British Porn Ban Hitting House Of Commons

Proposals to ban violent pornography in the U.K. were set to clear the lower house of Parliament today even though some lawmakers objected to rules that might restrict home-made images.

The House of Commons this evening will finish its final reading of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill, which would bar possession of sexual images where a person's life appears to be threatened or where sexual acts with animals or human corpses are shown. The House of Lords also must approve of the rules.

Lawmakers from the ruling Labour Party and Conservative opposition sought to water down the bill by allowing images made of consenting adults or actors, though none wanted to derail the government's plan to move the legislation to the upper chamber of Parliament tonight.

``Everybody is opposed to violent acts that are real violent acts, but when it is simply for sexual purposes such as bondage, it shouldn't be a criminal offense,'' Harry Cohen, a Labour member of Parliament who wants the bill amended, said in an interview in London. ``The definition of what will be an offense is far too wide. People won't know what the threshold is.''

Couples who make home videos of themselves engaged in restricted acts may be prosecuted, according to Deborah Hyde, a spokeswoman for Backlash, a lobby group set up to campaign against the legislation. She said the rules would allow courts to jail people for three years for making violent images.

`Vengeful Ex-Lover'

``If you and your partner make a film of yourselves and store it on your computer and if that relationship breaks down, a vengeful ex-lover could report you to the police for having these images and you could face a prison sentence,'' Hyde said.

The government says that producers of violent and extreme images who operate in the U.K. are already covered by current laws. It wants a new offense against possession of violent images to clamp down on pornography from the U.S. and eastern Europe.

The measures follow a campaign by Liz Longhurst, the mother of a schoolteacher murdered in England in 2003 by a man obsessed with strangulation fetish Web sites.

Today's rules also would allow communities affected by prostitution to declare themselves as ``zones of safety'' where people face criminal prosecution for seeking to buy sex. Currently, prostitution is legal in the U.K. while soliciting for sex on the street or advertising in telephone booths is banned.

Prostitution Curbs

Attempts to criminalize the clients of prostitutes may drive the business further out of the public eye and expose more people to exploitation, according to Rachel Frost, spokeswoman for the International Union of Sex Workers, which represents prostitutes.

``People will still work in this industry,'' Frost said in an interview in London. ``Anything that criminalizes it and pushes it further underground makes it harder to tackle exploitation and abuse.''

A British delegation lead by Home Office minister Vernon Coaker will tomorrow start a visit to Sweden and the Netherlands to investigate the way those countries regulate the sex industry.

The bill before Parliament today also would ban strikes by prison officers in England and Wales. Justice Secretary Jack Straw said a voluntary agreement between prison officers and their employers was no longer working after 20,000 guards walked off the job in August because of a pay dispute.

Nick Herbert, the Conservatives' lawmaker in charge of justice said Straw is in the ``humiliating position'' of having to reintroduce legislation that the ruling Labour Party scrapped in 2005. The former Conservative government brought in similar rules in 1994. The Conservatives support the government's plans to re-introduce the legislation.

Blasphemy Laws

Separately, the government said it will consider scrapping blasphemy laws after an opposition Liberal Democrat lawmaker proposed amending today's bill to get rid of ancient legislation that protects Christianity and the Church of England.

Michael Ellam, Prime Minister Gordon Brown's spokesman, told reporters that the government may allow the change later when the bill receives consideration in House of Lords.

Church of England leaders have urged the repeal of the law, arguing that it is discriminatory because it does not protect religions other than Christianity.

Lawmakers are also debating provisions surrounding the new offense of inciting homophobic hatred. Some are concerned that the way the bill is phrased may not allow religions to preach against homosexuality and would thus deny religious leaders their right to freedom of speech.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...tdnw0&refer=uk

Interesting stuff, i wonder how much longer it will be before the UK totally revamps its laws dealing with sex and pornography?

Regards,

Lee

Nothing like a little bit of good, old fashioned censorship. After all, we have to protect the masses from themselves. Ordinary citizens cannot possibly be trusted to judge for themselves what is clean enough for them to watch. Because after all, ideas, words and films can be dangerous things. While today the films are encouraging them to explore their anuses with plastic toys, tomorrow they might encourage us to explore how the government uses our anuses for its own pleasure and we must not have that!

Government = :fool:

I agree with the corpses bit but Im not sure what the rest would mean for fetish or bondage content. I wouldnt anyone British start panicking until the Lords have had there say. In recent years they have seemed quite reasonable and will probably ammend the Bill the exclude consensual acts by private persons or actors (as it should be).

This is how it starts. For the record, corpse-porn never did it for me. Maybe i
m just not cultured enough...convoluted pun there..sorry.