Ken Cuccinelli's Unnatural Act: Or, the AG and the BJ's

I'll admit, I was aware that Ken Cuccinelli was up for bigger things back in 2010, when it looked like he was trying to take on climate science as his signifying crusade; but deep down, I was hoping he would go full-metal-wingnut over something a little more representative of his social conservative bona fides.  After all, this is the guy who weirded out over boobies post-Ashcroft. I won't have Rick Santorum to kick around forever--why not be on the look-out for a new field of ripe prudish whackadoodlehood?

But the other reason I was hoping Cuccinelli would pick a crusade with social conservative value is that there is a religious right bubble--on one hand, they seem to be aware that they're out of the mainstream and that their values aren't represented by Hollyweird and the mainstream media, but on the other hand, there seems to be a an almost naive lack of awareness that they don't represent a silent, moral majority of people who think exactly as they do. Case in point, I believe, is his request for a re-hearing of Virginia's anti-sodomy law:

This specific case deals with a man who was prosecuted under the "Crimes Against Nature" statute for having had oral sex with women, a felony offense under that law. The man in the case, William MacDonald, was in his late 40s when he was charged with having consensual oral sex with two young women who were, at the time, ages 16 and 17. While that might be seen as creepy, in Virginia, the age of consent is 15 years old. It is considered statutory rape—a felony offense—to have sex with anyone under that age. Under state law, an adult can be prosecuted for "causing" delinquency by having sex with someone between the ages of 15 and 18, but that is only a misdemeanor. MacDonald was convicted of such a misdemeanor, and his lawyers aren't challenging that conviction. But they have challenged—so far, successfully—the state's attempt to prosecute him for violating the "Crimes Against Nature" law. 

Because Virginia still has this anti-sodomy law on the books, the state wants to use it against MacDonald and win a felony conviction. The state, however, couldn't prosecute him under this statute if he had engaged in vaginal sex. That is, the state is trying to use a loophole in the law that makes oral, but not vaginal, sex a felony in order to go after this guy. The court of appeals determined that MacDonald could not be prosecuted under this law because the US Supreme Court ruled in 2003 that such laws are an unconstitutional "intrusion into the personal and private life of the individual."

At issue with the statute that he's using is that he's specifically singling out, not the issue of the ages of the young women in question nor the issue of consent, but the actual nature of the act itself. He wants a felony conviction because the act is oral sex.

He wants oral sex to be treated as a serious crime.  Let that sink in. Is that really where most people are on the subject?  Because I am willing to bet they are not. And yet he's going to be "the anti-oral sex guy" on the cusp of a gubernatorial run--is that natural, I ask you? (And this is just the latest thing in a string of things, which includes being birther-curious and paranoid about being tracked by one's Social Security number.)

Anyway, I suspect Cuccinelli will make for interesting watching in the months, nay, years to come.