How should you title a bill on a controversial subject?

One strategy: Don't mention it.

Consider the following bill titles, all of which neatly pull the trick of sounding either positive or innocuous while avoiding mentioning their raison d'être:

The Healthy Youth Act: Puts most students in comprehensive sex ed classes, with an option for abstinence-only at parents' discretion.

Personal Protection in Restaurants: Allows people with concealed weapons permits to bring handguns into restaurants and bars.

Conform State Law to Lawrence v. Texas: Gets rid of state statutes, since found unconstitutional, that prohibit gay sex.

Repeal Ban G.S. 95-99: Allows state government employees to join a union and collectively negotiate their contracts.

Defense of Marriage: Puts a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage in North Carolina up for a referendum.

Note the words "guns," "homosexuality," "sex education" or "unions" don't appear in any of the above, or any other bills filed this session, for that matter.

Rep. Rick Glazier wants to take an unconstitutional law banning sodomy off the books.

As previously noted, North Carolina's anti-sodomy law dates back to the reign of Henry VIII, becoming a part of state statutes in 1715 when English common law was declared to be part of our law.

The U.S. Supreme Court declared anti-sodomy laws unconstitutional in 2003, but it remains on the books despite several attempts to remove it.

Glazier filed a bill today that would rewrite the statute — which currently says "the crime against nature, with mankind or beast" is a Class I felony — is not unlawful if it is "between mutually consenting adults in a private home, private residence, or other private abode."

That change would conform state law to the Supreme Court's decision in Lawrence v. Texas, though it would still allow the anti-sodomy statute to be used to prosecute public sex acts and bestiality.

Raleigh police charged two adults with sodomy this weekend.

After a call Saturday about an assault, police charged two West Raleigh men with a "crime against nature" — a Class I felony — for having sex early that morning, Matthew Eisley reports. Each faces up to two years in prison if convicted.

The charge was filed under General Statute 14-177, a century old law most recently revised in 1994. But the U.S. Supreme Court appears to have declared such charges unconstitutional in its landmark Lawrence v. Texas case in 2003.

"The petitioners are entitled to respect for their private lives," the high court ruled in that case. "The State cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime."

An attorney for the Raleigh police told officers after the ruling that they could charge people for committing those acts in public, but not in private.

State Sen. Ellie Kinnaird, a Carrboro Democrat, said she has tried for years to get the statute rescinded, but the legislature has not agreed. (Bills in 1997, 1999, 2001, 2003 and 2005 were sent to committee. A similar bill in 1993 was reported unfavorably.)

"I press it every year," she said. "It would be politically difficult, but that doesn't matter — it's unconstitutional."