text:
Informatica Corporation (Nasdaq:INFA), the world's number one independent provider of data integration software, today introduced Informatica Cloud Spring 2013, the latest release of its award-winning Informatica Cloud family of cloud-based integration and data management applications.
Powered by the industry's leading integration platform-as-a-service (iPaaS), Informatica Cloud Spring 2013 delivers:
Cloud Data Masking: Securing Sensitive Data during Development and Test
Informatica Cloud Spring 2013 brings the first comprehensive software as a service (SaaS) solution for protecting data privacy in application development and test (sandbox) environments. Delivering the market leading Informatica Persistent Data Masking technology as a self-service, wizard-based cloud application, Informatica Cloud Data Masking empowers organizations to:
Advanced Cloud Workflow, Process Creation and Management
Informatica Cloud Spring 2013 delivers Informatica Cloud Extend, technologies that Informatica obtained through the acquisition of Active Endpoints to deliver powerful workflow capabilities for salesforce.com customers. Available today on the AppExchange, this cloud-based application enables sales, marketing and support professionals to:
Enterprise-Class Cloud Integration Enhancements
Informatica Cloud Spring 2013 delivers new security and administration features that support broader cloud integration deployments and strengthen IT governance and control. These include:
Expanded Cloud Data Quality and Master Data Management
Informatica Cloud Spring 2013 furthers Informatica's leadership in cloud data quality and MDM. Advances include:
New Cloud Connectivity and Pre-built Integration Templates
With the Spring 2013 release, Informatica Cloud now has more than 50 Cloud Connectors and 30 Cloud Integration Templates built using Informatica Cloud iPaaS capabilities and available instantly through their respective Informatica Marketplace Malls.
All Informatica Cloud integration customers will be upgraded to the Spring 2013 release on February 23, 2013. Details are available on the Trust site. Informatica Cloud Data Masking is in pre-release. To register for the pre-release program, visit http://www.informaticacloud.com/cloud-data-masking.
Tweet this: News: @InformaticaCorp #Cloud Spring Brings Most Comprehensive #Integration Capabilities to the Cloud http://bit.ly/11TQLFj @infacloud
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Informatica Corporation (Nasdaq:INFA) is the world's number one independent provider of data integration software. Organizations around the world rely on Informatica for maximizing return on data to drive their top business imperatives. Worldwide, over 5,000 enterprises depend on Informatica to fully leverage their information assets residing on-premise, in the Cloud and across social networks. For more information, call +1 650-385-5000 (1-800-653-3871 in the U.S.), or visit www.informatica.com. Connect with Informatica at http://www.facebook.com/InformaticaCorporation, http://www.linkedin.com/company/informatica and http://twitter.com/InformaticaCorp.
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The Acquisition of Color Words
Katie Wagner and David Barner
Human experience of color results from a complex interplay of perceptual and linguistic systems. At the lowest level of perception, the human visual system transforms the visible light portion of the electromagnetic spectrum into a rich, continuous three-dimensional experience of color. Despite our ability to perceptually discriminate millions of different color shades, most languages categorize color into a number of discrete color categories. While the meanings of color words are constrained by perception, perception does not fully define them. Once color words are acquired, they may in turn influence our memory and processing speed for color, although it is unlikely that language influences the lowest levels of color perception.
One approach to examining the relationship between perception and language in forming our experience of color is to study children as they acquire color language. Children produce color words in speech for many months before acquiring adult meanings for color words. Research in this area has focused on whether children's difficulties stem from (a) an inability to identify color properties as a likely candidate for word meanings, or alternatively (b) inductive learning of language-specific color word boundaries. Lending plausibility to the first account, there is evidence that children more readily attend to object traits like shape, rather than color, as likely candidates for word meanings. However, recent evidence has found that children have meanings for some color words before they begin to produce them in speech, indicating that in fact, they may be able to successfully identify color as a candidate for word meaning early in the color word learning process. There is also evidence that prelinguistic infants, like adults, perceive color categorically. While these perceptual categories likely constrain the meanings that children consider, they cannot fully define color word meanings because languages vary in both the number and location of color word boundaries. Recent evidence suggests that the delay in color word acquisition primarily stems from an inductive process of refining these boundaries.
Argument Realization and Case in Japanese
Hideki Kishimoto
Japanese is a language where the grammatical status of arguments and adjuncts is marked exclusively by postnominal case markers, and various argument realization patterns can be assessed by their case marking. Since Japanese is categorized as a language of the nominative-accusative type typologically, the unmarked case-marking frame obtained for transitive predicates of the non-stative (or eventive) type is 'nominative-accusative'. Nevertheless, transitive predicates falling into the stative class often have other case-marking alignments, such as 'nominative-nominative' and 'dative-nominative'. Consequently, Japanese provides much more varying argument realization patterns than those expected from its typological character as a nominative-accusative language.
In point of fact, argument marking can actually be much more elastic and variable, the variations being motivated by several linguistic factors. Arguments often have the option of receiving either syntactic or semantic case, with no difference in the logical or cognitive meaning (as in plural agent and source agent alternations) or depending on the meanings their predicate carry (as in locative alternation). The type of case marking that is not normally available in main clauses can sometimes be obtained in embedded contexts (i.e., in exceptional case marking and small-clause constructions). In complex predicates, including causative and indirect passive predicates, arguments are case-marked differently from their base clauses by virtue of suffixation, and their case patterns follow the mono-clausal case array, despite the fact that they have multi-clausal structures.
