Transforming Teenagers into Oral Sex Felons: The Persistence of the Crime Against Nature after Lawrence v. Texas
Transforming Teenagers into Oral Sex Felons: The Persistence of the Crime Against Nature after Lawrence v. Texas
Michael Kent Curtis and Shannon Gilreath, 43 Wake Forest L. Rev. 155 (2008)
This Article focuses on the persistence of the “crime against nature,” a crime which seemed to have been largely buried by the Supreme Court in its 2003 decision in Lawrence v. Texas. Lawrence struck down “crime against nature” statutes as applied to consenting adults in private. But, as several state courts have read their statutes, the “crime” survives for use in other circumstances. The result is that the “crime against nature” can still be used to prosecute teenagers who voluntarily engage in oral or anal sex with each other. That is true, for example, in North Carolina and Georgia and apparently elsewhere as well.