer people.
“South Carolina is the last state in the country to require sex offender registration for pre-Lawrence sodomy convictions,” said Allen Chaney, ACLU-SC’s legal director, in a statement. “This practice needlessly subjects law abiding citizens to the horrors of the sex offender registry and demonstrates a deeply troubling animosity by the State towards the gay community.”
Those found guilty under South Carolina’s anti-sodomy law before 2003 were forced to register as sex offenders. Since convicted in 2001, Doe’s conviction was pardoned in 2006 but he remains on the sex offender registry.
Doe’s lawsuit was filed on December 22. In the suit, Doe alleges that the requirement that still forces him to register as a sex offender almost 20 years after the law was abolished violates his Fourteenth Amendment rights to due process and equal protection under the law. Matthew Strugar, a Los Angeles-based private attorney representing Doe alongside ACLU-SC, told The Post and Courier that the sex offender status has negatively impacted Doe’s life.
Because of his status, Doe has had to provide the local sheriff’s office detailed information twice a year about himself. This information includes his permanent and temporary residence, his place of employment, vehicle information, fingerprints, palm prints, and every account he has used online. He was led to file the suit after being denied a professional license.
“The registration obligations, sort of, take over your life,” Strugar told the papers.
“It is unconscionable that in 2021, South Carolina would still put people convicted of having gay sex on the sex offender registry. This kind of overt, state-sanctioned homophobia would have been surprising 30 years ago. Today it is shocking. And it is unconstitutional.”
