Sexual license

“ The very argument advanced to sustain the statute's validity, so far as it condemns the obscene, goes to show the invalidity of the statute so far as it condemns 'filth,' if 'filth' means that which renders sexual desires 'disgusting.' For if the argument be sound that the legislature may constitutionally provide punishment for the obscene because, anti-socially, it arouses sexual desires by making sex attractive, then it follows that whatever makes sex disgusting is socially beneficial. ”

“ In my view, the interest asserted by petitioners in preventing prostitution, sexual assault, and other criminal activity, although presumably not a justification for all applications of the statute, is sufficient under O'Brien to justify the State's enforcement of the statute against the type of adult entertainment at issue here. ”

“ At the conclusion of a two-year study, the U. S. Commission on Obscenity and Pornography determined that the standards we have written interfere with constitutionally protected materials:
"Society's attempts to legislate for adults in the area of obscenity have not been successful. Present laws prohibiting the consensual sale or distribution of explicit sexual materials to adults are extremely unsatisfactory in their practical application. ”

“ As we observe below, "the Court has not definitively answered the difficult question whether and to what extent the Constitution prohibits state statutes regulating [private consensual sexual] behavior among adults," n. 17, infra, and we do not purport to answer that question now.↑ . As Mr. Justice Powell notes, post, at 711, the prohibition of mail-order sales of contraceptives, as practiced by PPA, is a particularly "significant invasion of the constitutionally protected privacy in decisions concerning sexual relations."↑ . ”

“ Indeed, the valiant attempt of one lower federal court to draw the constitutional line at depictions of explicit sexual conduct seems to belie any suggestion that this approach marks the road to clarity. [16] The Court surely demonstrates little sensitivity to our own institutional problems, much less the other vagueness-related difficulties, in establishing a system that requires us to consider whether a description of human genitals is sufficiently "lewd" to deprive it of constitutional protection; whether a sexual act is "ultimate" ”

“ This limit of consensual sexual activity being a constitutional right which was made by the litigants, saying we have the right as individual adults under the Constitution to any kind of sexual behavior that we desire and the State cannot limit us. ”

“ Sex and nudity may not be exploited without limit by films or pictures exhibited or sold in places of public accommodation any more than live sex and nudity can [p. 26] be exhibited or sold without limit in such public places. [8] At a minimum, prurient, patently offensive depiction or description of sexual conduct must have serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value to merit First Amendment protection. See Kois v. Wisconsin, supra, at 230-232; Roth v. United States, supra, at 487 ”

“ Whereas the commission of sexual offences in the Republic is of grave concern, as it has a particularly disadvantageous impact on vulnerable persons, the society as a whole and the economy;
Whereas women and children, being particularly vulnerable, are more likely to become victims of sexual offences, including participating in adult prostitution and sexual exploitation of children ”

“ A mature individual's choice of an adult sexual partner, in the privacy of his or her own home, would appear to me to be a decision of the utmost private and intimate concern. Private consensual sex acts between adults are matters, absent evidence that they are harmful, in which the state has no legitimate interest. ”

“ In sum, even though the State has determined that the use of contraceptives is as iniquitous as any act of extra-marital sexual immorality, the intrusion of the whole machinery of the criminal law into the very heart of marital privacy, requiring husband and wife to render account before a criminal tribunal of their uses of that intimacy, is surely a very different thing indeed from punishing those who establish intimacies which the law has always forbidden and which can have no claim to social protection. ”

“ In particular, if it were to be held that as a matter of law all infliction of bodily harm above the level of common assault is incapable of being legitimated by consent, except in special circumstances, then we would have to consider whether the public interest required the recognition of private sexual activities as being in a specially exempt category. ”

“ Enacting all matters relating to sexual offences in a single statute; (b)
criminalising all forms of sexual abuse or exploitation; (c)
repealing certain common law sexual offences and replacing them with new and, in some instances, expanded or extended statutory sexual offences, irrespective of gender ”

“ He concluded that there was no justification for maintaining the common law crime of committing an unnatural sexual act by a man or between men, if such act would not constitute an offence if committed by a woman, between women or between a man and a woman ”

“ Introduction
[1] ⁠This is an application by a 53-year old man, a dentist by profession (the applicant) , for confirmation of an order made by the Supreme Court of Appeal, declaring unconstitutional sections 14 (1) (b) and 14 (3) (b) of the erstwhile Sexual Offences Act [1] (the Act) , in terms of which the applicant had been convicted of acts of indecency. The effect of those provisions was to set the age of consent to “immoral or indecent acts” between people of the same sex at 19 years, as opposed to 16 years for the same acts between people of the opposite sex. ”

“ I would accordingly endorse paragraph 1 of the High Court’s order declaring the common law offence of sodomy to be inconsistent with the 1996 Constitution and invalid.
The Constitutional Validity of Section 20A of the Sexual Offences Act 1957
[74] ⁠For the sake of convenience, the provisions of section 20A of the Sexual Offences Act are again quoted:
[75] ⁠The absurdly discriminatory purpose and impact of the provision can be demonstrated by numerous examples. One will suffice. A gay couple attend a social gathering attended by gay, lesbian and heterosexual couples. ”

“ Whoever induces, decoys or procures or compels any female under eighteen years of age, or causes any female over eighteen years of age, against her will, to have sexual intercourse with any person other than himself; or whoever knowingly permits any other person to have sexual intercourse with any female of good repute or chastity upon premises owned or controlled by him, shall be fined not less than ten dollars nor more than five hundred dollars, to which may be added imprisonment in the county jail not less than one month nor more than six months. ”

