*Originally published on March 30, 1977
What Wisconsin statute have “most members of the legislature violated?” asks Rep. David Clarenbach, D-Madison.
They may have violated sections of a statute delineating penalties for which Clarenbach is seeking to reform.
A HEARING on a bill to alter coverage and penalties for anal and oral sex—statutorily known as sex perversion—and fornication, to apply only when performed in public, brought forth a roomful of supporters and only one opposing speaker.
Clarenbach’s assertion that the legislature is full of criminals brought cries of, “Speak for yourself, David!” and set the pace for an afternoon of witty testimony by persons representing various state and private groups concerned with privacy rights and civil liberties.
Mark McNary, a representative of the Gay Law Students’ Association, prefaced his remarks with a quip: “To the best of my knowledge, we’re the only organized criminals in the law school.” McNary noted his personal stake in the passage of this bill, saying, “It’s more than an amusing incongruity to be a lawyer and a felon at the same time.
IN REFERENCE to the old statutory punishment of revoking the driver’s license of a person convicted of “sexual perversion,” McNary asserted that, in addition to the fact that sexual conduct has no bearing on a person’s ability to drive, federal files are kept on such revocations, meaning “a private matter between two adults is made a federal concern.”
After his remarks, a committee member quizzed McNary on the number of members in the Gay Students’ Rights Association. Another committee member answered for McNary, suggesting that if the representative was curious he could always go to a meeting himself. McNary received no further questions.
The Rev. Judith Michaels called the idea of the state “telling people what they can do in the privacy of their own bedroom” an “immoral act.” She, like other speakers, said the present law is unenforceable—“We’d have to have police in every other bedroom in town.”
These sorts of laws, Michaels continued, “make about 98 percent of everyone—married or unmarried—a criminal. The other two percent have no imagination,” she joked.
THE EIGHTH district city council incumbent, James Yeadon, told members of the Judiciary committee, “What you are doing by having this law on the books is making what I do in the privacy of my bedroom a crime.”
“I’m not a criminal, I’m not a crook,” Yeadon quipped to an appreciative audience.
The Rev. Dr. Tom Larson, representing the Racine-Kenosha chapter of the Civil Liberties Union, noted his concern as a Unitarian minister for the separation of church and state.
“Some churches forbid oral sex or fornication or homosexuality. My church does not. The state should not act as the religious authority.”
Karla Dobinski, an attorney interested in women’s and gay rights, testified that the unenforceability of the sex statutes “doesn’t mean they’re harmless.” She stressed that “they provide the basis for discrimination against gay people.”
Dobinski said she had received “many a call” from worried people who feared “coming out” because of the presence of the statute.
AN ATTORNEY for the city of Madison announced that the Equal Opportunities Commission of Madison favors this legislation to“extend the right of sexual privacy to all persons—straight or gay.”
The attorney said that the acts made criminal by the present statue do no harm to society, that such statutes breed contempt for the law because they are unenforceable, that they are selectively enforced, that they are a burden to the resources of criminal justice and that sending violators to prison serves no purpose since there are typically more cases of “sexual perversion” in prisons.
Listing off a large number of prestigious organizations and corporations that have denounced discrimination on the basis of sexual preference, he noted Madison is one of 32 cities and counties which prohibit employment discrimination on this basis.
The attorney also named 18 states and many countries which have shed their anti-homosexuality and fornication laws, and urged the state of Wisconsin to “live up to its reputation as a progressive state” by passing this bill.
