Whither consent?

Writing in spiked! recently, barrister Barbara Hewson suggests that the age of consent for sexual activity should be restored to its pre-1885 position of 13.

Reducing the age of consent to 13 for all sexual acts would bring the UK in line with Spain, although Spain has a legal caveat that allows for prosecution where sexual consent is obtained by deception in the case of a person aged between 13 and 16. Until 1995, the age of consent in Spain was 12. Indeed, Britain’s age of consent is high by the standards of European countries, many of which have an age of consent for heterosexual acts of 14 or 15, although the age of consent for homosexual acts is not necessarily the same. Among other developed nations, Japan has an age of consent of 13, although this is subject to further restrictions.

An interesting note to this matter is that until 1993, English common law held that a boy under the age of 14 could not commit rape as a principal offender because he was irrebuttably presumed to be incapable of sexual intercourse. That a boy of that age is indeed so capable has been the subject of some publicity.

While there is some merit in arguing about the moral, physiological, emotional and cultural import of an age of consent, and the extent to which children need to be protected both from the attentions of adults and their peers, we should also consider all this in the context of what consent has come to mean in the implementation of the law. Consent is not, and never was, the same as a contract, whereby terms are mutually agreed and non-performance brings with it an entitlement to compensation. Rather, consent is a highly complex concept which is changing rapidly in its meaning.

Should Page 3 Nudes be Banned?

http://www.libertarian.co.uk/multimedia/2012-11-05-porn-sig.mp3

Sean Gabb, Director of the Libertarian Alliance, speaking on BBC Radio Leeds on the 5th November 2012.

The question was whether newspapers should be banned from showing pictures of naked women for the tittilation of their readers – ie, “Page Three Girls” in The Sun.

Sean argues these points:

What’s so Special about Buggery?

Note: A question worth asking is why organisations like Christian Voice always make a fuss about the texts in Leviticus and 1 Corinthians. Perhaps homosexuals are Hell-bound sinners. But what about the gigantic tax-gathering state that pulls millions of women out to work to maintain family living standards? What about the systematic denial of our divinely-sanctioned freedom to choose how we live? What about the evil social workers who take children away and sell them to childless couples? What about the morality, in Augustinian terms, of our current wars? What is it that makes buggery so uniquely mportant? SIG

NCROPA on “Obscenity”

Note: Here is another document from NCROPA. The Libertarian Alliance sometimes does these responses to Government consultations, though never in such depth. I don’t think the past tweleve years have made the response obsolete. SIG

FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION BILL

Note: I have acquired a large number of unpublished writings from the late David Webb’s NCROPA (National Campaign for the Reform of the Obscene Publications Acts). I will upload these as often as I have time to spare. Here is a draft Bill from 1986. The schedule of repeal would need to be rather longer nowadays. But the Bill is a good template for anyone interested. SIG

The “Football Association” is now a “Court” – official.

David Davis

A private “Sports Governing Body” (whatever that is for) has set itself up as a “Sondergericht”. It has issued a “judgement – a Fatwah, if you like -  and attached a “fine” – a strange sum: £220,000….Makes you wonder how it was arrived at? No?

When I’m Principal Secretary of State For War, in the Democratic-People’s-English Revolutionary-Liberalist-Party’s*** first government (minimal-statist, conservative, libertarian) private institutions that have previously and triumphalistically-set themselves up as “judges and juries” under the current climate of rampant GramscoFabiaNazism, will find themselves “under investigation”.

I do not believe in amnesties for socialist behaviour, adopted and deliberately pursued with malice-afforethought, and in the face of all empirical evidence that such behaviour was designed on purpose to kill, destroy the effective lives of or otherwise harm as many people as possible.

The FootBallAssociatioNazis will be “hauled in for questioning” by the War Secretariat’s “Operational Services Department Personnel (Domestic Division)”. A version of a reverse-PPI-Claim will be applied to their staffs, who will be “invited to re-imburse John Terry the sum of £220,000 plus interest plus 8% plus a “sum to be decreed” for “damages”.”

