Cheers UK - Jeers US

[Huey]

I wonder when the US government will wake up and make such wide range and much needed changes. The UK makes us look pretty obsolete . The follow article is from PA news.

 

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Home Secretary David Blunkett has announced "an historic change" of the gay sex laws.

 

It is the most radical overhaul of sex crime legislation for more than 100 years.

 

Offences like buggery, gross indecency and soliciting by men will be binned while protections against rapists, paedophiles and other perverts will be tightened.

 

Defendants accused of rape will have to be able to show they took "reasonable action" to ensure the other person consented to sex.

 

A new offence of "grooming" children for sex abuse - previously thought to be planned only for adults who lure youngsters on the Internet - will be applied to every aspect of life and have a maximum five year penalty.

 

Laws on child abuse will be updated, the sex offenders register will be tightened and there will be entirely new offences to combat sexual exploitation of children and adults.

 

Mr Blunkett said: "The law on sex offences is widely recognised as archaic, incoherent and discriminatory.

 

"Much of it belongs in an age before the light bulb or motor car yet we now live in a world of global communications, with children two clicks away from Internet porn sites generated by a multi-million pound sex industry.

 

"We must have laws that are fit for the 21st century, that reflect today's society and attitudes and provide effective protection against today's crimes."

 

The Home Office paper said the so-called gay "cottaging" offences, which date from 1956, will be repealed because they "criminalise consensual sexual activity in private between men, which would not be illegal between heterosexuals or between women".

[trilingual]

The U.S. government never will make such changes. That's because in the U.S. criminal law is primarily a state, not a federal, matter. (There is federal criminal law in the U.S., but it only covers crimes against the United States itself, like tax fraud, or crimes having an interstate aspect or impact, like mail fraud or transporting minors across a state line for immoral purposes.) Sodomy laws are a state matter; in many states the laws have been repealed by the legislature or invalidated by the state courts as violating the state (not federal) constitution. There is a continuing campaign to seek the repeal or invalidation of the remaining sodomy laws, but the success of such efforts depends on the composition of a state's legislature or its state Supreme Court. At the federal level, a truly reprehensible and intellectually corrupt U.S. Supreme Court decision ignored the right to privacy it espouses and ruled that states can continue to criminalize the sexual behavior of consenting adults in the privacy of their own homes. The way things are going, there isn't much hope of Supreme Court's reversing that decision. So it will continue to be up to the states to change their law. There also seems to be no political will in the U.S. to change the legal status of gays in the military or to repeal the loathesome federal "Defense of Marriage Act."

 

Some of the changes proposed in the UK are encouraging, but others involving child porn are alarming. I don't support sexual abuse of anyone at any age, but in many cases behavior that only involves fantasies or imaginary sexual behavior (like writing stories or a personal journal, or making drawings or using a computer to make a composite photo simulating sexual activity between adults and children) is being prosecuted. When someone's THOUGHTS are made illegal, as opposed to their actions, that's kind of scary.

[Rick Munroe]

>So it will continue to be up to the states to change their law.

 

For more information, check out this site: http://www.sodomylaws.org/

 

>When someone's THOUGHTS are made illegal,

>as opposed to their actions, that's kind of scary.

 

I never fantasize about twinks, let alone children, but if thoughts were illegal, I'm sure I could get arrested in some states for some of the really dirty stuff I think about on a daily basis. For example, this morning... }(