Death of another freedom

Under this Labour Government, there have been many freedoms taken away or powers increased for the legal agencies in the UK.

On Sunday, there is a march to protest at the latest loss of freedom with a very badly drafted piece of legislation that comes into effect on Monday.

This is of course the ban on violent images that has been such a talking point amongst the BDSM and fetish communities.

The Consulting Adults Action Network are one of the many organisations that are showing public support against this and I, along with many others, will be there on Sunday to join the march against this as, not only do I probably possess many images that would fall foul of the legislation. In particular the following is of concern:

(6) An “extreme image” is an image which—
(a) falls within subsection (7), and
(b) is grossly offensive, disgusting or otherwise of an obscene character.
(7) An image falls within this subsection if it portrays, in an explicit and realistic way, any of the following—
(a) an act which threatens a person’s life,
(b) an act which results, or is likely to result, in serious injury to a person’s anus, breasts or genitals,
(c) an act which involves sexual interference with a human corpse, or
(d) a person performing an act of intercourse or oral sex with an animal (whether dead or alive).

Section 6b is so vague to make it almost a catch-all for any image that may involve many of the fetishes I adore such as needle play, flogging etc. Indeed, everything I have a picture of would seem to be fall into 6b.

I urge anyone from the UK to join in this and voice concern over this piece of diabolical legislation

Extreme Porn

Two interesting articles appeared in yesterdays Independent newspaper here and here. They are both on the same subject, i.e the upcoming legislation on the possession of offensive images but both are on opposite sides of the coin.

Personally, I fully agree with Jerome Taylor who has, previously looked at the way BDSM is portrayed in the UK media. He seems to be quite in synch with the way most people within the BDSM and fetish scene think whilst Deborah Orr would seem to be a mouthpiece for the moral majority and Christian Right!

Her argument that we already have laws in place that restrict behaviour in BDSM, whilst correct, seem to be that they are fit and proper laws and completely disregard the work done by Spanner over many years to get the laws overturned. The UK has some of the most draconian laws in place that relate to consensual sexual behaviour and the new laws coming in are, sadly, another set of badly written statutes that were done with emotion rather than logic.

I, with many others, now wonder if our own personal collection of porn is legal or not and I suspect a lot of disk formatting will be going on over the next few weeks.