I said something similar on Facebook a couple of minutes ago. In case any blogreaders here can’t read Facebook, I have posted the text of my piece there:-

Obituary: David Alec Webb, 1931-2012

Obituary,
David Alec Webb, Actor and Legal Reform Campaigner,
6^th March 1931-30^th June 2012
Prepared by Sean Gabb
First published in The Libertarian Enterprise

 

David Alec Webb, wit, raconteur, well-known actor on stage, screen and television, and tireless – and ultimately successful – opponent of the laws against pornography, died on the 30^th June this year, at the age of 81

The son of a car worker, he was born in Luton in 1931. He attended LutonGrammar School, where he did well academically and became Head Boy. After national service in the Army Education Corps, where he became a sergeant, he got a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (RADA). From here, he embarked on a long and successful career that began on the West End stage, but soon migrated to television. He was a prominent character in the early days of Coronation Street. Worried about the dangers of typecasting, he soon moved on, and, between the 1960s and the beginning of the present century, made well over 700 appearances in television programmes. These included Upstairs, Downstairs, Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), Tales of the Unexpected, Doctor Who, and The Avengers. He also found time for the cinema, appearing in, among much else, The Battle of Britain. In a profession which, notoriously, has an unemployment rate of 80 per cent, he was never out of work.

England not the only country run by nutters

http://praguemonitor.com/2012/09/17/hard-liquor-ban-excessive-trade-association-says?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+PragueDailyMonitor+%28Prague+Daily+Monitor+-+all+stories%29

Note: Not fifty people down with methanol poisoning, and the authorities are banning strong drink across the whole Czech Republic. It’s like banning sex because a few people have caught the pox. It won’t work, of course. Like Slovakia, the country is awash in domestic slivovica. Since our own authorities are doubtless watching this exercise in prohibition, I call on the Czech people to respond as they always have to tyranny. SIG

UKIP submission on gay marriage ‘consultation’

by Archbishop Cranmer

UKIP today submitted its response to the Government’s ‘consultation’ on plans to legislate for same-sex marriage. Despite the philosophical tensions (see here), UKIP oppose this legislation because ‘they believe that contrary to the hype it is illiberal legislation that threatens rather than enhances civil liberties’. The submission is reproduced below, but in summary UKIP believes:

The Real Summit of the Americas Scandal

by Thomas Knapp
http://c4ss.org/?p=10160

To call the Summit of the Americas “prostitution scandal,” in which at least 23 US Secret Service and military personnel are now “implicated,” a tempest in a teapot is to vastly over-estimate its impact and importance.

Nadine Dorries MP and the Quest for Sexual Abstinence

by Sean Gabb

I have just heard that Nadine Dorries has withdrawn her Sex Education (Required Content) Bill. If passed, this would have required schoolgirls to discuss abstinence in the classroom. The summary of the Bill taken from the UK Parliament website is as follows:

Sex and Disease

by DJW

We keep reading stories of HIV positive men who infect large numbers of partners, but why is it up to the state to tell us what we should do in intimate contact? so what if the man (eg http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2046347/Monster-gave-HIV-left-life-sentence-says-mother-infected-man-slept-hundreds-women.html) was HIV+. The decision whether to wear rubber insulation was up to him and his sexual partners. And women who sleep with people they don’t know without marrying them first – well they are taking the risk. So what is the problem? What next? A law forbidden kissing when you have the common cold? I am totally opposed to the idea of “safe sex”. The real safe sex is sex between a man and his wife – and everything else includes risks of various types and that is all there is to it.

 

Peter Tatchell on Homosexual Marriage

Stonewall undermines campaign for gay marriage

Ben Summerskill suggests marriage equality would cost too much

London, UK – 21 September 2010

Ben Summerskill, the chief executive of Britain’s main gay lobby group, Stonewall, has reportedly defended his organisation’s refusal to campaign for marriage equality. He was speaking at the Liberal Democrat party conference LGBT fringe meeting on Monday night, 20 September.

Leading Lib Dems at the meeting – Stephen Gilbert MP, Evan Harris and equality minister, Lynne Featherstone MP – spoke out in favour of legalising same-sex marriage. Mr Summerskill did not. He explained why Stonewall was not campaigning on the issue.

