I know almost nothing about Minnesota law, but I do know federal employment discrimination law, and a sexual proposition to someone with whom you have no employment relation (coworker, supervisor, employee, etc.) also isn't sexual harassment --itself not a crime. (Actually even at work you get, literally, a free pass; sexual harassment must be objectively and subjectively unwelcome unwelcome conduct that is severe or pervasive -- one pass doesn't count.)
And while, again, I don't know Minnesota law, I can't imagine what kind of tort it might be to make someone a sexual proposition, as long as one didn't touch or threaten the other person.
As the article below correctly suggests, recent Supreme Court cases would make it unconstitutional to single out homosexual propositions from any other kind and make them the basis for kind of civil or criminal liability.
(Go to law school and you too can learn to talk like this.)
--- Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> [as amusing as it is to see Craig de-pantsed, it's
> ludicrous that
> what he did is considered a crime, esp since it
> appears not to be]
>
> <http://thegarance.com/archives/670>
>
> Is Solicitation a Crime in Minnesota?
> Posted by Garance ()
>
> A lot of people are asking, “Is solicitation a
> crime?” That is: Was
> there anything criminal about Sen. Larry Craig’s
> gestures if they
> suggested a desire for consensual lewd behavior of
> some kind with the
> man in the adjacent restroom stall?
>
> The answer, as far as I can discern, is a clear no.
> (See University
> of Minnesota Law Professor and Independent Gay Forum
> contributor Dale
> Carpenter for more. And also, surprisingly,
> Captain’s Quarters.) It
> is not a misdemeanor in Minnesota to ask a person to
> have sex with
> you, whether by gesture or voice, and even if the
> person finds the
> request unwanted. Think about it: If it were, the
> women of that state
> would have a field day with creeps at bars and
> cat-callers on the
> street.
>
> Solicitation of children to engage in sexual conduct
> is a crime (as
> it should be), as is solicitation of prostitution.
> But, again, I can
> find nothing in Minnesota state law that makes
> asking someone to hook
> up with you a crime, rather than a civil tort (as in
> sexual
> harassment law) regardless of the circumstances.
>
> Why, then, do police continue to act as though it
> is? Because of the
> long and only-recently ended practice of firm legal
> discrimination
> against gay people. Until 2001, consensual sodomy
> was a crime in
> Minnesota, meaning that it was only six years ago
> that gay people in
> that state stopped being treated by the letter of
> the law as, quite
> literally, outlaws and criminals.
>
> Meanwhile, in Idaho, the state Sen. Larry Craig has
> represented in
> Congress since 1981, consensual sodomy was a felony
> punishable as a
> “crime against nature” by five years to life in
> prison until 2003,
> when the Supreme Court ruled in Lawrence v. Texas
> that a similar
> statute in Texas was unconstitutional, thus striking
> down the state’s
> law. From 1996 until then, the state sex offender
> registry was
> written so as to add those convincted of even
> consensual sodomy to
> the sex offender rolls for life.
>
> Until the sodomy laws were struck down by the
> Supreme Court,
> solicitation of sodomy was a crime in many of the
> states that had
> sodomy laws, and it was this “solicitation for
> sodomy” provision that
> allowed men who sought sex from other men to be
> targeted for arrest
> by police in, for example, public restrooms, under
> circumstances
> where there was no money or coercion involved. (More
> on which in a
> minute.)
>
>
>
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