Various case marking options are also made available for arguments by grammatical operations. Some processes instantiate a change on the grammatical relations and case marking of arguments with no affixation or embedding. Japanese has the grammatical process of subjectivization, creating extra (non-thematic) major subjects, many of which are identified as instances of 'possessor raising' (or argument ascension). There is another type of grammatical process, which reduces the number of arguments by virtue of incorporating a noun into the predicate, as found in the light verb constructions with suru 'do' and the complex adjective constructions formed on the negative adjective nai 'non-existent.'
Argument Realization in Syntax
Malka Rappaport Hovav
Words are sensitive to syntactic context. Argument realization is the study of the relation between argument-taking words, the syntactic contexts they appear in and the interpretive properties that constrain the relation between them.
Chinese Semantics
Haihua Pan and Yuli Feng
Cross-linguistic data can add new insights to the development of semantic theories or even induce the shift of the research paradigm. The major topics in semantic studies such as bare noun denotation, quantification, degree semantics, polarity items, donkey anaphora and binding principles, long-distance reflexives, negation, tense and aspects, eventuality are all discussed by semanticists working on the Chinese language. The issues which are of particular interest include and are not limited to: (i) the denotation of Chinese bare nouns; (ii) categorization and quantificational mapping strategies of Chinese quantifier expressions (i.e., whether the behaviors of Chinese quantifier expressions fit into the dichotomy of A-Quantification and D-quantification); (iii) multiple uses of quantifier expressions (e.g., dou) and their implication on the inter-relation of semantic concepts like distributivity, scalarity, exclusiveness, exhaustivity, maximality, etc.; (iv) the interaction among universal adverbials and that between universal adverbials and various types of noun phrases, which may pose a challenge to the Principle of Compositionality; (v) the semantics of degree expressions in Chinese; (vi) the non-interrogative uses of wh-phrases in Chinese and their influence on the theories of polarity items, free choice items, and epistemic indefinites; (vii) how the concepts of E-type pronouns and D-type pronouns are manifested in the Chinese language and whether such pronoun interpretations correspond to specific sentence types; (viii) what devices Chinese adopts to locate time (i.e., does tense interpretation correspond to certain syntactic projections or it is solely determined by semantic information and pragmatic reasoning); (ix) how the interpretation of Chinese aspect markers can be captured by event structures, possible world semantics, and quantification; (x) how the long-distance binding of Chinese ziji 'self' and the blocking effect by first and second person pronouns can be accounted for by the existing theories of beliefs, attitude reports, and logophoricity; (xi) the distribution of various negation markers and their correspondence to the semantic properties of predicates with which they are combined; and (xii) whether Chinese topic-comment structures are constrained by both semantic and pragmatic factors or syntactic factors only.
Clinical Linguistics
Louise Cummings
Clinical linguistics is the branch of linguistics that applies linguistic concepts and theories to the study of language disorders. As the name suggests, clinical linguistics is a dual-facing discipline. Although the conceptual roots of this field are in linguistics, its domain of application is the vast array of clinical disorders that may compromise the use and understanding of language. Both dimensions of clinical linguistics can be addressed through an examination of specific linguistic deficits in individuals with neurodevelopmental disorders, craniofacial anomalies, adult-onset neurological impairments, psychiatric disorders, and neurodegenerative disorders. Clinical linguists are interested in the full range of linguistic deficits in these conditions, including phonetic deficits of children with cleft lip and palate, morphosyntactic errors in children with specific language impairment, and pragmatic language impairments in adults with schizophrenia.
Like many applied disciplines in linguistics, clinical linguistics sits at the intersection of a number of areas. The relationship of clinical linguistics to the study of communication disorders and to speech-language pathology (speech and language therapy in the United Kingdom) are two particularly important points of intersection. Speech-language pathology is the area of clinical practice that assesses and treats children and adults with communication disorders. All language disorders restrict an individual's ability to communicate freely with others in a range of contexts and settings. So language disorders are first and foremost communication disorders. To understand language disorders, it is useful to think of them in terms of points of breakdown on a communication cycle that tracks the progress of a linguistic utterance from its conception in the mind of a speaker to its comprehension by a hearer. This cycle permits the introduction of a number of important distinctions in language pathology, such as the distinction between a receptive and an expressive language disorder, and between a developmental and an acquired language disorder. The cycle is also a useful model with which to conceptualize a range of communication disorders other than language disorders. These other disorders, which include hearing, voice, and fluency disorders, are also relevant to clinical linguistics.
Clinical linguistics draws on the conceptual resources of the full range of linguistic disciplines to describe and explain language disorders. These disciplines include phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and discourse. Each of these linguistic disciplines contributes concepts and theories that can shed light on the nature of language disorder. A wide range of tools and approaches are used by clinical linguists and speech-language pathologists to assess, diagnose, and treat language disorders. They include the use of standardized and norm-referenced tests, communication checklists and profiles (some administered by clinicians, others by parents, teachers, and caregivers), and qualitative methods such as conversation analysis and discourse analysis. Finally, clinical linguists can contribute to debates about the nosology of language disorders. In order to do so, however, they must have an understanding of the place of language disorders in internationally recognized classification systems such as the 2013 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) of the American Psychiatric Association.
