I read it in a magazine, I think.
You can probably find something on it by doing a google search, but I’m afraid what I will come up with at work.
One hint: I recall there being a football star in England who was caught “dogging” and admitted that he had been very into it for a while now. That incident had given the new trend a lot of press.
Prostitution* was legal in Canada but swinging wasn’t?
*Yes, I know there are technicalities. Don’t ruin my moment.
Is swinging illegal here?
I thought adultery was illegal until I took a class on the California court system last semester. Apparently, at least in CA, it’s not. Is swinging illegal somewhere?
There have always been swinger clubs, and always will be. The legality of those clubs just means that it will be less dangerous for people who already do it. Nobody who isn’t into swinging is going to see this new law and think, “sweet! Now I can go swinging.”
This was my favorite entry – no idea how it made it into the public lexicon:
A toast to Canada! A country that acknowledges that what goes on between 2, 3, 4 or more consenting adults is their business and nobody elses.
If only our government would take a page.
See my comments above. Depending on the situation, a swinging encounter might also violate state fornication or adultery laws, assuming that any of these laws remain constitutional after Lawrence .
Here is a list of state laws. The list is dated, and as I noted above, some or all of these laws are unconstitutional. *Lawrence *only invalidated sodomy statutes, but it’s logic probably extends to some other sex laws. E.g., http://writ.news.findlaw.com/grossman/20050125.html (discussing Virginia’s invalidation of fornication statute); http://writ.news.findlaw.com/grossman/20030708.html (same author discussing implications of *Lawrence *for other laws). OTOH, I have seen cases that say that privacy applies to acts between two people in private–not public gatherings.
Article on Legality of Swing Clubs
Florida Judge Throws Out Case Against Swing Club
Indiana Swing Club “Discovered”
I’d assume that less gay bath-houses will be raided by the police now. Not sure I can think of any other long term effects at this point (apart from the obvious that operators of swingers clubs will finally be left alone).
For what it’s worth, it wasn’t the entire article. But your warning is noted.
The judgments have changed the test for indecency from impinge on community standards to significant risk of harm to the autonomy and liberty of members of the public.
In the long term, this will chip away at the criminalization of sexuality, and will also deter prosecutions in communities where the religious right holds sway.
Socially, it will not make a significant difference in and of itself, but when added to similar left leaning decisions ranging from prostitution to nudity to same sex marriage, it contributes to strengthening of individual freedoms with respect to sexuality. It helps build a society based on toleration.
Here are the judgments:
R. v. Labaye, 2005 SCC 80 http://www.lexum.umontreal.ca/csc-scc/en/rec/html/2005scc080.wpd.html
R. v. Kouri, 2005 SCC 81 http://www.lexum.umontreal.ca/csc-scc/en/rec/html/2005scc081.wpd.html
Another vote for things not changing much. Swingers’ clubs, saunas, etc., already exist and mostly go unmolested. The problem was that the law still existed and could be used to harass them at the pleasure of the police department.
This British cite ( site ) gives a fairly straightforward definition of what dogging is.
** Fair warning- this link has zero adult visual content but IS in fact a gateway to register to find locations in the U.K. for dogging and for people interested in this behavior. This link is likely not so safe for work, though as I said there is no "porn " content at all.**
As far as the Canadian decision presented in the OP, it comes as no surprise that our neighbors to the north are more modern in their thinking than the U.S. counterparts in the Judicial branch of government. There are the moral stances, then there are the plain and simple health and safety stances. I have been invited to be in involved in a swinger group in the Massachussettes area, but have declined. ( that ain’t mah thang 
). I did ask about safe sex and was informed that this was a rigidly controlled group, wiht mandatory blood testing results provided by all.
Hoo-Hah, I say. I get a blood test on Friday and the results show me clean. On Saturday I fuck eleven people and contract everything from scabies to HIV to syphillis to warts ******. The paperwork I present says I am clean, because I was on Friday. I say bullshit to the entire concept of “safe infection-free” swing situations. IMHO you are playing with huge fire to enter into such situations- but I also think that nobody has the right to legislate said situations. Consenting adults take their own risks, assume responsibility for their actions. At least, in a free society they get to. :rolleyes:
Cartooniverse
****** Not that I’m capable of performing sexually with eleven partners in a single weekend. I’m just sayin’…
So are these legal or not in the United States? Any laws on adultery are typically only mentioned in the United States when some state finally decides to clear them off the books, since they had been non-operational for generations.
Some of these adultery laws go back over a hundred years, and people should remember that once you get back more than a hundred years or so, you get into a time period where adultery was considered a legal misconduct in virtually all of the Western world.
