Sodomy: Any of various forms of sexual intercourse held to be unnatural or abnormal, especially anal intercourse or bestiality.

I’m sure most have heard by now the infamous statement made by South Dakota legislator Bill Napoli. He provided it as part of a discussion of that state’s very restrictive new abortion law:

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Others said the bill simply went too far. Democratic Representative Clayton Halverson considers himself in the middle on this issue.

STATE REP. CLAYTON HALVERSON (D): In my opinion, the middle is: Allow the amendments we offered, which would include, in the case of rape, the option of abortion should be available; in the case of incest, the same thing goes; and when the mother’s health or the health of the fetus, those are exceptions that I don’t think should be ignored. And I believe that’s the middle. That’s where I think most of the people in our state fall.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: That’s not how Senator Napoli reads public opinion in his state.

BILL NAPOLI: My calls have been running 3-1 in favor of this bill.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Napoli says most abortions are performed for what he calls “convenience.” He insists that exceptions can be made for rape or incest under the provision that protects the mother’s life. I asked him for a scenario in which an exception may be invoked.

BILL NAPOLI: A real-life description to me would be a rape victim, brutally raped, savaged. The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She planned on saving her virginity until she was married. She was brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it, and is impregnated. I mean, that girl could be so messed up, physically and psychologically, that carrying that child could very well threaten her life.

I submit that the state has no identifiable interest in whether a woman is a virgin or not. Or whether she’s ‘religious’. Apparently Mr. Napoli wouldn’t even consider an exemption for married women who are raped. Nor raped virgins who were anally raped without enough brutality.

Mr. Napoli should have a bounty on his head. He’s obviously a sick, sick, sick, sick man. Elsewhere in the same interview, he says:

BILL NAPOLI: When I was growing up here in the wild west, if a young man got a girl pregnant out of wedlock, they got married, and the whole darned neighborhood was involved in that wedding. I mean, you just didn’t allow that sort of thing to happen, you know? I mean, they wanted that child to be brought up in a home with two parents, you know, that whole story. And so I happen to believe that can happen again.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: You really do?

BILL NAPOLI: Yes, I do. I don’t think we’re so far beyond that, that we can’t go back to that.

So his goal is to make certain that pregnant women get married, including shotgun weddings. And he’s holding hostage the rights of already-married women, already-loving parents to enforce his nostalgic version of what his wild west once was in his own fantasy past, before he was old enough and savvy enough to know women were getting abortions back then.

But I have a solution.

It’d be reasonable to expect the women of South Dakota, and its progressives, would unite to turn Mr. Napoli out of office for this awful piece of legislation and his comments - which were even worse.

In US history, it hasn’t been uncommon to see different states evolve towards greater civilization at different rates. The South, dragging its feet and knuckles, evolved so slowly in its first 90 years that it chose secession with the disastrous, bloody consequences that followed. Secession just won’t work.

But where’s the precedent, the body of law, that prevents expulsion? It doesn’t exist. But neither, to my knowledge, is it prohibited.

Yes, I’m suggesting a majority of state legislatures could choose to vote South Dakota right out of the US of A. If they wish to lag behind civilized society, if they wish to give rapists the right to see their children borne by their victims, I think the rest of society should have the right to expel it from our republic entirely.

Before you instinctively reject that notion, consider a few questions:

1) What does South Dakota have that’s vital to our nation?

2) Isn’t our support of theocratic extremism that makes half the population second class citizens with less rights than the men the same folly as support for the Taliban?

3) We spend more from the federal treasury providing programs for South Dakota than we collect from them in taxes. Is it a wise investment losing money on a region that’s moving towards less liberty and the dangers of theocratic government?

I think it’s a viable, pragmatic choice to sustain liberty, to advance human capabilities and to better civilize our society. I think it’s important that when a state’s citizens head in the opposite direction that they understand there’s serious consequences for foolish, inhumane and anti-liberty decisions that are essentially unAmerican.

Every South Dakotan who disagrees with their government’s decision would be allowed a free pass to move to any of the other 49 states, so no-one would be denied ongoing citizenship in our country. But those who wish to stand by their democratic right to entrap women in unwanted pregnancies caused by criminal rapists can maintain their choice and fend for themselves, without us supporting their theocratic tyranny.

Let them have their own country. But let’s not bless their hatefulness via our tax dollars. America just can’t consent to being the Land of the Half-Free.