Cognitively Oriented Theories of Meaning
Peter Gärdenfors
There are two main theoretical traditions in semantics. One is based on realism, where meanings are described as relations between language and the world, often in terms of truth conditions. The other is cognitivistic, where meanings are identified with mental structures. This article presents some of the main ideas and theories within the cognitivist approach.
A central tenet of cognitively oriented theories of meaning is that there are close connections between the meaning structures and other cognitive processes. In particular, parallels between semantics and visual processes have been studied. As a complement, the theory of embodied cognition focuses on the relation between actions and components of meaning.
One of the main methods of representing cognitive meaning structures is to use images schemas and idealized cognitive models. Such schemas focus on spatial relations between various semantic elements. Images schemas are often constructed using Gestalt psychological notions, including those of trajector and landmark, corresponding to figure and ground. In this tradition, metaphors and metonymies are considered to be central meaning transforming processes.
A related approach is force dynamics. Here, the semantic schemas are construed from forces and their relations rather than from spatial relations. Recent extensions involve cognitive representations of actions and events, which then form the basis for a semantics of verbs.
A third approach is the theory of conceptual spaces. In this theory, meanings are represented as regions of semantic domains such as space, time, color, weight, size, and shape. For example, strong evidence exists that color words in a large variety of languages correspond to such regions. This approach has been extended to a general account of the semantics of some of the main word classes, including adjectives, verbs, and prepositions. The theory of conceptual spaces shows similarities to the older frame semantics and feature analysis, but it puts more emphasis on geometric structures.
A general criticism against cognitive theories of semantics is that they only consider the meaning structures of individuals, but neglect the social aspects of semantics, that is, that meanings are shared within a community. Recent theoretical proposals counter this by suggesting that semantics should be seen as a meeting of minds, that is, communicative processes that lead to the alignment of meanings between individuals. On this approach, semantics is seen as a product of communication, constrained by the cognitive mechanisms of the individuals.
The Compositional Semantics of Modification
Sebastian Bücking
Modification is a combinatorial semantic operation between a modifier and a modifiee. Take, for example, vegetarian soup: the attributive adjective vegetarian modifies the nominal modifiee soup and thus constrains the range of potential referents of the complex expression to soups that are vegetarian. Similarly, in Ben is preparing a soup in the camper, the adverbial in the camper modifies the preparation by locating it. Notably, modifiers can have fairly drastic effects; in fake stove, the attribute fake induces that the complex expression singles out objects that seem to be stoves, but are not. Intuitively, modifiers contribute additional information that is not explicitly called for by the target the modifier relates to. Speaking in terms of logic, this roughly says that modification is an endotypical operation; that is, it does not change the arity, or logical type, of the modified target constituent. Speaking in terms of syntax, this predicts that modifiers are typically adjuncts and thus do not change the syntactic distribution of their respective target; therefore, modifiers can be easily iterated (see, for instance, spicy vegetarian soup or Ben prepared a soup in the camper yesterday). This initial characterization sets modification apart from other combinatorial operations such as argument satisfaction and quantification: combining a soup with prepare satisfies an argument slot of the verbal head and thus reduces its arity (see, for instance, *prepare a soup a quiche). Quantification as, for example, in the combination of the quantifier every with the noun soup, maps a nominal property onto a quantifying expression with a different distribution (see, for instance, *a every soup). Their comparatively loose connection to their hosts renders modifiers a flexible, though certainly not random, means within combinatorial meaning constitution. The foundational question is how to work their being endotypical into a full-fledged compositional analysis. On the one hand, modifiers can be considered endotypical functors by virtue of their lexical endowment; for instance, vegetarian would be born a higher-ordered function from predicates to predicates. On the other hand, modification can be considered a rule-based operation; for instance, vegetarian would denote a simple predicate from entities to truth-values that receives its modifying endotypical function only by virtue of a separate modification rule. In order to assess this and related controversies empirically, research on modification pays particular attention to interface questions such as the following: how do structural conditions and the modifying function conspire in establishing complex interpretations? What roles do ontological information and fine-grained conceptual knowledge play in the course of concept combination?
Compound and Complex Predicates in Japanese
Taro Kageyama
Compound and complex predicates—predicates that consist of two or more lexical items and function as the predicate of a single sentence—present an important class of linguistic objects that pertain to an enormously wide range of issues in the interactions of morphology, phonology, syntax, and semantics. Japanese makes extensive use of compounding to expand a single verb into a complex one. These compounding processes range over multiple modules of the grammatical system, thus straddling the borders between morphology, syntax, phonology, and semantics. In terms of degree of phonological integration, two types of compound predicates can be distinguished. In the first type, called tight compound predicates, two elements from the native lexical stratum are tightly fused and inflect as a whole for tense. In this group, Verb-Verb compound verbs such as arai-nagasu [wash-let.flow] 'to wash away' and hare-agaru [sky.be.clear-go.up] 'for the sky to clear up entirely' are preponderant in numbers and productivity over Noun-Verb compound verbs such as tema-doru [time-take] 'to take a lot of time (to finish).'