The United States is unique in that we often don’t strike old laws from our books, but typically once society has come to regard something as okay, whatever laws are on the books really don’t matter. It’s a good reflection of the fact that, a law in and of itself really doesn’t mean anything. Without any public support, and without any desire by the authorities to enforce them, they’re really nothing more than little quirks in the code books.
In fact the only real adultery law that I think is seriously enforced in the United States is in the military.
Personally I’m going to wager with our fifty states it’s a good bet that the answer is going to be different across the country.
It does tick me off to some degree that people talk about adultery laws in this country in a derogatory manner. Some people seem to be willfully ignorant of the fact that they’re just a relic in a code book that no one has ever taken the time to change, and that they are almost never enforced.
It’s irrelevant. A law is enforceable until it is revoked or altered. Kind of simple, really. Hence the phrase " The law of the land ".
Not exactly. I think Martin Hyde is closer to it.
In Canada a law may be on the books without having been revoked or altered, but still may not be enforceable. A good example is s.159(1)(b) of the Criminal code:
In Ontario, the Court of Appeal found it to be unconstitiutional: R. v. Carmen M (25 May 1995), 98 C.C.C. (3d) 481 (Ont. C.A.), affirming (1992), 75 CCC (3d) 556 (Ont. Gen. Div.), but it still sits on the books.
A Federal trial court found it to be unconstitutional: Halm v. Canada (Minister of Employment and Immigration), [24 February 1995] 2 F.C. 331 (Fed.Ct. Tr.Div.), but it still sits on the books.
Recently, an Alberta trial court found it unconstitutional: R. v. Roth, [2002] A.J. No. 159, (Alta. Q.B.), but it still sits on the books.
What it comes down to is that the law remains on the books and has not been tested in all jurisdictions, but inthe jurisdictions in which it has been tested, it has been found to be unconstitutional. In jurisdictions in which it has not been tested, a stupid Crown could make a run a prosecuting under it, but would fail. If it ever made its way up to the Supreme Court of Canada (which often happens when a law is found unconstitutional in one province but constitutional in another province), then even if the SCC found it to be unconstitutional, there still would be nothing forcing Parliament to remove it from the books.
In short, just because a law is on the books and has not been revoked or altered does not mean that it is enforceable.
It is worth remembering that in the cases referred to in the OP, the law was not tossed. It still is the law of the land. What changed is what it takes to trigger the law.
The charge was for keeping a common bawdy‑house for the practice of acts of indecency under s. 210(1) of the Criminal Code. This remains the law. What has been changed by the decisions is what constitutes criminal indecency, the test for which has been changed from community standards to actual harm.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out concerning sex workers. As it stands, prostitution is legal, but due to s.210 sex workers are at risk of prosecution for keeping a common bawdy-house if they service their clients at their own facility. This has resulted in out-calls being the norm, by which sex workers visit their clients rather than the clients visit the sex workers. Out-calling increases the risk to sex workers, so there has been pressure from the sex worker industry to toss the common bawdy-house law.
The SCC decisions partly turned on the swinger clubs not being for profit, thus the decisions would not directly save sex workers from prosecution, however, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the same reasoning, sans profit remarks, applied in a brothel case.
All in all, I think these decisions signal a move toward the de-criminalizing common bawdy-houses, such that eventually we will see such issues as municipal zoning matters rather than criminal code offences.
Not true at all. In fact many States have laws concerning abortion that violate the decision in Roe v. Wade. They’re irrelevant because they lost their power in all cases where the law violated that decision, so there’s really little reason, aside from good recordkeeping to bother with getting them off the books.
For all those expressing the “U.S take a page” or “get a clue” or somesuch opinion: Is there any evidence that swinger’s clubs are closed/harassed/prosecuted or even illegal in the U.S.?
Just curious, as I’ve never heard of any legal action against such places. Remember, we’re not talking brothels or strip clubs, but swinger’s clubs.
Maybe, in this case, our Dear Friends to the North are simply playing catch-up.
Psst. Check out posts 25 & 26 above.
Sorry I wasn’t clear. You do cite some circumstances where such clubs were harassed, and some local laws.
However, I still don’t see where swingclubs are the target of some national law that needs repealing, or that swing clubs in general are in need of a protective national law such as Roe v. Wade. If isolated local law enforcement officials have a problem with swing clubs, they’ll drum up some other charge to cause the clubs trouble.
I think people posting that the US needs to Get A Clue in order to catch up with Canada in regard to swingclubs don’t have much to stand on. U.S. law doesn’t seem to even acknowledge that swingclubs exist, let alone persecute them.