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Turns out that a century-old ban on cohabitation isn’t the stodgiest thing on the books in Virginia. Although legislators last week started working on overturning an 1877 law prohibiting unmarried couples from living under the same roof, an examination of the state’s criminal code by Reason reveals some more forehead-slap-inducing regulations.
For instance, bans on oral sex and having sex in your car are still technically in effect, if rarely enforced. Same goes for adultery, toward which Virginia takes as archaic an approach as the Ten Commandments. In fact, that law was applied as recently as 2004, when the former town attorney in Luray was sentenced to 20 hours of community service after being found guilty of sleeping with someone not his wife.
But there are even more egregiously blue laws still on the books, it turns out. For fuck’s Hell’s heck’s sake, cursing in public is against the law. Section 18.2-388 of the Virginia Code states that “profane swearing and intoxication in public” is punishable as a Class 4 misdemeanor:
If any person profanely curses or swears or is intoxicated in public, whether such intoxication results from alcohol, narcotic drug or other intoxicant or drug of whatever nature, he shall be deemed guilty of a Class 4 misdemeanor. In any area in which there is located a court-approved detoxification center a law-enforcement officer may authorize the transportation, by police or otherwise, of public inebriates to such detoxification center in lieu of arrest; however, no person shall be involuntarily detained in such center.
OK, one individual’s public drunkenness can very well be hazardous to the safety of others, but to lump in the people who yell out in anguish when they stub their toes, step in dog shitpoop, drop their groceries, or get crossed by a fellow pedestrian is just extreme. And unlike the cohabitation law, which dates back to the laced-up end of the 19th century, the no-cursing law went into effect in 1950, just as America’s social mores were starting to loosen up.
Of course, any quick trip into Virginia is cause enough to unleash a torrent of profanity. And if the law were actually enforced, people found guilty of Class 4 misdemeanors would have to pay up $250 per naughty word. Actually, it could be a scam to rip off D.C. residents, who in a survey last year conducted by the job-search website Career Builder were reported to lead the nation in workplace profanity.
But, to our relief, we could find no examples of anyone actually being hauled in by the cops after saying a naughty word in public. Consider us fucking relieved no one pays attention to this piece-of-shit law.