Deb Law  0:00  
Good morning. This is Deborah Law with Lambda Reports a program by and for the lesbian and gay community of St Louis. I want to remind you that today is the day of the rally, the parade and the picnic at Forest Park. So come out and join us. Have a wonderful time. I'm going to be talking this morning with Zulema Halpin and Gene Schultz. Zulema is a founding member of the Privacy Rights Education Project, and is also on the faculty at UMSL. Gene is also a member of prep, a law professor at St Louis University, a member of Lambda Lawyers, which is a local organization of lesbian and gay lawyers and just recently elected to the Board of the National Lesbian and Gay Lawyers Association. I want to welcome you both and thank you for joining me. We're here this morning to talk about, as we are very close to the third anniversary of the Bowers versus Hardwick decision, what kind of ramifications has this is had  for our community and what kind of activities are being planned. Zulema, can you tell us what kinds of things are on tap? 

Zulema Halpin  1:07  
Yes, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force has called for a national day of mourning for privacy rights to be held nationally in St Louis, the privacy rights education project that is PREP and Challenge Metro are having several events at 10:30 in the morning on July the 28th that is this coming Wednesday. I'm sorry, June 28 this coming Wednesday, we will be having a press conference at the Old Courthouse to announce the start of a petition drive to repeal Missouri's sexual misconduct law, which is the law that criminalizes sex between people of the same sex. Also at six o'clock this coming Wednesday, June 28 again, on the west side of the old courthouse, we will be having a rally with a number of different speakers to dramatize sodomy laws, and, in particular, Missouri's sexual misconduct law, and to protest those laws, and again, to announce to the community the initiation of the of the petition drive.

Deb Law  2:20  
On June 30 in 1986 with the Supreme Court decision, it essentially said that we as lesbians and gays have no constitutional right to have sex in the privacy of our own homes, or in general, to have sex. While one could have thought that that might have been a death blow to our movement, it certainly has not been, though very devastating. I know it was instrumental. It was one of the the reasons that folks from PREP got together. Can you what I'm interested in is what your perspective is on the response of our community to that decision and what's happened in the last three years.

Zulema Halpin  2:55  
I think, I think the the repercussions politically of the Bowers versus Hardwick decision are quite interesting, because, as Deb just said, one possible outcome would have been for the community to become even more closeted and for people to simply go into hiding. Instead, what has happened is that the year following the decision, Washington saw one of the largest civil rights marches ever. We had 600,000 people marching in Washington for gay and lesbian rights, and around the country, the gay community, as well as heterosexual supporters, appeared to have been galvanized by that decision and started very serious political work and educational work around the issue of the right to privacy, and in particular, the right to privacy of people who are lesbian and gay.

Deb Law  3:45  
gene. Let me ask you. I'm not sure that all of us in Missouri are really aware of what the sexual misconduct code is, what its ramifications are, what the history of it is. Can you give us a little bit of background and some of your involvement? 

Gene Schultz  3:57  
Okay, in the in the mid 70s, the Attorney General of Missouri, at that time, Jack Danforth, appointed a committee to revise the entire criminal code, and that committee brought in four lawyers to do the drafting, and I was one of those lawyers. And what we would do is we would propose to this committee what we thought the law ought to be, and in the area of of of sexual misconduct, or sodomy, as it's sometimes called, we recommended that all consensual sexual activity among adults in private that didn't have a commercial aspect, be decriminalized, and we made a very strong I didn't do it personally, one of my colleagues did, made a very strong presentation to the committee. The committee seemed to agree with everything that was said. But then, when we took the vote, the vote was to retain, uh, criminal penalties. And the four of us were quite shocked. And I remember one of us asked one of the people who had voted against our proposition, why, and he happened to be a legislator, and he said, Well, I agree with everything that you said, but you're not sending something to the legislature that has my name on it that approves homosexuality. And I think that illustrates two things. One, the belief among many people that the majority supports criminalization, which I think is a myth. And the other thing that I think, that it illustrates, which is even more important, is that people of good will do, in fact, realize, at least many of them do, that it's not proper or appropriate to criminalize this type of behavior, but they're so afraid of what their neighbors are going to say if they come right out and say that, that they cover up their own judgment and remain quiet. And I think that's one of the important reasons why we should have this petition drive, because as more people see other people saying what they really believe, I think that we'll find that we have a lot more support than we may have thought at the beginning.

Deb Law  6:36  
What does the sexual misconduct code say it specifically in reference to sex between consenting adults of the same sex?

