tangents

news & views

by dal mcintire

Letchworth, Herts, England: 2 police watched thru peep-holes above a public convenience when a towncouncil member allegedly behaved improperly with another man . . . St. John's, Gainsborough: former vicar pleaded guilty to 4 counts improper conduct with 17-yr.-old youth. . . Notting Hill: musician arrested for showing improper pictures to another man in public convenience... "Something that happened" on a train caused 18-yr.-old fishshop worker to pull knife on 51-yr.-old writer who sat next to him... Sussex Assizes: typist, aged 27, pleads guilty of extortion, threatening to accuse older man of improper acts.

With crude details of many such weekly tragedies, England's gutter press (which for filth bows to no other press in the world) enlivens its millions of readers.

Meanwhile, the proposal to decriminalize consenting, adult homosexual acts continues in hot debate, with many an illustrious name lined up for reform. The Hon. Sir Patrick Devlin, lately noted for his expose of the shocking condition of Nyasaland natives, recently made a strong attack (Maccabaen Lecture in Jurisprudence of the British Academy) on the Wolfenden logic, and forthwith became the darling of status-quo moralists.

Fastening on the Wolfenden sincrime distinction, which led Anglicans, Romans and Methodists to concur that some admittedly sinful acts are not the state's business to

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punish, Devlin redefines sin broadly, so as to conclude that the state ought to punish it. He argues, with what he calls unanswerable logic, that no moral code has validity without religion. Conceding that Old and New Testament morals differ, and those of other religions more so, he maintains that law is based on moral ideas, and a breach of morals is an offense against society as well as the participants, since English criminal law has never allowed a man's "consent" to an offense against himself. The Wolfenden reasoning, he says, could equally excuse euthanasia, suicide, abortion, incest, etc. "Although there is much immorality that is not punished by law, there is none that is condoned by law."

Constructing three straw men, Sir Patrick asks:

1. Has society the right to pass judgment at all on matters of morals? Ought there, in other words, to be a public morality? Or are morals always a matter for private judgment?

2. If society has the right to pass judgment, has it also the right to use the weapon of the law to enforce it?

3. If so, ought it to use that weapon in all cases or only in some; and if in some, on what principles should it distinguish?

The Wolfenden Committee itself, he says, assumed the existence of

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