Louisiana senate says no to public sex

The Louisiana senate went on record Monday opposing sex in public, following the lead of the house of representatives, which passed a bill last month prohibiting public sex. An explicit videotape shot during the Southern Decadence festival in New Orleans's French Quarter, an annual gay celebration, inspired the legislation. The video has been much circulated by a New Orleans minister who wants his city to clamp down on the festival. While public sex is already illegal in the state, Monday's bill outlaws sex for the "purpose of drawing a crowd" and includes harsher penalties than those in the existing law, of up to a year in jail and a fine of $1,000. There was no discussion of the bill in the senate Monday, and it passed unanimously.