No, the Michigan Senate did NOT just pass a bill outlawing oral and anal sex.

[DesMoinesDem]

From Michigan Senator David Knezek's Facebook:

I've seen a number of posts suggesting the Michigan Senate passed a new law banning oral and anal sex in our state. If you're willing to bear with me, I'd like to take a moment to set the record straight. I hope you might consider reading this post at length to gain the facts.

Senate Bills 219 and 220, the bills in question, were sponsored by Senator Rick Jones (R) and Senator Steve Bieda (D). SB 219 and 220 would establish Logan's Law here in Michigan, which prevents convicted animal abusers from adopting pets. It is a popular issue that has gained significant bipartisan support.

So why are some news articles reporting that the Senate just voted to ban oral and anal sex when we really voted to prevent animal abusers from adopting animals? A few background notes and a brief explanation of the legislative process should help.

Michigan has had a ban - an unconstitutional ban, I might add - on oral and anal sex since 2003. This is not a new law. It can be found in Section 158, Subsection 1 of Michigan Compiled Law 750.158.

When amendments to any law are made, when additional subsections to the law are added, so on and so forth, a bill is introduced that includes all current language in that particular section as a whole, plus the new and amended language you wish to add.

Section 158, the section of law that needed to be amended in order to prevent convicted animal abusers from adopting animals, is also the same section of law that included the 2003 ban on oral and anal sex. Same section of the law, two different subsections.

The way the information is currently being presented to the public, it would suggest that a bill stating, "Ban all oral and anal sex!", was placed before the Senate and then all 38 of us stood up and said, "Hey that sounds like a good idea! Okay!".

That, as you now know, is inaccurate.

A bill stating, "Prevent animal abusers from adopting animals", was placed before the Senate and all of us voted "yes". It was indeed a unanimous vote - a vote to prevent animal abusers from adopting animals - on a bill, as you now know, whose section of law also included the subsection which includes the unconstitutional ban on oral and anal sex.

To be fair, I would welcome criticism stating that we, the Senate, missed an opportunity to take this unconstitutional ban off the books or at least message on the issue and the need for its removal. It would be fair to say the Senate, by way of not removing the ban, reaffirmed its existence in state law and that's not good either. It would be inaccurate to suggest that we passed a bill to ban those activities that were already, and unconstitutionally, banned in Michigan back in 2003.

It would have been easy to insert language that prevents animal abusers from adopting animals while simultaneously striking the language that banned oral and anal sex. However - to be forthright with you and this is where the partisanship comes in - that would have killed Logan's Law, leaving us with an unconstitutional ban on oral and anal sex still on the books plus zero laws preventing animal abusers from adopting animals. We now have one of the two, neither of which being any less important than the other, and, with the attention this issue now has, we can try to remove the unconstitutional ban in the House or through separate legislation that I would support and co-sponsor.

In conclusion, this issue has, again, highlighted for me two of the greatest frustrations of this job - the ability of an inaccurate headline to mislead the public and the power a one-sentence headline that's easily shareable has versus a long-winded explanation like this that likely few will read. Sound bytes always beat the long-winded explanations but they are rarely, if at all, accurate.

Sometimes it's a stretching of the truth, sometimes it's a downright lie, but it almost always leads to a distrust of elected officials and frustrations with the political process. The public rightly responded with outrage thinking that we were wasting time and taxpayer dollars on such a silly bill. This is what you were led to believe. I don't blame you.

My commitment has been and will always be as such - I am an ally and a strong supporter of the LGBTQ community; I don't care what two people do in the privacy of their own homes; and when presented with the opportunity to educate and inform, I will always welcome your criticism with the opportunity to share an "inside baseball" perspective of the legislative process and how it works (or doesn't). That is my commitment to you and I hope you might meet me halfway in spreading the truth. We will all be better for it.

https://www.facebook.com/davidmknezek/posts/1668209583438258