Tuesday, November 11, 2003

Work's been piling up lately, which explains how I missed this little gem of a news piece about my beloved home.

Policeman gets two years for oral sex (Yahoo! News)

A 27-year-old local policeman received a two year prison sentence for receiving oral sex from a 16-year-old girl. Now, this girl was above the age of consent and had consented to perform the act on the policeman. However, oral sex is against the law in my country.

A brief explanation if you will. According to section 377 of my country's penal code, unnatural sex is against the law. Offenders can be prosecuted with the maximum penalty being life imprisonment. This section was taken from the British penal code, which was established back in antiquated times.

After the above incident, a fair amount of people wrote in to the papers, outraged that such a ridiculous law could still exist in the 21st Century. Several expressed their surprise that oral sex was regarded on the same level as rape and murder, given that the penalties were just as severe. As one man put it, "if unnatural sex (inclusive of oral and anal) is indeed as dangerous as murder, why is it that there has been no effort put into educating the general public about their so-called dangers?"

Another wrote that if the police should be going after the distributors of flavoured condoms since such products were obviously sold for the promotion of oral sex. And that magazine houses should be shut down for having articles on different sexual positions, including those which would fall under the category of unnatural sex.

Such a ridiculous law, to be bandied about as and when people need to be made an example of. It's 2003. Get with the freakin' programme.

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