According to a report on the Pink News website (copy below), he cited the cost of implementing marriage equality, which he claimed could total £5 billion – a figure that other campaigners question.

http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2010/09/20/ben-summserskill-stonewall-opposed-to-gay-marriage-equality-because-it-will-cost-5-billion/

A recent online survey of LGBT readers by the Pink News website found that 98% want full marriage equality. Stonewall does not represent LGBT opinion on this issue. It is out of touch.

“Although Stonewall does a lot of valuable, important work, on this issue it is wrong,” said Peter Tatchell, human rights campaigner and spokesperson for the LGBT group OutRage!  

“It is, in effect, actively undermining the campaign for marriage equality.

“While many straight politicians now support same-sex civil marriage, Stonewall is refusing to campaign against the homophobic ban on gay and lesbian couples getting married. Among other reasons, it says equal marriage rights could cost £5 billion to implement.

“It is shocking to see a gay equality organisation declining to support equal rights legislation because it might cost too much. No other equality organisation makes equal human rights contingent on the cost. It is deplorable to insinuate that we can only have equality if it doesn’t cost too much.

“Where does Stonewall get this £5 billion figure from? If civil marriage and civil partnerships are the same, as Stonewall has always claimed, how could marriage equality cost more?

“Every other comparable LGBT organisation in the world is campaigning to end the ban on same-sex marriage, but not Stonewall. It is out of step with the British and global trend towards equal marriage rights,” said Mr Tatchell.

OutRage! has campaigned for marriage equality since 1992, when it launched the first UK challenge to the ban on same-sex marriage. Five lesbian and gay couples from OutRage! filed applications for gay marriage at Marylebone registry office in London on 19 March 1992. They were refused. But OutRage! has carried on the campaign ever since, and plans to file appeals against the ban to the European Court of Human Rights later this year.

PINK NEWS

Ben Summerskill: Stonewall not fighting for gay marriage equality because ‘it could cost  £5 billion’

PinkNews.co.uk · September 20, 2010

http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2010/09/20/ben-summserskill-stonewall-opposed-to-gay-marriage-equality-because-it-will-cost-5-billion/

The chief executive of LGB lobby group Stonewall, Ben Summerskill, this evening told a fringe meeting at the Liberal Democrats party conference that the group is not actively campaigning for marriage equality because it would cost a staggering £5 billion to implement. The charity have been stonewalling questions on its exact position on marriage equality for some time.

Zoe O’Connell, who writes the Complicity blog, described the meeting: “Of all the bizarre places to come out against marriage equality, an event run in conjunction with DELGA, the Liberal Democrat LGBT organisation, would seem to be the most odd. But that’s just what Ben Summerskill, head of so-called ‘equality’ organisation Stonewall did today.”

All of the other speakers at the fringe event; Lynne Featherstone, the minister for equality; Evan Harris, president of Lib Dem LGBT group DELGA; and Stephen Gilbert, the Lib Dem MP who will tomorrow propose a motion in favour of marriage equality at conference, all said they support full LGBT marriage equality. Just Mr Summerskill spoke in opposition.

Last year, Mr Summerskill told PinkNews.co.uk “There are lots of lesbians who actually don’t want marriage”. But, last month, a survey for PinkNews.co.uk revealed that 98 per cent of the LGBT community favour full marriage equality. PinkNews.co.uk readers at the event report that Mr Summerskill claimed that it would be too expensive to introduce marriage equality because of increased pension payments to heterosexual couples who may theoretically wish to take up civil partnerships, if allowed. He claimed this would cost £5 billion.

After the debate, Mr Summerskill told a PinkNews.co.uk contributor who did not want
to be named that there was also the risk that straight, same sex, platonic friends might seek to have civil partnerships in order to make tax savings. Lib Dem MP Stephen Gilbert argued at the fringe meeting that marriage equality should not be subject to a cost/benefit analysis and claimed that if South Africa had adopted Stonewall’s approach, they would still have apartheid. Mr Summerskill reportedly labelled this view as offensive.

