By Zachary Gorchow
Executive Editor and Publisher
Posted: February 9, 2016 11:11 AM

It started Monday with some Internet memes mocking Michigan, something about the state newly banning anal and oral sex.

Then, this morning, a friend from Florida emailed me with a link to a website I had never heard of claiming a bill that passed the Michigan Senate, SB 219, would ban sodomy in the state, asking me if this was really happening. Then I began seeing Facebook friends posting the story, either to express outrage that the Senate would pass such a law or incredulous at the gullibility of some people.

I can’t tell exactly where this originated, but let’s get this out of the way quickly.

SB 219 does NOT make new law criminalizing sodomy in Michigan.

That’s because Michigan law has criminalized sodomy for more than a century.

Under the law, it is a felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison for anyone who commits an "abominable and detestable crime against nature either with mankind or with any animal." That wording has been interpreted to include anal and oral sex by either gay or heterosexual couples. It also criminalizes bestiality.

That law was rendered null and void by a 2003 U.S. Supreme Court ruling declaring such laws unconstitutional, but the Legislature has never removed it from the books.

So why the confusion, and what does SB 219 do anyway?

The bill is part of a package of bills designed to protect animals from cruelty, in this case by prohibiting someone from owning an animal for at least five years as part of a sentence when convicted of certain crimes against animals.

The bill restates the anti-sodomy/anti-bestiality subsection in the law because under the bill that would become a crime leading to the prohibition on owning an animal for five years.

Some websites have claimed the bill adds “mankind” to the statute. That is false. If the language was new, it would be added in bold, capitalized letters. The word “mankind” has been in the law going back to the 19th century.

What is interesting about the bill though is it does grammatically clean up the anti-sodomy/anti-bestiality subsection, going from “Any person who shall commit” to “A person who commits” and so on. That is pretty typical housekeeping in almost any bill.

But the bill leaves the word “mankind” in the law even though the U.S. Supreme Court has said that part of the law is unconstitutional. Sen. Rick Jones (R-Grand Ledge), the bill sponsor, has told several of these websites taking out that word would have scuttled the bill, and he did not want that to happen.

USA Today reported almost two years ago that of the 14 states that had anti-sodomy laws on the books when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, only two have struck them from their laws since then.

There was an effort in 2003 after the court ruled to remove the law from the books in Michigan, but it went nowhere. Then-Rep. Leon Drolet, a Republican who is now openly gay but at the time was not, circulated a bill to strike the law and met considerable resistance when he went looking for co-sponsors.

I recall one House Republican member at the time, who was hardly a raging conservative, telling me on a not for attribution basis that supporting the bill would be tantamount to political suicide. The fear was how opponents would caricature it politically, and indeed Mr. Drolet’s opponents ruthlessly used the bill against him for years to come.

So in the final analysis, two things have not changed: Michigan’s anti-sodomy law and the idea of repealing it remaining politically taboo.