How Virginia's Attorney General Would Turn Thousands Of High School Students Into Felony Sex Offenders | ThinkProgress

How Virginia's Attorney General Would Turn Thousands Of High School Students Into Felony Sex Offenders | ThinkProgress: Walk into any eleventh grade classroom in Virginia. If Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R-VA) has his way, close to forty percent of the students will be felony sex offenders.

Dahlia Lithwick breaks down the implications of Cuccinelli’s plan in a must-read piece over at Slate. In short, Cuccinelli’s petition asking the Supreme Court to reinstate much of Virginia’s so-called “crimes against nature” law — which criminalizes oral and anal sex — is unlikely to impact adults who have sex with adults because the Court’s previous decision in Lawrence v. Texas held that the Constitution protects non-commercial sexual activity among adults. The tea partying attorney general’s petition, however, largely relies on a line in Lawrence suggesting that underage sexual activity can still be criminalized.