Government proposes the criminalisation of sexuality by proxy

I am, it has to be said, quite an extreme libertarian when it comes to sexual practices. As far as I am concerned what consenting adults get up to in the bedroom is a matter for them, and no one has any right whatsoever to dictate upon it. I also have the same attitude toward pornography. If pictures (or videos) show acts by consenting adults then so be it. Frankly I don't care what they're doing as long as they're consenting, and that is all that should matter.

I bring this up because a campaign has been launched, quite rightly, against the new Criminal Justice Bill that was published last week called Backlash. The new bill contains a section on pornography which makes all manner of things illegal on the basis of insanely wide ranging defintions about what is "extreme". According to the bill it will be illegal; to possess images whcih have the sole purpose of sexual gratification if they are "extreme" where extreme is defined as,

(a) an act which threatens or appears to threaten a persons life
(b) an act which results in or appears to result (or be likely to result) in serious injury to a persons anus, breasts or genitals,
(c) an act which involves or appears to involve sexual interference with a human corpse,
(d) a person performing or appearing to perform an act of intercourse or oral sex with an animal, where (in each case) any such act, person or animal depicted in the image is or appears to be real.

So let's start with category (a) shall we? OK, so the idea of prosecuting someone in possession of snuff images doesn't sound to bad. However, we're not talking about snuff here necessarily, the use of the word "appears" woould effectively ensare masses of BDSM images which are taken by consenting adults, for consenting adults - presumably the Government has not heard of "safety words".

Section (b) gets even more woolly though. Not only would it cover BDSM again, but it would also cover anal sex pornography almost across the board, thereby discriminating across the sexes. Not only does the law have the phrase "appears to" again, but it also has "or be likely to result". It sounds like they're implmenting Health and Safety risk assessments for sex doesn't it?

As we move on to section (c), clearly necrophilia is just plain wrong. On the scale of one to ten where ten is the most wrong thing you can do, having sex with a corpse scores at least 32. This said though, is it wrong for someone to have images where consenting adults play out bizarre roleplaying scenarios?

Finally we have section (d) which is all about bestiality. I don't know what more to say other than that it appears to suggest that having a picture of someone sexually gratifying a horse with their hand is OK. It would seem that it's only wrong if the person uses their mouth or actually gets jiggy with the beast - someone clearly didn't think it through when they drafted it. It's interesting to note that the one area where mutual consent is impossible the Government draft a loophole. *

Essentially, it seems to me the idea behind these laws is the assumption that if you're the kind of person that wants to look at fake rape, bondage, sadomaschism, anal sex, autoerotic autoasphyxiation, necrophilia or bestiality, you obviously intend to go out and do it. A bit like the idea that playing violent video games makes you a violent killer. Personally that strikes me as nonsense, if you're going to be a violent killer, or a rapist, or a corpse wierdo, or a sheep shagger, it's unlikely you need images to help you along in performing out those fantasies.

However, if you're just a person that gets turned on by certain things which you happen to engage in with consenthing adult company, and you want to look at pictures of other consenting adults doing the thing that turns you on, why should you be criminalised for that? After all, it is, in effect, your sexuality, and the last time I looked discrimination was a bete noir of the Government.

* The law as written and proposed though is clearly absurd. I have no problem with banning images of people shagging horses etc etc because animals cannot give informed consent.

Update: It's just occured to me that images of a deeply Oaten-esque scatlogical nature would not be considered extreme under the proposed definitions. Japanese scat fans will no doubt be breathing a sigh of relief at the loophole they're being given, and will probably rejoice at effectively being considered "mainstream".