Banned wagon
A weekly survey of the things our rulers want to prohibit ANYONE who has followed this gov- ernment's crusade for gay rights might be forgiven for thinking that we are ruled by outrageous libertarians. We have had repeated attempts to legalise homosexual activity for 16-year-olds and to permit local authorities to promote homosexuality among 12-year-olds. Now ministers have unveiled plans to legalise 'cruising' in public conveniences.
Yet, at the same time, our leaders can be remarkably prudish. Further to last week's measures against kerb- crawlers, the Home Office — motto: 'Building a safe, just and tolerant soci- ety' — has announced proposals for three new offences relating to sexually explicit videos. In future you may be prosecuted for 'showing a video classi- fied as R18 to a child', 'allowing a child to watch an R18 video' or 'failing to take reasonable care to prevent a child from watching an R18 video'.
Many conservative-minded folk will applaud these measures, even if the last rule means that parents, hostel-keepers and boarding-school headmasters may face a sojourn behind bars for allowing their 16- and 17-year-old charges to keep an unmonitored video recorder in their rooms. But the government's inconsis- tencies on sexual matters do raise several questions. Is it really sensible that it may soon be legal for a 16-year-old boy to bc seduced in a public convenience by a middle-aged man in a grubby raincoat, but that he must wait another two years before being allowed to watch sex on video?
If you are old enough to do some- thing, surely you are old enough to watch it being done on screen. One won- ders whether the government's liberal line on sex, combined with its tough line on naughty videos, isn't inspired by the sort of lament you used to hear from former music-hall stars: 'The telly's killed off live entertainment, it has.'
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