The second type, called loose compound predicates, takes the form of "Noun + Predicate (Verbal Noun [VN] or Adjectival Noun [AN])," as in post-syntactic compounds like [sinsya : koonyuu] no okyakusama ([new.car : purchase] GEN customers) 'customer(s) who purchase(d) a new car,' where the symbol ":" stands for a short phonological break. Remarkably, loose compounding allows combinations of a transitive VN with its agent subject (external argument), as in [Supirubaagu : seisaku] no eiga ([Spielberg : produce] GEN film) 'a film/films that Spielberg produces/produced'—a pattern that is illegitimate in tight compounds and has in fact been considered universally impossible in the world's languages in verbal compounding and noun incorporation.
In addition to a huge variety of tight and loose compound predicates, Japanese has an additional class of syntactic constructions that as a whole function as complex predicates. Typical examples are the light verb construction, where a clause headed by a VN is followed by the light verb suru 'do,' as in Tomodati wa sinsya o koonyuu (sae) sita [friend TOP new.car ACC purchase (even) did] 'My friend (even) bought a new car' and the human physical attribute construction, as in Sensei wa aoi me o site-iru [teacher TOP blue eye ACC do-ing] 'My teacher has blue eyes.' In these constructions, the nominal phrases immediately preceding the verb suru are semantically characterized as indefinite and non-referential and reject syntactic operations such as movement and deletion. The semantic indefiniteness and syntactic immobility of the NPs involved are also observed with a construction composed of a human subject and the verb aru 'be,' as Gakkai ni wa oozei no sankasya ga atta 'There was a large number of participants at the conference.' The constellation of such "word-like" properties shared by these compound and complex predicates poses challenging problems for current theories of morphology-syntax-semantics interactions with regard to such topics as lexical integrity, morphological compounding, syntactic incorporation, semantic incorporation, pseudo-incorporation, and indefinite/non-referential NPs.
Computational Semantics
Katrin Erk
Computational semantics performs automatic meaning analysis of natural language. Research in computational semantics designs meaning representations and develops mechanisms for automatically assigning those representations and reasoning over them. Computational semantics is not a single monolithic task but consists of many subtasks, including word sense disambiguation, multi-word expression analysis, semantic role labeling, the construction of sentence semantic structure, coreference resolution, and the automatic induction of semantic information from data.
The development of manually constructed resources has been vastly important in driving the field forward. Examples include WordNet, PropBank, FrameNet, VerbNet, and TimeBank. These resources specify the linguistic structures to be targeted in automatic analysis, and they provide high-quality human-generated data that can be used to train machine learning systems. Supervised machine learning based on manually constructed resources is a widely used technique.
A second core strand has been the induction of lexical knowledge from text data. For example, words can be represented through the contexts in which they appear (called distributional vectors or embeddings), such that semantically similar words have similar representations. Or semantic relations between words can be inferred from patterns of words that link them. Wide-coverage semantic analysis always needs more data, both lexical knowledge and world knowledge, and automatic induction at least alleviates the problem.
Compositionality is a third core theme: the systematic construction of structural meaning representations of larger expressions from the meaning representations of their parts. The representations typically use logics of varying expressivity, which makes them well suited to performing automatic inferences with theorem provers.
Manual specification and automatic acquisition of knowledge are closely intertwined. Manually created resources are automatically extended or merged. The automatic induction of semantic information is guided and constrained by manually specified information, which is much more reliable. And for restricted domains, the construction of logical representations is learned from data.
It is at the intersection of manual specification and machine learning that some of the current larger questions of computational semantics are located. For instance, should we build general-purpose semantic representations, or is lexical knowledge simply too domain-specific, and would we be better off learning task-specific representations every time? When performing inference, is it more beneficial to have the solid ground of a human-generated ontology, or is it better to reason directly with text snippets for more fine-grained and gradual inference? Do we obtain a better and deeper semantic analysis as we use better and deeper manually specified linguistic knowledge, or is the future in powerful learning paradigms that learn to carry out an entire task from natural language input and output alone, without pre-specified linguistic knowledge?
Connectionism in Linguistic Theory
Xiaowei Zhao
Connectionism is an important theoretical framework for the study of human cognition and behavior. Also known as Parallel Distributed Processing (PDP) or Artificial Neural Networks (ANN), connectionism advocates that learning, representation, and processing of information in mind are parallel, distributed, and interactive in nature. It argues for the emergence of human cognition as the outcome of large networks of interactive processing units operating simultaneously. Inspired by findings from neural science and artificial intelligence, connectionism is a powerful computational tool, and it has had profound impact on many areas of research, including linguistics. Since the beginning of connectionism, many connectionist models have been developed to account for a wide range of important linguistic phenomena observed in monolingual research, such as speech perception, speech production, semantic representation, and early lexical development in children. Recently, the application of connectionism to bilingual research has also gathered momentum. Connectionist models are often precise in the specification of modeling parameters and flexible in the manipulation of relevant variables in the model to address relevant theoretical questions, therefore they can provide significant advantages in testing mechanisms underlying language processes.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Lumen needed a new logo design and created a contest on 99designs.
A winner was selected from 46 designs submitted by 12 freelance designers.
Lumen Enterprise
New start-up focusing on technology and software development. The company is new, this is first brand, company is comprised of 3 young entrepreneurs with a passion for solving IT problems. Company is developing exciting new products with wide appeal for the target market.
