Ok.. so the 2nd half of that title is more a prediction right now then actual fact, but I wont be surprised if that happens.
In a move sure to renew pronouncements from the American Religious Right that Canada is the modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah of the world, the Canadian Supreme Court ruled 7-2 today that group sex among consenting adults is legal.
Some more details about the background behind the ruling:
In a ruling that changes the way Canadian courts determine what poses a threat to the population, the top court threw out the conviction of a Montreal man who ran a club where members could have group sex in a private room behind locked doors. “Consensual conduct behind code-locked doors can hardly be supposed to jeopardize a society as vigorous and tolerant as Canadian society,” said the opinion of the seven-to-two majority, written by Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin.
The decision does not affect laws against prostitution because no money changed hands among the adults having sex
Of course.. our social conservatives immediately jumped on this as the start of a lax in morality and hinting that this was the work of “activist judges” – obviously using talking points of their southern cousins:
“The court is essentially saying that fairly public sexual acts can be tolerated in commercial establishments,” said Janet Epp Buckingham of the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada.”We found it a disappointing judgment… You wonder if the court is an appropriate place for these kinds of decisions to be taking place because they don’t have broad public hearings with a lot of public input,”
The court seems to have anticipated this however, by stating that public opiunion should not effect the rule of law:
The judges said that just because most Canadians might disapprove of swingers’ clubs, this did not necessarily mean the establishments were socially dangerous.
“The causal link between images of sexuality and anti-social behavior cannot be assumed. Attitudes in themselves are not crimes, however deviant they may be or disgusting they may appear,” the judges said, noting no one had been pressured to have sex or had paid for sex in the cases before the court.
“The autonomy and liberty of members of the public was not affected by unwanted confrontation with the sexual activity in question,” they said.
Wow.. liberal judges or libertarian judges?
Anyhow, I certainly expect Ralph Reed and James Dobson and others of the US religious right to make more forays into Canadian public affairs by condemning this and repeating their calls for the Conservative Party of Canada to be elected to prevent the disintegration of Canadian society and the threat of such “deviant ideas” spilling south.
