JAG CENTRAL

In what will be the hot-button topic of the year in military courts, the U.S. Air Force Court of Criminal Appeals weighed in by affirming a sodomy conviction in U.S. v. Gamez. No. ACM 35576. 1LT Gamez was convicted as a result of several sexual encounters with a female enlisted airman, to include oral copulation (the basis of the sodomy charge). 1LT Gamez was married at the time. The Court noted that since 1LT Gamez was guilty of both adultery and of violating the military's policy on fraternization between enlisted and officers, the oral sex, even though consensual and between a man and a woman, lied squarely outside the type of liberty interests the Supreme Court envisioned in Lawrence v. Texas.