Her Crime? Sex Work in New Orleans

[AlphaCentauri]

More than half of the people on Louisiana's Sex Offender Registry -- which was designed for rapists and child molesters -- are indigent women convicted of sex work

Tabitha has been working as a prostitute in New Orleans since she was 13. Now 30 years old, she can often be found working on a corner just outside of the French Quarter. A small and slight white woman, she has battled both drug addiction and illness and struggles every day to find a meal or a place to stay for the night.

These days, Tabitha, who asked that her real name not be used in this story, has yet another burden: a stamp printed on her driver’s license labels her a sex offender. Her crime? Offering sex for money.
New Orleans city police and the district attorney’s office are using a state law written for child molesters to charge hundreds of sex workers like Tabitha as sex offenders. The law, which dates back to 1805, declares it a crime against nature to engage in “unnatural copulation”—a term New Orleans cops and the district attorney’s office have interpreted to mean anal or oral sex. Sex workers convicted of breaking this law are charged with felonies, issued longer jail sentences and forced to register as sex offenders.

Of the 861 sex offenders currently registered in New Orleans, 483 were convicted of a crime against nature, according to Doug Cain, a spokesperson with the Louisiana State Police. And of those convicted of a crime against nature, 78 percent are Black and almost all are women.
http://dissidentvoice.org/2010/01/her-crime-sex-work-in-new-orleans/

[bahrbearian]

1. I wonder if Vitter has one of those on his license ?

[cutlassmama]

2. He just wore diapers with a prosititue. He didn't have oral/anal sex.

[glowing]

3. Oh, what a smart way to get women to stop prostituting.. label their i.d.'s with sex offender.

make it impossible for the woman to work anywhere other than a street corner.

[winyanstaz]

4. umm there is nothing "unnatural" about prostitution.....

It's been around from the beginning of time.
I also argue that oral sex is not unnatural..
annal sex? Well thats something that if it is between two concenting adults and no one is hurt...its none of my business.
I just dont recall the right of the government to regulate human sexuality as being in the Constitution.

[classysassy]

5. Its the congressional whores

that offend me.

[Tutankhamun]

6. Any law that stupid (oral/anal=ilegal) must be biblical in origin.