Apparently the Sheriff in East Baton Rouge, Louisiana is either exceedingly ignorant of the law or believes himself to be above it, as reports are coming out that over the last couple of years, cops have been entrapping men for agreeing to private, consensual sex and arresting them:
An undercover East Baton Rouge Parish sheriff’s deputy was staking out Manchac Park about 10 a.m. one day this month when a slow-moving sedan pulling into the parking lot caught his attention. The deputy parked alongside the 65-year-old driver and, after denying being a cop, began a casual conversation that was electronically monitored by a backup team nearby.
As the two men moved their chat to a picnic table, the deputy propositioned his target with “some drinks and some fun” back at his place, later inquiring whether the man had any condoms, according to court records. After following the deputy to a nearby apartment, the man was handcuffed and booked into Parish Prison on a single count of attempted crime against nature.
There had been no sex-for-money deal between the two. The men did not agree to have sex in the park, a public place. And the count against the man was based on a part of Louisiana’s anti-sodomy law struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court a decade ago.
The July 18 arrest is among at least a dozen cases since 2011 in which a Sheriff’s Office task force used the unenforceable law to ensnare men who merely discussed or agreed to have consensual sex with an undercover agent, an investigation by The Advocate has found.
The sheriff is claiming to be ignorant of the fact that the law on Louisiana’s books is unenforceable:
“To our knowledge, the Sheriff’s office was never contacted or told that the law was not enforceable or prosecutable,” a statement from the Sheriff’s Office claims.
Well, it was in the damn newspaper, in 2003, but far be it from us to ask the good sheriff to keep up with current events.
That explanation doesn’t appear to satisfy Metro Councilman John Delgado.
“Does he know that slavery is no longer around?” an outraged Delgado told The Advocate newspaper in Louisiana. “Does he know that we have cars and no longer horse and buggies?”
Of course, none of the cases have been prosecuted, since the law is unenforceable, so the sheriff has simply been wasting people’s time and money. And according to the first report, most of the men ensnared have unsurprisingly been closeted, middle-aged to older men, a fact which should outrage the Religious Right, as the “closeted, middle-aged” cohort has more to do with their community than ours. We expect to see a blanket condemnation from Baton Rouge’s favorite hate group leader Tony Perkins, ASAP.
