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This September marks the 50th anniversary of the British government's landmark Wolfenden Report, calling for decriminalization of male homosexuality. It took ten more years for Parliament to enact, by just one vote, the report's recommendations. The Wolfenden reforms were cautious. The report sought-- indeed, insisted upon-- privacy for homosexual couplings: sex between males with a third person merely present remained illegal.

Today in the UK, straight and gay enjoy almost equal protection under the law, and the Wolfenden Report's jubilee is the occasion of congratulatory reflections all over the media about how far gay people have come.

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ut new British prime minister Gordon Brown isn't joining in the spirit of the festivities. On June 26, his government introduced new legislation ostensibly targeting sadomasochist porn, but which guts notions of sexual privacy and makes naughty thoughts punishable crimes.

As part of the Criminal Justice Bill-- the 54th such since New Labor assumed power ten years ago-- Brown seeks a dramatic expansion of state power to conduct surveillance, raid homes, and throw people in jail for crimes of solitary sexual fantasizing.

Brown's proposal invents a new category of prohibited erotica-- "extreme pornography"-- defined as porn that "appears" to depict violence, sex with animals, or necrophilia. Not only will production and distribution be banned, so will possession. Violators will face up to three years in prison and/or hefty fines, plus a spot on Britain's sex-offender register.

Britain's SM community is up in arms. Even the sex-squeamish campaign group Liberty has decried the legislation.

The proposals are a "clear warning that the government intends to intimidate and criminalize not only the entire BDSM community but very considerable portions of the DVD/video-owning and website-visiting communities as well," declares Julian Petley in Index on Censorship.

Yet the omnibus crime bill is calculated to be a crowd-pleaser-- with provisions toughening laws against juvenile offenders and nuclear terrorists. In addition to violent-appearing porn, Brown's bill trawls through decades of British sex laws to tighten the noose on other forms of edgy expression. Section 70 updates the Obscene Publications Act of 1959 to increase maximum penalties for retailers from three to five years. And section 400 subsection 3 expands a 1978 act regarding "indecent photographs" of minors to include-- bizarrely-- "pencil-traced images using tracing paper... of photographs taken on a mobile phone"-- presumably shutting a loophole through which the innocence of British youth was gushing like air from an unknotted balloon.

Brown is still enjoying his honeymoon, and what politician wants to be seen as soft on bestiality and necrophilia? So even if it could make millions of movie-renting Britons criminals, the bill appears likely to pass.

Once politicians start talking about the evils of "extreme porn," the subject often shifts to headline-grabbing crimes in which they contend such erotica is implicated.

Victims groups, for example, welcome the measure. One vocal proponent is Liz Longhurst, whose daughter, 31, was raped and strangled in March 2003 by musician Graham Coutts, 39. The convicted killer kept her body in a storage locker, and visited over a month what he regarded as his trophy. Previously, Coutts had "trawled violent pornographic websites to fuel his fantasies," reported the UK Guardian, and his image search-terms included "necro," "snuff," and "asphyxia."

Yet the connection between images and actions is famously murky. The same Guardian piece says Coutts fantasized about killing since he was child, long before Google was a gleam in anyone's eye.

Another recent high-profile killing-- occurring right off the campus of Harrow, the posh boys school-- also points up the problems of pinning crime on pictures. Last September, the 25-year-old daughter of one Harrow instructor was assaulted and then stabbed by the 22-year-old son of another. William Jaggs, then a student at Oxford, went on to stab himself but survived. He had recently played a role in a student production of Equus, a play in which a sexually-obsessed youth who is enthralled with horses knifes them in the eyes. Grounds for banning that play?

A wide-angle law

It's not an idle question. "Extreme" may be the watchword of the proposed anti-porn measure, but in reality it covers material almost boringly commonplace. The law would target any sexual image that "appears to result (or be likely to result) in serious injury to a person's anus, breasts, or genitals," that "threatens or appears to threaten a person's life," that "involves or appears to involve sexual interference with a human corpse," or that depicts someone "performing or appearing to perform an act of intercourse or oral sex with an animal."

Since the standard is "appear," the provisions make no distinction between depictions from real life or those simulated by actors or participants in fantasy play. Nor does the proposed law distinguish between photographs and, say, realistic computer graphics.

Material running afoul of these provisions is found even in the mainstream Hollywood titles that are "classified" by authorities for release in the UK. Surely the British government doesn't intend people should go to prison for possessing The Exorcist, Porky's, American Pie, Exit to Eden, or Tokyo Decadence? Actually it does, in cases where an individual has extracted scenes or images from the larger work for reasons that a court decides are "solely or principally for the purpose of sexual arousal."

George Orwell anticipated such official solicitousness about citizens' interior mental lives, even if he guessed wrong that the state's preoccupation would be political dogma rather than sex.

Certainly Britain is plotting a 1984ish existence for anyone caught up by the new law. Those designated "sex offenders" in the UK can lose the right to travel, are subject to continual electronic monitoring, chemical castration, and police searches of their home anytime without cause. That is on top of the ever-present risk of attack by lynch mob-- and whatever new conditions the government may choose to impose in its inevitable 55th or 73rd omnibus criminal reforms.

New legal tools to make SM hurt

Despite a storied history of public-school canings and navy floggings, actually voluntary SM is already legally dicey in the UK. Any injury, pain, or mark that a court decides is more than "trifling" or "momentary" counts as assault, and consent is no defense.

That's the upshot of legal cases following from the notorious Operation Spanner, a police investigation that began in 1987 when police seized a privately made videotape showing men engaged in heavy-- and entirely willing-- SM play. Scenes showed beatings, laceration, and genital abrasions-- but nothing requiring so much as a visit to the doctor for patching up. Still, in December 1990, 16 gay men received fines and sentences of up to four-and-half years. Some terms were subsequently reduced, but the convictions were upheld on appeal in the UK and the European Court of Human Rights.

The new "extreme porn" law leverages these legal prohibitions over SM by extending them to mere possession of visual representations. The low threshold of "injury" under British law suggests how broad the range of proscribed material could be. The proposed ban on SM erotica opens the door to porn sting operations, infiltration of fetish groups, and heightened electronic surveillance of anyone authorities suspect of predilections toward kink.

It's a funny way to commemorate the right to sexual privacy that Wolfenden-- to a fault-- put on such a pedestal.

Author Profile:  Bill Andriette
Bill Andriette is features editor of The Guide
Email:	theguide@guidemag.com