“ Statutes banning public sexual activity are entirely consistent with protecting the individual's liberty interest in decisions concerning sexual relations: the same recognition that those decisions are intensely private which justifies protecting them from governmental interference can justify protecting individuals from unwilling exposure to the sexual activities of others. But the mere fact that intimate behavior may be punished when it takes place in public cannot dictate how States can regulate intimate behavior that occurs in intimate places. ”

“ The pimps of proxenetism are recruited from the dregs of society. In this domain, as in the others, penal law should not be put in force; the object should be the protection of society and the improvement of the criminal.
As regards prostitution itself, it cannot be made a misdemeanor without opening the door too widely to complete arbitrariness. The State cannot prevent a responsible adult from disposing of his own body, without introducing religion and metaphysics into legislation; but the State can require those who practice prostitution not to molest the public. ”

“ In the second place the plaintiff says that gross indecency, as an offence, is confined to sexual conduct between males. Similar or associated sexual conduct between female citizens who have a homosexual or lesbian disposition is not prohibited. On this account the plaintiff complains that the section creating the offence discriminates against male homosexuals solely on the ground of their sex and in a way which is unrelated to any difference of capacity, physical or moral, or of social function. ”

“ Few seem to even suspect that the seventh commandment has any bearing upon sexual conduct within the pale of matrimony. Yet if we may believe the confessions and statements of men and women, legalized prostitution is a more common crime than illicit commerce of the sexes. So common is the popular error upon this subject, and so strongly fortified by prejudice is it, that it is absolutely dangerous for a writer or speaker to express the truth, if he knows it and has a disposition to do so. ”

“ If any person shall wilfully or deceitfully entice or carry away a female child under the age of eighteen years with the intent or for the purpose of prostitution or illicit sexual intercourse, he shall be imprisoned not exceeding three years and be fined not exceeding five thousand dollars. ”

“ Because § 29A's prohibition extends to posing or exhibiting children "in a state of nudity," rather than merely to their participation in live or simulated sexual conduct, the statute clearly restrains expression within the ambit of the First Amendment.
It is equally evident that the Commonwealth's asserted interest in preventing the sexual exploitation and abuse of minors is "of surpassing importance." ”

“ In reaching this conclusion I have regard to the information available in these appeals and of such inferences as may be drawn therefrom. I appreciate that there may be a great deal of information relevant to these activities which is not available to your Lordships. When Parliament passed the Sexual Offences Act 1967 which made buggery and acts of gross indecency between consenting males lawful it had available the Report of the Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution (the Wolfenden Report) (Cmnd 247 (1957) ) , which was the product of an exhaustive research into the problem. ”

“ Any person who manufactures, sells or supplies any article which is intended to be used to perform an unnatural sexual act, shall be guilty of an offence.
(2) For the purposes of subsection (1) , ‘sell’ includes to offer for sale, to keep for sale or to keep in a place where goods are sold, offered or kept for sale.”.
Insertion of section 20A in Act 23 of 1957. 3. The following section is hereby inserted in the principal Act after section 20:
“Acts committed between men at a party and which are calculated to stimulate sexual passion or to give sexual gratification, prohibited. ”

“ The more reasonable rule is the one proposed here: the girl cannot be prosecuted for either crime, because the law considers her to be the victim and puts the burden on the adult to avoid the sexual relationship.
Moreover, the holding in these cases is now moot, because in 1975 the Legislature amended sections 286 and 288a to make sodomy and oral copulation legal unless done with a minor or in various circumstances indicating a lack of full consent. ”

“ Whether constitutional rights are infringed in sexual preference cases, and whether some compelling state interest can be advanced to permit their infringement, are important questions that this Court has never addressed, and which have left the lower courts in some disarray. ”

“ This reasoning rests on the premise that married people will comply with the ban in regard to their marital relationship, notwithstanding total nonenforcement in this context and apparent nonenforcibility, but will not comply with criminal statutes prohibiting extramarital affairs and the anti-use statute in respect to illicit sexual relationships, a premise whose validity has not been [p507] demonstrated and whose intrinsic validity is not very evident. ”

“ The term, illicit intercourse, applies to all sexual intercourse that is illegal.
In our discussion of the young man's problem, we may confine our consideration particularly to intercourse with professional prostitutes and with clandestines, or women who are willing to accept the sexual embrace for their own gratification or for money. ”

“ In my view, however, the challenged regulation must be upheld, not because it survives some lower level of First-Amendment scrutiny, but because, as a general law regulating conduct and not specifically directed at expression, it is not subject to First-Amendment scrutiny at all.
* Indiana's public indecency statute provides:
" (a) A person who knowingly or intentionally, in a public place:
" (1) engages in sexual intercourse;
" (2) engages in deviate sexual conduct;
" (3) appears in a state of nudity; or
" (4) fondles the genitals of himself or another person ”

“ It is sad to see ladies of high position defending such barbarous institutions as proxenetism (the business of keeping brothels) and the regulation of prostitution, imagining that they thereby protect their daughters against seduction. Such aberration can only be explained by suggestive influence on the part of men. Among men, and especially among many physicians, the belief in the efficacy of regulation depends on a mixture of blind routine, faith in authority and want of judgment, combined perhaps with more or less unconscious eroticism. ”