In Lawrence v. Texas, the supreme court found that Texas’ law against consensual homosexual sex was unconstitutional, and overturned the court’s previous decision, Bowers vs. Hardwick which had upheld as constitutional a similar law in Georgia. In his dissent, justice Scalia lambasted the majority for overturning Bowers, which he claimed was the basis of many state laws relating to morality. He includes the following line:

State laws against bigamy, same-sex marriage, adult incest, prostitution, masturbation, adultery, fornication, bestiality, and obscenity are likewise sustainable only in light of Bowers’ validation of laws based on moral choices.

His logic is of course the standard culturally conservative approach which does not differentiate between consenting homosexual sex and bestiality and assumes that they are equivalent in all ways. Although I would disagree, it’s a debate that’s happened before repeatedly, and I have no wish to rehash it yet again.

What did catch my eye though, is the fact that Scalia mentions masturbation in his list of laws which may get overturned. Are there actually states with laws against masturbation? If so I couldn’t find out which ones with Google, and I’m curious to know how they possibly could have come about. (Also how can they possibly be enforced?) Has anyone actually heard of a state which has outlawed the safest sexual practice there is?

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 26th, 2009 at 8:07 pm by Ari and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.