Professional Information Technology managers and independent IT support providers. This is an existing market, audience can be dry without need for flourish
- The company's name is Lumen Enterprise
- The company's tag-line is "Come to the light"
- Winning design will combine company name and tag-line in a single design, without bleed over each element
- Attached image is a rough concept of the imagery our logo should imply: light as a beacon, simple to find, rising above, exceeding expectations
- Please note: our company's product names make general reference to our company image.
- Fonts may be stylized but should be clean, bold, simple to read
- Desired color palate will be cool hues, gray/black/white/blue
- Background should be clean, without texture
- Final design will transfer equally well to letterhead, business cards and embroidery for custom shirts, hats, etc.
Find out how a design contest works or learn more about our logo design services.


text: Flotilla 3-2 will conduct a one-day boating safety class from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday, April 12 at Flotilla 3-2's building. Course is $55 per person. To register call Krista Tinney at 848-4351. Participants will qualify for the New Jersey Boat Safety Certification by successfully passing the Certification Test administered at the end of the course.


text:
August 08, 2011 3:26 pm ET by Carlos Maza
Up until 1962, gay sex between two consenting adults was a felony in every state in the United States. So-called "crime against nature" or "sodomy" laws -- the term "sodomy" is a reference to the biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah -- typically punished violators with lengthy prison sentences, fines, and even hard labor. Although these laws typically targeted gays and lesbians, some statutes were written broadly enough to cover any form of non-vaginal intercourse, including oral and anal sex between heterosexuals.
While many states moved to repeal their sodomy laws in the late 1900s, others -- like Georgia -- moved in the opposite direction. In the 1986 Bowers v. Hardwick decision, the Supreme Court upheld Georgia's sodomy law, arguing that there was no "fundamental right upon homosexuals to engage in sodomy."
After Bowers, several more states began moving towards decriminalizing private acts of gay sex between consenting adults. It wasn't until 2003, however, that the Supreme Court finally reconsidered its position on sodomy laws.
In Lawrence v. Texas (2003), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that Texas' sodomy statute was unconstitutional, marking a major legal victory on the path towards LGBT equality. With the remainder of state sodomy laws technically invalidated by Lawrence, the LGBT community began to shift its focus. Alexis Agathocleous, staff attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights, recently wrote:
Coming seventeen years after Bowers v. Hardwick, the Supreme Court's seething antigay decision that upheld a Georgia sodomy law, Lawrence felt like a sea change. Laws actually criminalizing the community, many people assumed, were a relic of the past. And accordingly, the LGBT rights movement shifted gears: litigation, lobbying, advocacy, and resources in the years since Lawrence have overwhelmingly focused on civil institutions such as marriage and visibility in the mainstream media. In short, the mainstream LGBT community stopped talking about criminal justice.
Eight years later, however, eighteen states still refuse to rewrite their laws and take these anti-gay relics off their books, with countless LGBT Americans continuing to feel their devastating effects as a result. Several state legislatures and courts have exploited loopholes in the Lawrence decision, while others have simply refused to acknowledge the decision altogether.
Continued Enforcement
Nearly a decade after Lawrence, many states have continued to enforce laws prohibiting private, consensual sex between same-sex adults.
In Michigan, the practice of charging and convicting gay men under the state's "Abominable and Detestable Crime Against Nature" or "Gross Indecency" laws still exists, with violators facing the risk of having to register as sex offenders and prison sentences of up to 15 years. According to Rudy Serra, attorney and Chairman of the Executive Clemency Council for the State of Michigan, police officers continue to aggressively prosecute LGBT people without legal challenge:
The legislature still has not repealed the sodomy and gross indecency statutes, even after Lawrence v. Texas, and ultra-conservative ("strict constructionist") judges still continue to enforce the "legislative intent" to criminalize gay sex, regardless of what the U.S. Supreme Court says.
LGBT people in Michigan continue to be charged with crimes for public speech, in which they let another person know they are interested in private, unpaid sex with another adult. Bag-A-Fag (undercover decoy cop) operations, where police officers pretend to be gay men cruising for unpaid, consensual sex continue in Michigan. LGBT people are still at risk of spending 15 years in state prison for acts that are perfectly legal in most other states. [emphasis added]
Even in states where sodomy laws are understood by judges to be unconstitutional, the presence of sodomy laws can cause gays and lesbians to be dragged into humiliating, costly, and discriminatory legal disputes.
In 2008, Nelson Sloan and Ryan Flynn were arrested by the Raleigh Police Department under North Carolina's "crime against nature" statue for engaging in private, consensual, homosexual sex. The charge is considered a Class I felony in the state and carried a punishment of up to two years in prison. "I have never been so humiliated in all my life," Sloan said. "It's just awful."