Gene Schultz  6:46  
Well, it says that any sexual con, any sexual contact between the between the hand, mouth, anus of one person, and tongue sorry or tone of one person and the genitals of another is is forbidden, and it carries a penalty of up to a year in prison and $1,000 fine, even though this is entirely consensual, and that's very broad, and especially in regard to the hand genital contact, which is something that almost every teenager engages in at some point. It is on the other hand, narrow and goes against the tide, in a sense, in being applicable, applicable only to gay sex. I might add parenthetically that those two changes were changes the legislature added to the bill as our committee drafted it, and makes it very unlikely that the legislature intended this statute to protect public health. After all, what danger is there to the public health in hand, genital contact? And if you are really interested in health anybody, it doesn't matter what sex the parts are, the health issue is the same.

Deb Law  8:22  
right? Well, I know that when the Hardwick decision came down, many lesbians, in fact, did not feel that this directly affected us. There has been some sense, and I think, a misuse of the term sodomy as more specifically, referring to sex between and among gay men, while, in fact, one can see from what the statute says that it directly affects us. It is obviously, in most instances, an unenforceable law or an unenforceable ruling. What it does seem to do, though, is provide an institutionalized base for a homophobic reaction. And

Zulema Halpin  9:02  
Sure, I think that's that's absolutely correct. I want to go back to your your statement about lesbians not thinking that the decision was applicable to lesbians. Only two weeks after the Hardwick decision, the Missouri Supreme Court upheld Missouri sexual misconduct law, and as we have already heard, that law applies to virtually any sexual expression between two people of the same sex. So this clearly applies to lesbians. And lesbians are as vulnerable to being prosecuted under this law should they be found engaging in sex, even in the privacy of their own home. The other repercussions, I think that you mentioned briefly, is, or are that it provides a justification for homophobia in our society. Essentially, what it does is it labels gay people as criminals and even though the law itself only applies to acts the way that it is usually seen by the general public and interpreted is that people who are gay or lesbian are criminals. This then justifies discrimination, it justifies harassment, it justifies efforts to keep gay and lesbian parents from having custody of their children, and it justifies outright violence against people who are gay and lesbian.

Gene Schultz  10:31  
I might simply add that it also creates a barrier to effective public health measures, because people are afraid to get tested. They're afraid to admit to their doctor their sexual orientation. They're afraid to tell their partner about their other experiences. They are not honest when they're when surveys are taken, it messes up the entire public health effort, especially with respect to AIDS, because people are afraid to admit and come out with their own sexual conduct. And consequently, this is a serious matter in a time like this, when we're worried about the spread of the AIDS virus.

Deb Law  11:28  
Yeah, underscored most dramatically, I think, by the fact that the State of Missouri will not pass out information with accurate descriptions of safe sex, because it is much but illegal sex. But we can, you know, how that could be extrapolated into numbers of lives? It's incredible.

Zulema Halpin  11:45  
Yeah. The other way that it has been used, and it has been used recently in this state, is that when there are attempts to pass ordinances or rulings by whether it be local governments, by universities that would prohibit discrimination against people who are gay or lesbian, the immediate response that one gets is that you can't have those types of rulings because or those types of ordinances because people who are gay or lesbian are engaging In criminal activity, and we cannot condone criminal activity. So the ramifications are rather broad and far-reaching. And I think this is what we have to keep in mind, that this is a law that even if it is not always enforced in the sense that people are arrested for engaging in gay or lesbian sex, that it is nonetheless affecting the lives of all lesbian and gay people, on a I would say, on a daily basis, every aspect of life.

Deb Law  12:49  
I agree. Well, I have to say, unfortunately that we are close to running out of time. So before we lose this time, please again, let me pass the microphone back to you all, and so you can again let our community know about the activities that are being planned, both for the 28th of June and then the ongoing activity in terms of the petition.

Zulema Halpin  13:07  
Yes, once again, on Wednesday, June 28 there will be a rally at six o'clock on the west side of the Old Courthouse that will act as a protest and also as a dramatization of Missouri's sexual misconduct law and what it means. We hope that all people that are listening will come to it, and please bring your friends as well. The petition drive will be continuing through the Fall. There will be petitions available at the PREP booth at the at the Rally on Sunday today, this afternoon. So please come by and get petitions there. Also you can write prep Privacy Rights Education Project at 24106 St Louis, Missouri, 63130. For further information or to obtain petitions. And we would like as many people as possible to become engaged in the petition drive, which is, by the way, a statewide petition drive.

Deb Law  14:10  
There's also the possibility of calling the Hotline Action Line isn't there for more information? 

Zulema Halpin  14:15  
Yes, for more information about the events of the National Day of Mourning in St Louis, you can call 367-0084, to again. get further information about the events of the of the National Day of Mourning, as well as about the petition drive.

Deb Law  14:35  
You can see we have just begun to scratch the surface here. Please come out to the Rally find out more information. Certainly come to the picnic this afternoon and get as much as you can. Not only do we need to mourn the third anniversary of the Hardwick decision, but we need to organize .

Transcribed by https://otter.ai