Mr Summerskill reportedly also offered the argument that there is a feminist view that the institute of marriage is fundamentally wrong. He also argued that for as long as people are being murdered in homophobic attacks, it is not the right time to campaign for marriage equality. Mr Gilbert responded saying that there is a need to send a clear message to those in society “that would try to discriminate that we are equal and we will not settle for any less than equality. As long as LGBT people are ‘othered’ in any way at all, attacks will continue.”

Mr Summerskill also accused PinkNews.co.uk of running an “unethical campaign” against Stonewall after it asked every LGBT rights organisation/ political group to outline their stance on marriage equality. Only Stonewall refused to answer.

Last Friday, Stonewall received an open letter signed by hundreds of people including two MEPs, two MPs and a number of human rights academics calling on them to clarify their position on marriage equality.

ENDS

Further information: Peter Tatchell 0207 403 1790

Far be it from me to point the accusing finger….

Sean Gabb

Of course, *IF* Mr Hague delights in a spot of bum fun – and I have no evidence whatever that he does – it’s hardly a sick bag matter. Certainly, it’s far less our concern than if he were flipping properties or otherwise fiddling his expenses. Indeed, the fact that he *MIGHT* have misled the public is of no consequence. When you have no right to ask a particular question, you have no reason to complain if you are not given a true answer.

No, what I dislike about William Hague is that he acted in 2001 *AS IF* he’d been bribed or blackmailed to throw the election, and he then somehow made millions for giving his crap speeches all over the place, and he appears to have been pushing like mad for support of British military involvement in America’s wars. He also helped stitch us up over the Lisbon referendum. All this is surely a product more of stupidity than of villainy. But I see no reason to think better of him for that.

If revelations that he has been more than “posing as a somdomite” are the only way of wiping that grin from his face, just watch how old-fashioned I can become!

Peter Tatchell on Marriage

Note: Peter Tatchell will be speaking at the Libertarian Alliance Conference, to be held in London on the 30th-31st October 2010. See the LA Website for details.

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Is marriage equality a priority?

Time to end the ban on same-sex marriage

London – 19 August 2010

A recent Pink News poll, found that 98% of its readers believe that civil partnerships are not enough. They want full same-sex civil marriage.

The main UK gay lobby group, Stonewall, does not call or campaign for marriage equality; claiming it is not a priority.

All other major LGBT groups oppose the ban on gay marriage and want registry office civil marriages to be open to all couples, without discrimination.

Peter Tatchell of OutRage! writes for Pink News

http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2010/08/18/gay-rights-groups-set-out-positions-on-marriage-equality/

The main issue is not whether same-sex marriage is a priority but whether LGBT people should be banned from getting married. We should not be banned. Equality is the number one issue.

No LGBT organisation claiming to support equal rights should remain silent and inactive while we are denied the right to marry. Such outrageous homophobic discrimination must be challenged.

Campaigning for marriage equality does not preclude us from also campaigning against homophobic bullying or for LGBT asylum rights. It is not a case of having to choose one campaign over another. It is possible to simultaneously push for equality on several fronts.

Nor is the main issue whether same-sex marriage is a good thing. I share the feminist critique. Marriage has a history of sexism and patriarchy. I would not want to get married. But as a democrat and human rights defender, I support the right of other LGBTs to marry, if they wish. I resent the fact that people are deemed ineligible to marry, simply because they love a person of the same sex.

Every LGBT organisation should be publicly backing the right of lesbian and gay couples to get married in a registry office on exactly the same terms as heterosexual men and women.

Imagine the outcry if the government banned black couples from getting married and required them to register their relationships through a separate system of civil partnerships instead?

Most of us would condemn it as racist, to have separate laws for black and white people. We’d call it apartheid, like what used to exist in South Africa.

Well, black people are not banned from marriage but lesbian and gay couples are. We are fobbed off with civil partnerships.

Civil partnerships are not equality. They are a new form of discrimination. Separate is not equal.

In terms of law, civil partnerships are a form of sexual apartheid. They create a two-tier system of partnership recognition: one law for heterosexuals (civil marriage) and another law for same-sex couples (civil partnerships).

