The Legislation of Morality
| DOI | 10.1177/0032258X8806100411 |
| Date | 01 October 1988 |
| Published date | 01 October 1988 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
GREGORY BEAVEN, MA M.PHIL
Law
School. Leicester Polytechnic
KENNETH V. RUSSELL, PH.D
Law
School. Leicester Polytechnic
THE LEGISLATION OF
MORALITY
Attempts to legislatemoralityduring theThatcheryears have included the
Sexual OffencesAct 1985, which criminalized for the first time in British
history the conduct
of
kerb crawlers, and the amendment to the Criminal
Justice Act 1987, which for the first time makes the possession
of
pornography material which includes children, acriminal offence.
The provision of such "goods" as pornographic material in both
printed and pictorial forms, illicit drugs, and gambling facilities together
with such "services" as prostitution, abortion and consensual adult male
homosexuality in private, occupies an ambivalent and controversial area
of
both law and morality. Only the unusual citizen could claim not to have
partaken
of
a mild form
of
at least one of these activities.
Yet at certain times and in certain places, all have been criminalised,
sometimeswith draconian consequencesfor the individual. The possession
of
illicit drugs is a considerably more serious matter in Malaysia than in
the United Kingdom; allegedly, more male homosexuals than murderers
were executedannually in early 19th century London; and whereas in Iran
and other fundamentalist Islamic countries, prostitutes are stoned and
flogged, in the UnitedKingdom they can rise to the contemporary cultural
heights of 'television personality'. Cynthia Payne is by no means the first
English prostitute to form the subject
of
abest-selling biography, but
certainly the first to achieve the accolade
of
aChristmas "coffee table"
book. The maxim "autre pays, autre moeurs" is
of
apermanentrelevance
in this area.
What these goods and services have in common is that they may,
when legislation is enacted in respect of them, loosely be labelled as
"crimes without victims". Despite the very clear distinctions between
them which can make generalisations unhelpful, all have been, remain, or
may become the target
of
criminal legislation - this despite the fact that
they are voluntarily chosen and, in legal terms, involve no secondary
victim.
Schur'sdefinition is a starting point; he definesvictimless crimes as:
"a
willing and privateexchange
of
stronglydemandedyet officially
1. See S.S.M. Edwards (1987)
'The
Kerb Crawling Fiasco: Criminalizing the
Prelude to Sexual Conduct"New Law Journal, December 25, pp.1209-1211.
362 October 1988
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