It's disturbing that he was placed on the sex offenders register after basically using a sex aid in private. It all seems to hinge on the concept that people have a legal right not to be distressed by other people's behaviour, and to back that up with prosecution. The cleaners are shocked by his behaviour? Well, we'll put him on the sex offenders register for you, never mind that the grown-up thing to have done would have been to go away again. Had he been having consensual sex with an adult, no doubt the result would have been the same; because there is I believe a law now that makes sex in public - even if accidentally seen - an offence. Which sounds like a snooper's charter to me: "I saw the couple next door having sex. It was while I was standing on my shed roof looking into their bedroom." Next: Muslims offended by off licences? Vegetarians by butchers shops? So what if they are? Mostly they learn to live with it. For someone to be lumped with rapists and child-abusers because someone burst in on him having a sherman* is, well, wrong.
It's certainly less offensive, you would think, to public taste and decency than the man mentioned in the same article who was convicted of doing it with pavements. We only know this guy was found by the cleaners but not how he reacted, which might be where the offence lay. But yes. Still a tad Taliban.
It's disturbing that he was placed on the sex offenders register after basically using a sex aid in private. It all seems to hinge on the concept that people have a legal right not to be distressed by other people's behaviour, and to back that up with prosecution. The cleaners are shocked by his behaviour? Well, we'll put him on the sex offenders register for you, never mind that the grown-up thing to have done would have been to go away again. Had he been having consensual sex with an adult, no doubt the result would have been the same; because there is I believe a law now that makes sex in public - even if accidentally seen - an offence. Which sounds like a snooper's charter to me: "I saw the couple next door having sex. It was while I was standing on my shed roof looking into their bedroom."
ReplyDeleteNext: Muslims offended by off licences? Vegetarians by butchers shops? So what if they are? Mostly they learn to live with it. For someone to be lumped with rapists and child-abusers because someone burst in on him having a sherman* is, well, wrong.
*Sherman tank. Rhyming slang.
It's certainly less offensive, you would think, to public taste and decency than the man mentioned in the same article who was convicted of doing it with pavements. We only know this guy was found by the cleaners but not how he reacted, which might be where the offence lay. But yes. Still a tad Taliban.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the slang education.