The first is to get the extreme pornography law off the books ... http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/5817
The second is to seriously review the Obscene Publications Act ... http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/5807
To take the oldest first, the Obscene Publications Act.
The law was brought in by politicians who wanted to protect societies morals. The problem was that they didn't have a solid enough definition of what they wanted to achieve. They simply brought in the act with odd wording and left the Crown Prosecution Service to clean up the mess.
The CPS are responsible for the various points and while about half of them are still relevant today (protection of children, beastiality illegal, etc.) a good chunk of them are not. You can read them for yourself here.
This is the main breakdown list...
- sexual act with an animal
- realistic portrayals of rape
- sadomasochistic material which goes beyond trifling and transient infliction of injury
- torture with instruments
- bondage (especially where gags are used with no apparent means of withdrawing consent)
- dismemberment or graphic mutilation
- activities involving perversion or degradation (such as drinking urine, urination or vomiting on to the body, or excretion or use of excreta)
- fisting
Actually, there have been changes. The list in 2008 was as follows...
- sexual acts with children
- sexual assaults upon children
- portrayal of incest
- buggery with an animal
- rape
- drug taking
- flagellation
- torture with instruments
- bondage (especially where gags are used)
- dismemberment or graphic mutilation
- cannibalism
- activities involving perversion or degradation (such as drinking urine or smearing excreta on a person's body)
So the children sections have been removed, (children are well covered by other laws) incest has been removed, drug taking has been removed and canibalism has been removed. This shows the exact nature of those who are now guiding this law. They don't care about protecting the morals of society as a whole. This is now just an instrument of sexual repression.
We can actually trash a good chunk of this new guidance in one swoop...
- realistic portrayals of rape
- sadomasochistic material which goes beyond trifling and transient infliction of injury
- torture with instruments
- bondage (especially where gags are used with no apparent means of withdrawing consent)
- dismemberment or graphic mutilation
Take any graphic horror movie and they'll have these. The bondage, especially with gags are used, should have also caught films like, "Pulp Fuction," but, oh dear, that seems to have slipped the net. As for the rest of it, well, that should have taken out a good number of our serious horror and mutilation films like, "Saw," and many, many others that achieve classification regularly in our system. I mean, bondage is used in children's entertainment material where the villains tie up the goodies and sling a gag in their mouths. How many kids played cowboys and indians?
What's left?
- sexual act with an animal
- activities involving perversion or degradation (such as drinking urine, urination or vomiting on to the body, or excretion or use of excreta)
- fisting
Well I don't agree with beastiality, but "scat," (otherwise known as Coprophilia) and fisting are common sexual acts in the UK; admittedly scat is on the specialist side.
So the majority of even the current advice on the OPA is just so far out of step with the reality of sexual life in the UK that it is ridiculous. WHY THE HELL they took out cannibalism, I haven't got a fucking clue. Well, it makes sense only if you conclude that the law was created by a bunch of sexual prudes that can't handle reality.
The bottom line is that they just didn't have a clue about what they wanted to achieve when they made this law. It also applies to the written word as well as pictures; this is why the advice on drug abuse was taken off as even the governments own anti-drug campaigns should have been prosecuted under this law.
It is a law of dreamers, how they would like society to be, rather than for them to grow up and acknowledge how society currently IS.
Second law, the, "Extreme Pornography" law which is actually a section of the Criminal Justice and Immigration act.
There are so many things wrong with this law that it is unbelievable.
For a start, the REA report (which you can read here in PDF form) complained about the time scale... "Within the timescales and resources available, a full systematic review was not possible. Instead, the design drew on aspects of systematic review methodology. The inclusion and exclusion criteria (in Annex A) were established with the Home Office."
The impact on the arts has not been addressed. The Ministry of Justice was asked about an exhibition at The Barbican that ran from the 12th October 2007 to the 27th of January 2008 in an exhibition entitled "Seduced: Art & Sex from Antiquity to Now." The MoJ have not answered this question. The validity of publicly displayed works from the likes of Maplethorpe, are now in question but more importantly and far, far more telling about just how little proper thought and research was put in to this law, is that it is a question which the government refuses to answer; because they don't have an answer; or at least most likely, not one that the public would accept as being realistic.
The Ministry of Justice was asked, five times to date, to name one case, past, present or future where this act has or would have saved even one life. They have not answered this question. The only conclusion is that this law was not brought in to tackle crime, but to criminalise portions of society in an attempt to align societies morals towards someone else's thinking.
Research like Kutchinsky B's 1991 report from the Institute of Criminal Science, University of Copenhagen, Denmark entitled, "Pornography and rape: theory and practice? Evidence from crime data in four countries where pornography is easily available.", need to be brought up to date. It was clearly stated ... "The development of rape and attempted rape during the period 1964-1984 was studied in four countries: the U.S.A., Denmark, Sweden and West Germany. In all four countries there is clear and undisputed evidence that during this period the availability of various forms of pictorial pornography including violent/dominant varieties (in the form of picture magazines, and films/videos used at home or shown in arcades or cinemas) has developed from extreme scarcity to relative abundance. If (violent) pornography causes rape, this exceptional development in the availability of (violent) pornography should definitely somehow influence the rape statistics. Since, however, the rape figures could not simply be expected to remain steady during the period in question (when it is well known that most other crimes increased considerably), the development of rape rates was compared with that of non-sexual violent offences and nonviolent sexual offences (in so far as available statistics permitted). The results showed that in none of the countries did rape increase more than nonsexual violent crimes. This finding in itself would seem sufficient to discard the hypothesis that pornography causes rape."
The counter argument presented is that it is viewing such material that makes people want to commit these acts. The MoJ acknowledge that this is a very contentious area, but has chosen to legislate in this environment and likely increase the number of violent sexually motivated attacks in to our society instead of holding the status quo while much needed in depth research was carried out.
The REA also fell down in that it relied on material presented to students in a controlled environment, removing their ability to exercise their own judgement and walk away from what offended them on an individual level; effectively creating conditions where a particular result would be almost assured to be observed. The Society for Social Work and Research in their January 2007 report Bridging Disciplinary Boundaries commented on such; "However, much of the work in this area has been conducted with college students and in psychology lab situations. Therefore, the research results may not pertain to sexual abusers, adolescents, or real life experiences."
The law is heavily subjective. History shows that applications of the OPA have been successful in more conservative parts of the UK while more liberal judges in other parts have dismissed similar cases. It is bad enough that we suffer post code lottery health care. Postcode lottery justice is just too much to stomach.
Voices against the law (on the subjectivity angle) even came from people who were outside the sexual arena. Here is a quote from an article on The Register - "Ironically, some support for these calls comes from John Beyer, Director of Mediawatch UK, and supporter of even stricter measures on pornography. "It is important for there to be clear divide between what is legal and what is not. People need to know.""
The actual use of the law to date, has been pathetic. A secondary charge only as an add-on to pornography being peddled on street corners. Hardly a good use for a law that came in to being with such high ideals.
It was a waste of government time and resource (and public money) and should be struck from our books.
The sad thing is, that I could present yet more argument against this law and also the police. It is THAT BAD.
If the government want to come up with a law that really protects people, then they had better get a firm grip on what it is that they are trying to achieve ... FIRST.
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