The Raleigh police Captain at the time, T.D. Hardy, explained that, even though the state's law against sodomy had been struck down by Lawrence, his department's actions were still valid:
"The law is still on the books. …What the D.A.'s office will do with it, I don't know." [The News & Observer, 5/25/08, via Nexis]
The Assistant District Attorney eventually decided to drop the charges against the two men, citing Lawrence. Sloan responded by noting that he had nonetheless been punished for consensual sex:
"I am grateful that the DA's office has a better understanding of the Constitution than the Raleigh Police Department," Sloan said in a prepared statement Friday. "However, as long as this law remains on the books, it is a crime punishable by an arrest, a stay in jail, media attention and a fine of $450." [The News & Observer, 5/31/08, via Nexis]
After the charges were dropped, Joe Furmick, the veteran Wake County magistrate who booked the two men, explained why he chose to continue enforcing the state's unconstitutional "crime against nature" law:
"I couldn't care less what these guys do," he said. "I'm with the old Victorian lady who said, 'I don't care what people do as long as they don't do it in the street and scare the horses.' But you don't want me to decide which laws to enforce and which not to. My opinion shouldn't enter into it." [The News & Observer, 5/31/08, via Nexis]
Unfortunately, the practice of improperly arresting gays and lesbians on "crime against nature" or sodomy charges only to have them later dismissed is not uncommon in states that still maintain these laws. In Virginia, for example, Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli's office defends the practice, stating it was "how the system works."
In some states, keeping sodomy laws on the books can result in abuse even in cases where sexual intercourse hasn't occurred. In 2009, two gay men were kicked out of an El Paso restaurant for kissing in public. When the men called the police, officers informed them that "it was illegal for two men to kiss in public and said they could be cited for 'homosexual conduct,'" even though the state statute only prohibits "deviate sexual intercourse with another individual of the same sex." The local police department eventually claimed that the officers involved were "relatively inexperienced," but the incident demonstrates the ease with which seemingly dormant anti-sodomy laws can quickly turn into weapons to be used against LGBT citizens.
Lawrence's Loopholes
Several state legislatures and courts have attempted to exploit loopholes in the Supreme Court's decision in Lawrence v. Texas in order to continue enforcing laws criminalizing homosexuality. At the end of the majority opinion in Lawrence, Justice Kennedy wrote a paragraph outlining the parameters of the Supreme Court's decision:
The present case does not involve minors. It does not involve persons who might be injured or coerced or who are situated in relationships where consent might not easily be refused. It does not involve public conduct or prostitution. It does not involve whether the government must give formal recognition to any relationship that homosexual persons seek to enter. The case does involve two adults who, with full and mutual consent from each other engaged in sexual practices common to a homosexual lifestyle. [emphasis added]
This paragraph has been the source of a great amount of ambiguity for those attempting to determine the constitutionality of state sodomy laws. It is frequently cited by state and lower federal courts in order to attempt to limit the scope of Lawrence, especially when dealing with prostitution and sex with minors. As Joseph Wardenski, a trial attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, wrote:
Despite the Lawrence majority's broad themes of equality and dignity for gay men and lesbians, several commentators have argued that the decision's scope is much less expansive. Indeed, in several early decisions applying Lawrence, courts have interpreted the decision quite narrowly. The Court itself has thus far declined to weigh in on the correct reach of Lawrence. [Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, Vol. 95 No. 4, 6/22/05, via Nexis]
As a result, some states have attempted to justify their "crime against nature" laws by arguing that their existing laws against crimes like prostitution and sex with minors are not written broadly enough to include oral and anal sex. According to the North Carolina Gay and Lesbian Legal Association:
Law enforcement officers and prosecutors argue that they continue to enforce and press charges for crimes against nature because the laws against prostitution, sex with minors, and the like are not worded broadly enough to include oral and anal sex. While this rationale may seem reasonable at first, the problem is that enforcement of the crimes against nature law penalizes homosexual men more severely than heterosexuals for sexual activity in secluded areas. For example, a heterosexual couple "parking" at night in a deserted area or making love in the woods will most likely be ignored by law enforcement officers. At most, they will be charged with indecent exposure, a misdemeanor. Two men in an identical situation, however, will usually be charged with crimes against nature--a felony. [emphasis added]
The prostitution exception has caused some state sodomy laws to evolve into a kind of "gay tax" by allowing police officers and prosecutors to pursue harsher penalties against LGBT suspects than they would for heterosexuals. In Louisiana, for example, people accused of engaging in prostitution can be charged either under the state's prostitution statute or under the solicitation provision of Louisiana's "crime against nature" law, which exclusively targets oral and anal sex. According to the Center for Constitutional Rights:
Police and prosecutors have unfettered discretion in choosing which to charge. But a Crime Against Nature conviction subjects people to far harsher penalties than a prostitution conviction. Most significantly, individuals convicted of a Crime Against Nature are forced to register as sex offenders.
CCR further contends that the only reason our clients are registered sex offenders is that they were convicted under the provisions of a 200-year-old statute that condemns non-procreative sex acts and sex acts traditionally associated with homosexuality, solely on grounds of moral disapproval.
Being forced to register as a sex offender can have devastating, life-long consequences for those who are charged under "crime against nature" laws. Ian Doe, a Louisiana resident who was kicked out of his house at age 13 for being gay and turned to sex work in order to survive, explained how being labeled a sex offender has undermined his ability to find a job and secure medical care:
DOE: And because of this charge, I can't get a decent job now. I can't do anything because of the charge ... I've been everywhere trying to get employment. I've been -- the minute they find out that I'm a sex offender or I'm a registered sex offender, they tell me "no thank you" or they'll call me back or they'll get back with me, and they never do. … I don't believe that I deserve this kind of -- this kind of punishment. I did four years in prison for this. While I was in prison for this crime, for this crime that I didn't even do that -- all I said was "fifty dollars," and they put me away for four years. And while I was in there, I was raped by an officer, a federal officer of the law that worked at the prison who was dealt with. I also was infected with HIV. I go into prison, and I get infected, and while -- and now I'm out here dealing with my health. I'm dealing with trying to get a job. … I don't believe I deserve to be punished like this. I believe that this should be changed for many reasons. But for one, we don't deserve this. I mean, it's because all the lack of a judgment of one police officer to do something, so if he wants to put a prostitution charge or if he wants to put a "crimes against nature" charge on you. There's no crime committed.
