#under virginia's colonial holdover sodomy laws

[clatterbane]

This is a thing that actually happened when I was in college.

A Virginia Tech official has filed an $850,000 libel lawsuit against the student newspaper for identifying her as the school’s “director of butt licking.”...

Yeagle’s attorney, S.D. Roberts Moore, said the title implies Yeagle committed “a crime involving moral turpitude” and that the actions of the paper “injured Yeagle’s employment, office, and professional standing without justification.” Moore argued that under Virginia state law, the act of “butt licking” could be considered felony sodomy. The law states “if any person … carnally knows any male or female person by the anus or by or with the mouth … he or she shall be guilty of a Class 6 felony.”

Yeah, she ended up seriously losing the libel suit. This particular hot vexatious mess was not dismissed outright, but made it to the state Supreme Court.

The fact that "your poor taste student paper joke called me a nasty felon" ever passed for a vaguely plausible legal argument in this situation serves as some illustration of just how ludicrous the legal space was. Which is precisely the type of legal space that authoritarian ideological weirdos are trying so desperately to drag us all back into--and no doubt employ in at least equally good faith wherever they see an opportunity.

Just thinking about how republicans are going after normie sex shit like "internet porn" and "dildos" now

we fucking told y'all