The Colorado State House voted down a bill Friday to take adultery laws off the books. The bill, which was voted down in committee, was initiated in the State Senate and would have removed the adultery statue and a similar statute, "promoting sexual immorality" [by renting a room to unmarried people who have sex]. The bill passed the democratically controlled senate but was defeated by republicans and one democrat in the House Health and Environment Committee.
According to the Denver Post, members of Colorado Family Action, a branch of Colorado Springs based Focus on The Family lobbed republican representatives not to pass the bill. The Director of Colorado Family Action said, “Colorado Family Action does not believe that as a state, we should encourage the moral decay of our society, no matter how archaic the laws may be and appear to some.”
When questioned, members of the House Health and Environment Committee said they did not want to vote for a bill they believed endorsed/excused adultery.
Regardless of the legislatures failure to remove these statutes it is unlikely that they could ever be enforced. Nathan Koppel, writing for the Wall Street Journal’s law blog notes that, “they are presumptively invalid under Lawrence v Texas” the 2003 Supreme Court case in which Texas’ anti-sodomy laws were overturned.
In any event, it is nice to see that someone else’s state legislature is behaving as well as our own.
http://www.denverpost.com/legislature/ci_18013601
1 comment:
I think that it is interesting that states are still holding on to some of these values. I was shocked to learn about Lawrence v. Texas last semester in Con Law and see that it had been so recent (2003). It is ridiculous that some of our political leaders fight to keep things on the books that don't match current society.
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