As Doe's testimony illustrates, "crime against nature" laws are especially devastating for the most vulnerable members of the LGBT community: homeless LGBT youth, most of whom have either been kicked out of their homes or forced to run away from hostile family members due to their sexual orientation or gender identity. Once on the streets, many LGBT teens resort to sex work in order to survive, making them easy targets for officers looking to enforce sodomy laws.
LGBT youth are also targeted by the "minor exception" that some courts have argued was established in Lawrence. As Wardenski wrote:
Since Lawrence, however, some courts have misunderstood and wrongly applied one seven-word phrase in Justice Anthony Kennedy's majority opinion, "[t]he present case does not involve minors," which this comment will refer to as "the minor exception." This phrase has been incorrectly interpreted to limit the reach of Lawrence by excluding LGBT youth from the decision's scope, since its proper application is to preclude adult sex offenders from seeking a liberty interest to engage in sexual conduct with children--an issue unrelated to sexual orientation. [Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, Vol. 95 No. 4, 6/22/05, via Nexis, internal citations removed for clarity]
This exception can play a tremendous role in determining the fate of LGBT teens engaging in same-sex sexual activity. In State v. Limon (2004), a Kansas state appellate court applied the exception in order to prosecute an 18-year-old man who, shortly after turning 18, engaged in consensual oral sex with a 14-year-old boy (both of them lived in the same state mental health facility). Wardenski explained how the use of the "minor exception" dramatically increased the 18-year-old's punishment:
If the younger boy had been female, Kansas's so-called "Romeo and Juliet" law would have applied, subjecting the defendant to a sentence of just thirteen to fifteen months. The Romeo and Juliet statute provided that in statutory rape cases involving voluntary sexual relations between two "members of the opposite sex" where the defendant is nineteen or under and less than four years older than the other youth, the defendant would face significantly shorter prison terms and more lenient attendant penalties, such as reduced post-release supervision periods and sex offender registration requirements. Because the defendant, Matthew Limon, was of the same sex as the younger boy, however, the Romeo and Juliet law's shortened presumptive sentence did not apply, subjecting Limon instead to the severely long prison sentence and to sex offender registration requirements. [Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, Vol. 95 No. 4, 6/22/05, via Nexis, internal citations removed for clarity]
Sodomy laws establish a basis upon which state governments can punish LGBT people more severely than heterosexuals, even when the crimes they commit are the same.
Codifying Anti-LGBT Bias
Even in states where sodomy and "crime against nature" laws are never enforced, the mere presence of the laws sends a powerful signal about the value of LGBT members to state and local communities. These laws reinforce negative stereotypes about homosexuality, same-sex relationships, and the validity of the lives of LGBT people. As explained in the Harvard Law Review:
Lawrence… has not eradicated the criminal statutes themselves nor their potential to inflict harm on gay and lesbian Americans. Since these laws were always "honored in the breach," and wreaked their most insidious effects external to criminal prosecutions, no great victory can be claimed merely from having these unenforced statues held unenforceable. [Harvard Law Review, Vol. 118 No. 1070, 2004, via Lexis, emphasis added]
As a result, un-repealed sodomy laws continue to reinforce damaging stereotypes about gay and lesbian people, branding them as criminals and justifying anti-gay bigotry. As Christopher R. Leslie, Assistant Professor of Law at the Chicago-Kent College of Law, wrote:
Sodomy laws exist to brand gay men and lesbians as criminals. Social ordering necessitates the criminalization of sodomy, thereby creating a hierarchy that values heterosexuality over, and often to the exclusion of, homosexuality. This symbolic effect of sodomy laws is not dependent on their enforcement. Even though very few men and virtually no women ever suffer the full range of criminal sanctions permitted under state sodomy laws, these statutes impose "the stigma of criminality upon same-sex eroticism."
Based on the mischaracterization that sodomy laws apply only to homosexuals, sodomy laws are currently justified as necessary to uphold an anti-gay morality. Any deterrent effect from sodomy laws is secondary to these primary symbolic effects. For their supporters, the laws are "seen not as a prohibition to be enforced as such, but rather as a symbol of societal disapproval." Supporters argue that "these statutes may serve an important function even if unenforced." But the apparent function is not to condemn homosexual conduct, but homosexual persons. As one commentator put it, "unenforced sodomy laws are the chief systematic way that society as a whole tells gays they are scum." Indeed, in every state "where sodomy statutes remain on the books, animus against lesbians and gays has been a major, if not the sole, reason for the decision to retain them." [Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, Vol. 35 No. 103, Winter 2000, via Lexis, emphasis added, internal citations removed for clarity]
Although Leslie was writing in 2000, his conclusion remains true after Lawrence. Many state politicians continue to use anti-gay animus to justify maintaining their state sodomy laws. In states like Texas and Kansas, lawmakers consistently defeat efforts to repeal their sodomy laws. One Texan lawmaker said he was "hesitant to do any changing" to the state law books, asserting that it "better reflects the views of a lot of citizens."
