A bill calling for repeal of a Maryland law that classifies oral sex between consenting adults as a crime and that was used to arrest four gay men in an adult video store in May 2021 was approved earlier this year by the state’s House of Delegates but died in a committee of the state Senate.

In a development that disappointed LGBTQ activists and the bill’s sponsors, the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee failed to act on the bill before the Maryland General Assembly adjourned for the year on April 11.

Sen. William ‘Will’ Smith (D-Montgomery County), who chairs the Democratic controlled committee, said the committee was faced with a large number of bills in a legislative session that lasts only 90 days, and it wasn’t able to get to Senate Bill 22, which called for repealing the state’s Unnatural or Perverted Sexual Practices Act.

“It’s a top priority for me,” Smith told the Washington Blade. “We will get to it next year. It’s just that we ran out of time,” he said. “It wasn’t a lack of willingness. So, I’m working with Sen. Lam to make sure it’s at the top of the agenda next year.”

Smith was referring to State Sen. Clarence Lam (D-Baltimore & Howard County), who introduced the bill in the Senate in January.

Smith said among the other bills that his committee worked on and approved, and that passed both houses of the General Assembly, was the Inclusive Schools Act, which prohibits state funded schools, including private religious schools receiving state funding, from discriminating against students based on their sexual orientation, gender identity, race, nationality, or disability.

Lam told the Blade he is disappointed his bill seeking to repeal the state’s remaining sodomy law did not make it out of the Senate committee. He said he’s hopeful the bill will pass in the General Assembly’s 2023 legislative session.

“My understanding is that it’s not because of policy concerns from the committee leadership,” Lam said in referring to the reason the Senate committee didn’t act on the bill. “I think the fact was they ran out of time to address this issue, which is frustrating because I think this is an important issue,” he said. “And I understand, and I recognize that they have a lot of important issues they’re working with, much of which was very substantive and weighty.”

The Judicial Proceedings Committee’s inability to act on the bill came after the House of Delegates Judiciary Committee approved the measure and sent it to the full House of Delegates, which passed it by a vote of 121 to 10, with one member not voting and nine members absent, according to the bill tracking site LegiScan.

The committee’s failure to act on the bill this year also came two years after it approved a separate bill in 2020 calling for repealing the section of Maryland’s two-part sodomy law that outlawed anal sex. As first introduced, the 2020 bill called for repealing both provisions of the archaic law – the so-called “Sodomy” provision banning anal sex and the Unnatural or Perverted Sexual Practice provision banning oral sex.

But at the request of two Republican members of the committee, Sens. Michael Hough (R-Frederick and Carroll County) and Bob Cassilly (R-Harford County), the committee’s Democratic members and the other two GOP members agreed to drop from the bill the section calling for repeal of the Unnatural or Perverted Sexual Practice provision. The committee consists of seven Democrats and four Republicans.

The full General Assembly then passed the amended bill that repealed only the “sodomy” section of the law during the General Assembly’s 2020 session. The House of Delegates, which initially passed the full two-part bill, agreed to the Senate’s changes. House of Delegates member David Moon (D-Montgomery County), who introduced the 2020 bill in the House, said he and his House colleagues reluctantly agreed to the Senate version because the only alternative was to have no bill at all.

Moon introduced this year’s version of the repeal bill in the House and helped guide it to passage by the full House before the bill died in the Senate committee.

The section of the law that this year’s bill would have repealed and that now remains on the books, states, “A person may not take the sexual organ of another or of an animal in the person’s mouth; place the person’s sexual organ in the mouth of another or of an animal; or commit another unnatural or perverted sexual practice with another or with an animal.”

Supporters of the repeal bill point out that other existing Maryland laws outlaw abusive treatment of animals as well as non-consensual sexual acts or sexual acts between adults and minors. The supporters, including the Office of the Maryland Attorney General, said repealing the Unnatural or Perverted Sexual Practice statute would not prevent the full prosecution of anyone engaging in abuse of animals, rape, or sex with minors.

Many LGBTQ activists were unaware that the repeal bill that passed in 2020 did not include the part of the statute outlawing oral sex. Many did not realize that change had been made to the 2020 repeal bill until the Harford County, Md., Sheriff’s Department conducted a May 20, 2021, raid on the adult Bush River Books & Video store in the town of Abingdon, which is located 25 miles north of Baltimore.

The Sheriff’s Department said one of its deputies, who entered the store undercover in plainclothes, observed what officials said was illegal activity by nine men, who were arrested during the raid. Most were charged with indecent exposure. Four were arrested on the charge of Unnatural or Perverted Sexual Practice.

One of the arrested men told the Blade he and most of the others arrested were caught engaging in sex inside locked video booths that the Sheriff’s deputies opened with keys they obtained from a store employee.

Court records show that the Unnatural or Perverted Sexual Practice charges appear to have been dropped against the four men who were faced with that charge. In response to a request from the Blade, Harford County Deputy State’s Attorney Gavin Patashnick, one of the prosecutors in the case, confirmed that “all perverted practice charges were dropped with no preconditions.”

But the attorneys — and an official with the national LGBTQ litigation group Lambda Legal — said the fact that law enforcement officials would seek to invoke the Unnatural or Perverted Sexual Practice statute was an unfair practice that subjected their clients to an unnecessary burden of an arrest.

Jeremy LaMaster, executive director of the Maryland LGBTQ advocacy group FreeState Justice, said the group engaged in lobbying efforts in support of this year’s repeal bill. He said in the final week of the General Assembly’s legislative session the group urged Smith and the Judicial Proceedings Committee’s vice chair, Sen. Jeff Waldstreicher (D-Montgomery County), to bring the bill up for a committee vote.

“We were advised a few times during the week by both Sens. Waldstreicher and Smith that it would be added to the committee voting list,” LaMaster said in a statement. “We monitored it daily and never saw it appear on a voting list.”

Gay Democratic activist Jeffrey Slavin, who serves as mayor of the Maryland town of Somerset near D.C., said he, too, was disappointed that the repeal bill failed to pass this year. 

“There’s really no excuse,” he said. “It’s a no brainer. And there are people who are being harassed needlessly because that law is still on the books. It’s from the last century. It’s ridiculous,” Slavin said, adding, “It’s a shame that this issue isn’t being raised on the campaign trail.”

Montgomery County LGBTQ activist Michael Tardif said he was skeptical about “excuses” of a heavy workload of the Judicial Proceedings Committee and a reported lack of sufficient time to get to the repeal bill.

“This is non-controversial legislation to repeal a heinous, outdated law that is still being used to ensnare LGBTQ people for private, consensual conduct,” he said. “The House Judiciary Committee has the same workload as the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee and managed to pass the House bill by Feb. 17,” Tardif told the Blade. “’Not enough time’ does not adequately explain why Senate Bill 22 did not even receive a vote in Judicial Proceedings,” he said, referring to the bill number for the repeal measure in question.

Smith told the Blade that because the state Senate has fewer members than the House of Delegates, the Senate committees have fewer members than the House to work on important legislation.

“The Maryland State Senate has four committees,” he said. “The House of Delegates has six. That means each committee in the Senate has 25 percent more jurisdiction over subject matters than each House committee.” He said each House committee has 21 members while each Senate committee has 11 members.

 “And although we work feverishly there is no way we can keep up with the pace of the House because that’s by design” of the legislature, he said. “And every subject we go with is extremely serious, and so is this one,” said Smith, referring to the sodomy repeal bill that didn’t make it through his committee this year.

“And as I’ve told you and others, we will get to this bill next year, come hell or high water,” he said.