This perpetuates and extends discrimination. The homophobia of the ban on same-sex civil marriage is compounded by the heterophobia of the ban on opposite-sex civil partnerships. Just as a gay couple cannot have a civil marriage, a straight couple cannot have a civil partnership.

Two wrongs don’t make a right. In a democracy, we should all be equal before the law.

Note:

The views of other LGBT organisations and campaigners can be viewed here on the Pink News website:

http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2010/08/18/gay-rights-groups-set-out-positions-on-marriage-equality/

Britain’s main gay rights lobby group, Stonewall, declined to participate and was not willing to express its point of view.

–

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Worthless Pigs Lose Tiger Sex Case

Sean Gabb

If it has money to spend on mounting prosecutions this bizarre and malicious, the Crown Prosecution Service is surely overfunded and in need of a few cuts.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/08/06/tiger_freed/

Dial 999 and Die…

Christopher Houseman

It’s good to know what Joe Public’s life is worth when duty calls

We can but hope this is an exceptional case; but then facing an imminent danger to one’s life is also pretty exceptional for most people. So the question remains: Are you sure you want to trust the Police to save you? It could be your final answer anyway.

Backlash Press Release: Tiger Porn defendant miscarriage of justice averted

 

By Nick | Published: May 28, 2010

BACKLASH PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – 28 May 2010

“Tiger Porn defendant miscarriage of justice averted”

The sexual civil liberties organisation Backlash have assisted in
averting a miscarriage of justice.

Andrew Holland was charged with one count of possessing extreme
pornography under the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008 at the
Mold Crown Court. He stood to be sentenced for the offence, having
pleaded guilty mid trial under advice from his local legal team in
Wrexham. Backlash contacted Holland to offer advice to discover that
he may have been misadvised by his local legal team; and that he did
in fact have a defence to the charge. Backlash provided funds for
provisional legal advice and research to be performed. We put Holland
in contact with our legal adviser, who is a solicitor specialising in
extreme pornography offences, Myles Jackman of Audu and Co in King’s
Cross, London.

Holland transferred representation to the specialist solicitors and
was given leave on Friday the 28th May 2010 by His Honour Judge Rogers
sitting at the Mold Crown Court to vacate his plea from Guilty back to
Not Guilty. That means that he will stand trial again; this time in
the knowledge that he has a defence. However, had he not contacted
Backlash in the first place he would have been sentenced for an
offence which he may have been misadvised that he did not have a
defence for.

Holland’s case gained notoriety as he had previously been charged with
a second, separate extreme pornography charge relating to a video clip
purportedly depicting a sexual act between a human and a tiger. This
charge was withdrawn when it was discovered that the prosecutor had
failed to listen to the video’s soundtrack, whererin one of the
“actors” made a comment about Tony the Tiger from the Frosties
commercials, proving the video was an elaborate joke and the tiger was
not real; leaving the prosecution deeply embarrassed.

Myles Jackman commented that: “it is ridiculous and dangerous that the
CPS are trying to criminalise the posession of dirty jokes”.

Please email for contact requests: info@backlash-uk.org.uk

Notes for Editors

1. Previous coverage of Mr Holland’s case can be found at

The Daily Telegraph:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/6918001/Man-cleared-of-porn-
charge-after-tiger-sex-image-found-to-be-joke.html

And The Register: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/01/06/tiger_police/

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/22/six_second_clip/

2. Backlash is an umbrella organisation providing academic, legal and
campaigning resources defending freedom of sexual expression. We
support the rights of adults to participate in all consensual sexual
activities and to watch, read and create any fictional interpretation
of such in any media.

http://www.backlash-uk.org.uk

3. Section 63 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008 bans the
possession of various ‘extreme images’ which can include faked images
and depictions of
adults engaging in consensual sexual activities. For details of the law
see:

http://www.backlash-uk.org.uk/wp/?page_id=7

Backlash Press Release: Tiger Porn defendant miscarriage of justice averted

Richard Littlejohn understands the GramscoFabiaNazi mind

David Davis

He has to: he must attend more than one drinks-potty a week with the bastards. But it does shine through.

Someone Thought This a Good Idea at the Time….