In Montana, where the state Republican Party maintains the criminalization of homosexuality as part of its party platform, GOP lawmakers recently defeated an effort to eliminate the state's sodomy law. During the House Committee hearing on the effort, lawmakers repeatedly equated homosexuality with bestiality and pedophilia and warned that gay sex would drive up health care costs by spreading HIV.
This anti-gay animus isn't limited to state politicians either. GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum has repeatedly stated that he believes Lawrence was wrongly decided. National anti-gay groups like the the American Family Association (AFA) continue to push for the re-criminalization of sodomy. Peter Sprigg, Senior Fellow for Policy Studies with the Family Research Council (which filed an amicus brief in the Lawrence case), advocated a return to criminalization on national television.
The stigmatizing effect of these laws outlives the anti-gay legislators that put them into place. As Leslie point outs, sodomy laws can take on "lives on their own," guiding public hostility towards LGBT people even as the LGBT community continues to make advancements at the state and national level:
Sodomy laws are kept on the books, even though state governments do not intend to actively enforce them, because the laws send a message to society that homosexuality is unacceptable. Even without actual criminal prosecution, the laws carry meaning. Statutes have significance completely independent of their actual enforcement. Law reflects society and informs it. Current generations enshrine their morality by passing laws and perpetuate their prejudices by handing these laws down to their children. Soon, statutes take on lives of their own, and their very existence justifies their premises and consequent implications. [Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, Vol. 35 No. 103, emphasis added, Winter 2000, via Lexis, internal citations removed for clarity]
The anti-gay public hostility reinforced by state sodomy laws can contribute to widespread violence against members of the LGBT community. While state governments may not wish to enforce their archaic anti-gay statute, members of the public may wish to enforce the law privately, typically in the form of gay-bashing:
[M]ere decriminalization is an inadequate remedy for the harms inflicted by sodomy laws. As long as the statutes continue to bear the imprimatur of the state and are enshrined in state penal codes, the state continues to express a degrading attitude toward a minority group, demeaning its members… [U]ntil these laws are disavowed, they continue to validate "private enforcement" - gay bashing by private citizens. [Harvard Law Review, Vol. 118 No. 1070, 2004, via Lexis]
Even when they don't motivate acts of anti-gay violence, the messages produced by sodomy laws can have a profound impact on the way that LGBT youth develop their sense of self-worth and self-esteem. The criminalization of homosexuality reinforces the idea that LGBT people are outlaws who live "outside the boundary of social acceptance." According to Ryan Goodman, Bigelow Fellow and Lecturer in Law at University of Chicago Law School:
Many people first learn about the existence of sodomy laws during their adolescence. For lesbian and gay individuals, the law tells them, at an early age, that they are outside the boundary of social acceptance. A common misunderstanding of the law is that it outlaws homosexuals or bans being gay. The distinction between conduct and identity is conflated, and one clear message sent is that homosexuals are delinquents; the law signifies public abhorrence of lesbians and gays. Even for individuals who keep the distinction between act and identity fairly clear, the law unmistakably signals disapproval of homosexuality. This affects individuals' self-image both in their reflections of themselves and in their parents' assessments of them, another prism through which they perceive themselves. [California Law Review, Vol. 89 No. 643, May 2001, via Lexis, internal citations removed for clarity]
Studies have already demonstrated that rates of LGBT teen suicide are higher in conservative areas. Given the impact that these laws can have on creating virulently homophobic social and political climates in these states -- as well as the toxic debates that arise when efforts are made to repeal them -- it isn't difficult to imagine that they also play a role in contributing to the astronomically high rates of LGBT youth suicides in America.
Moving Forward
It is clear that the promise of the Supreme Court's decision in Lawrence v. Texas remains unfulfilled. Despite significant progress made by the LGBT community in recent years, many LGBT Americans continue to live in the shadow of their state's outdated sodomy laws. These laws are consistently misused and manipulated in order to single out and punish sexual minorities, often in ways that fly in the face of the Lawrence decision.
Even in states where these statutes are never enforced, anti-LGBT animosity is fanned by government recognition that LGBT people are to be viewed as criminals in the eyes of the law. This animosity helps create the conditions for anti-LGBT hate crimes as well as disproportionate rates of suicide among non-heterosexual youth.
As the American public moves towards greater respect for and tolerance towards LGBT people, the issue of still-standing state sodomy laws should not be forgotten. These statutes continue to represent a major obstacle on the path to full LGBT equality. Their repeal should be just as much of a priority for the LGBT community as is the struggle for marriage equality. As Serra wrote:
As long as we are vulnerable to felony charges for consensual, unpaid sex with other adults, marriage equality and other goals are superfluous. Many LGBT people deny the problem because they feel that defending sex offenders is unpopular and because they buy into the majority's hysteria over sex crimes, but our most basic, fundamental rights to liberty, privacy and intimate association are still at risk.
"Homosexual Conduct" Still Illegal In Fourteen States
Santorum To Beck: States Should Be Allowed To Criminalize Gay Sex
Montana House Committee Votes To Keep Unconstitutional Sodomy Law On The Books


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