Pornographic quicky

A quick note on Labour's attempt to legislate its own sexual tastes onto everybody else. This heavily whipped bill is still progressing its way through parliament without any evidence yet to be shown that it will be anything but counter productive. One of the things that this law will do is that it will outlaw looking at images where you know everybody involved is consenting to, and really getting off on, whatever sexual practice if it happens not to be what the police also enjoy. However an interesting loophole however is brought up by the results of the Spanner case.

In the Spanner case a group of men decided to video themselves while taking part in some consesual BDSM activities, and a copy of the video somehow found its way into the hands of the police. The police launched an investigation believing that they where being assaulted. Eventually the men where found and explained exactly what was going on. They did not hide anything as they did not think that they had anything to fear. As far as they where concerned they where just having some consensual fun. Despite this it turned out there was quite a bit to fear and they where eventually brought to trial on charges of assualt.

This is where things become relivant to porn. The judge decided that he had to impose his own moral standards on them and refused to accept that there was anything sexual involved in BDSM and so that it could only be an assault. This meant that in the eyes of the law it was impossible for them to have consented to what happened, because under laws originally designed to protect the insurance industry it is impossible to consent to an assault (an law that would, if taken strictly, makes sports such as boxing and rugby illegal). This meant there was no option but to plead guilty as they had already explained exactly what was going on. The dominant partners where jailed for assault and the submissive partners where jailed for aiding and abetting an assult.

Spanner was a travesty of justice but it places an interesting loophole into case law, thanks to it extreme sex is not sex. However porn has to be sex which means that extreme porn, if it does not actually show people obviously getting off on what is being done, is not porn. Somehow I expect that should this law ever be used (but lets be frank, I doubt that Labour actually think about their laws being used. They see them as nothing more than symbols of what good people they are) the definition of what is and is not sex when it comes to extreme sex will once again change so that people who do not share the same ideas of fun as the judge in question can be sent to jail.