Puerto Rican Sodomy Law - An Irony of Gay History
http://www.bilerico.com/2008/10/puerto_rican_sodomy_law_-_an_irony_of_ga.phpOctober 15, 2008 2:00 PM
Puerto Rico is lagging behind the queer curve--and behind the environmental, civil rights and other curves that Americans now take for granted--not just because it is a Latin American culture, but, above all, because it is a colony of the U.S. Until the important Lawrence decision in 2003, when the U.S. Supreme court decriminalized sodomy, any perfectly respectable citizen in Puerto Rico caught having sex with someone of the same gender can be sent to the slammer for 10 years..
Of course Puerto Rican authorities fatuously claim that hardly anyone has ever done time under their imported Anglo-Saxon sodomy law. But the sodomy law is as entrenched in the legal system as the U.S. colonial powers are on the island, and both are a sword of Damocles hanging over the respective populations. Oppressing, abusing, and humiliating them. Keeping them in line.
