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Athletes. Alcohol. Oral sodomy. Yeah, I don’t think that mixes too well, either. It certainly hasn’t for one student at North Carolina State University in Raleigh.
Dejon Bivens, a 19-year-old member of the N.C. State tennis team, was arrested on Oct. 27 and charged with a “crime against nature.” How, you ask, could this happen? The “Crimes Against Nature” (CAN) law is void after the Supreme Court’s Lawrence v. Texas decision, right?
Wrong. Many of you might remember our Oct. 6 article on the North Carolina CAN law. It relayed the experience of a Florida priest arrested and charged in North Carolina with the same violation Bivens now faces. For the Florida priest, however, the actions he intended to engage in were completely consensual and would have been private — a type of CAN enforcement the Supreme Court struck down in its landmark decision.
Bivens, however, faces an entirely different “sodomy” situation, one in which consent was allegedly never given. In the early morning hours of Oct. 27, Bivens and other members of the N.C. State tennis team were partying like all other average college students around the country. No surprise there.
Bivens’ alleged victim told Raleigh police that he went to his room to sleep and found Bivens passed out in his closet. Later, the victim said he awoke to find Bivens performing oral sex on him.
Granted, I’m amused by the fact that Bivens had to “come out of the closet” in order to give his friend and teammate the surprise nighttime favor, but this really is no laughing matter.
There are at least two concerns that immediately come to my mind.
The first is making sure justice is done, such as making sure that two drunk college kids didn’t do something and one got scared and decided to wiggle his way out of whatever troubles he thought he might face.
The second concern is making sure that Bivens, if really guilty of a sexual assault, is held accountable for that sexual assault.
Concern number one is, I think, pretty self-explanatory — with two drunk, testosterone-driven athletes, yeah, something could have happened (although I’m not saying that anything really did).
On concern number two, let me go further.
In North Carolina, a person can be charged with a “crime against nature” if he or she engages in anal sex, oral sex, oral-to-anal sex or practically anything other than missionary style between a man and woman (oh, and bestiality can get you charged with a “crime against nature,” as well).
The statute is designed to limit and punish a type of sexual behavior or the specific sexual acts, not the motivation or intent behind those actions. In other words, the CAN law punishes gay sex or non-procreative straight sex based on those criteria alone; it doesn’t punish on the merit of whether an action was rape or a sexual assault (at least, not in how it is enforced anyway).
Charging Bivens under the CAN law does nothing to punish him for the action he is actually alleged to have committed. Yes, Bivens did perform “oral sodomy,” but the crime he is alleged to have committed is a sexual offense. A charge more representative of the actual crime should have been used, not a charge describing the particular sex act that took place.
According to the N.C. Gay Advocacy Legal Alliance (NCGALA), law enforcement “argue that they continue to enforce and press charges for CAN activity because the laws against prostitution, sex with minors and the like are not worded broadly enough to include oral and anal sex.”
NCGALA goes on to say that while the rationale may seem reasonable, the enforcement of the law remains lopsided, with homosexual behavior being penalized more harshly than heterosexual behavior.
According to Greensboro attorney John Boddie, a CAN charge is nothing more than a “felony in name only.” He said that for a person with no prior record the punishment for the crime could be as lenient as community service.
On the other hand, both first and second degree sexual offense sentences carry the possibility of long prison terms.
Boddie said that a CAN charge is an “insult to the victims of crimes akin to rape” because of the CAN law’s insignificance.
And, really, if this had been a man sexually offending a woman, don’t you think the perpetrator would have been immediately charged with sexual offense instead of some flimsy, limp-wristed (yes, pun definitely intended) charge like crimes against nature?
I can have sex with my significant other all day long, doing exactly what the CAN law says is illegal and we can engage in the same specific sexual act that Bivens performed, but what me and my guy are doing is nothing when compared to the sexual offense Bivens allegedly committed.
There are major differences between consensual sex and forced or coerced sex. That difference is called rape and it’s about time law enforcement wised up and started prosecuting criminals under charges that will actually mean something.
It is easy to understand why law enforcement officials want to use the CAN statute. Give as much punishment as possible, right? Yeah, that would make sense if a person was being charged under the CAN statute and with a sexual offense, as is the case in most sex offense crimes. But, that isn’t happening in this situation.Instead of facing any real consequences for his alleged assault, Bivens will get a little public humiliation and then move on.
I really don’t believe the CAN statute is doing any person in this state a favor. In fact, it is giving criminals an easy way out on charges that should really be more severe. We also have to consider that victims aren’t getting the justice they rightly deserve.
Yes, I know “the honorables” down in Raleigh really don’t want to touch all this “gay stuff” for fear of election day, but, come on, let’s get rid of this useless law, okay? Please?
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