Gay leaders in Carolinas hail court decision
Expect effects in courts, military, employment

Charlotte -- Gay rights leaders across the Carolinas called Thursday's U.S. Supreme Court ruling a landmark decision that will lead to future equal rights victories -- not immediately, but eventually.

The Carolinas were two of 13 states with sodomy laws that appeared invalidated when the Supreme Court overturned a Texas law banning gay sex.

Thursday's ruling "will take that silly `You're gay; you're a felon' argument out of the mix, which never should have been there in the first place," said Connie Vetter, a Charlotte lawyer and member of the Mecklenburg Gay and Lesbian Political Action Committee.

"It tells everybody, `These are people whose lives deserve privacy, deserve respect and deserve equality,' " she said. "That is huge in terms of a societal shift."

Conservative Christian groups assailed the ruling, and the S.C. attorney general denounced it, saying it usurps the power of states to decide what is appropriate behavior.

In both Carolinas, crime-against-nature laws made it a felony for homosexual or unmarried heterosexual couples to have anal or oral sex.

The crime was a misdemeanor in Texas, and applied only against gay people.

Last year, more than 1,300 people in North Carolina were charged with a crime against nature or soliciting a crime against nature, court officials said Thursday.

Those charged included not only gays but unmarried heterosexual couples and people engaged in prostitution. S.C. figures were not available.

N.C. gay rights advocates said the laws were unevenly applied to gays.

The N.C. Supreme Court in 1998 ruled that a judge could disqualify a father from custody in a divorce case because he was gay. The court cited an earlier U.S. Supreme Court ruling upholding an anti-sodomy law.

A spokesman for N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper said Thursday's ruling "casts serious doubt on the constitutionality of the North Carolina statute."

Last year, N.C. Sen. Ellie Kinnaird, D-Orange, sponsored a bill to remove North Carolina's law from the books.

S.C. Attorney General Henry McMaster said the Supreme Court's decision invalidates the state's crime-against-nature law.

"Texas, just like South Carolina, has the fundamental right and authority as a sovereign state to enact laws prohibiting behavior deemed inappropriate and detrimental to the state," McMaster said in a statement.

"The citizens of our state, through their elected representatives, have seen fit to have our law against sodomy in effect since the Lord Proprietors governed South Carolina," McMaster said.

The Rev. Lee Proctor of Mint Hill Baptist Church said the law should stand because the Bible condemns sodomy -- not just between gays but between heterosexual couples as well, he said.

"For me, it's not just a homosexual issue," he said.

Dan Kirsch, director of Charlotte's Lesbian & Gay Community Center, said the ruling "gives people who were sitting on the fence permission to say that gay and lesbian people are equal.

"It puts everybody -- gay or nongay -- on the same level when it comes to privacy in the bedroom," he said.

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