Demagogue

You know the old line about how to define the Yiddish word chutzpah: it's when a kid kills his parents and then asks the court to take mercy on him because he's an orphan.

Here's a new variation on an old theme.

Woman gets herpes. Woman sues former (male) lover, claiming he knew when they had sex that he had herpes. Man defends by saying you can't sue for injuries incurred when committing a crime (e.g., bank robber can't sue cohorts when he gets broken nose during robbery). Man points out that fornication--sex between people who aren't married--has been a crime in Virginia for 200 years.

Thanks to the Virginia Supreme Court, the man loses, or at least is denied this defense: relying on the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Lawrence (the gay sodomy case), the court holds the fornication law unconstitutional as applied to consenting adults.

Here's the real moment of chutzpah. In defending the constitutionality of the fornication law, the man argued that it served an important public purpose of preventing the transmission of venereal diseases.