4TheRcrd Mag.

Usually when it comes to sex, people don’t really bother considering it in terms of the law - needless to say it’s a very personal thing. I was surfing the net and reading articles about prostitution in Vancouver and decided I wanted to take a look at the legal side of it. I discovered that the Criminal Code of Canada is available online for anyone to view, and though the legal jargon is a bit dry, my curiosity persisted.

I skimmed down and found Part V: SEXUAL OFFENCES, PUBLIC MORALS AND DISORDERLY CONDUCT, under which I discovered strange and unexpected laws. For example, anal intercourse is illegal unless: a) it is between husband and wife in private, or b) it is between any two people 18 or over who both consent to the act and it is done in private. If a third person takes place in either A or B, the act is deemed not private and therefore illegal.

I also discovered that incest is illegal, but that the Canadian legal definition of incest includes intercourse between “parent, child, brother, sister, grandparent or grandchild” - meaning that incest between aunt, uncle, niece, nephew, and cousins is legal. It’s a fine line considering that the punishment for incest can be as harsh as (but not exceed) 14 years.

Further, upon looking up the laws regarding prostitution, which gave me the idea to look at the criminal code in the first place, I could not find any where a statement that it is illegal for a man or woman to prostitute him or herself out, as long as no one else was living off of their earnings, they didn’t disrupt the public by stopping traffic or pedestrian activity, and they didn’t keep an established place for their business - legally called a “bawdy-house”.

There was a lot more that I found weird and intruiging but I won’t list them all; if you are interested, check it out for yourself. But my discoveries raised a lot of questions for me, such as:

What exactly is the nature of the relationship between law and morality? If one breaks the law, is it immoral, and can something within the law be considered immoral? Often laws are guidelines for morality, but obviously everyone has their own specific beliefs, and even personal beliefs change over time…

To what extent should the law govern our personal lives? How much will people really heed the laws when it extends into such personal activities as sex when they can’t see any harm in it? If people did not heed such laws, would this threaten the integrity of the legal system and, for example, bring down the value of other laws in the minds of those who violate those too-personal laws? Obviously this is not a new question. The balance between the rights of the individual and the good of the collective society has been around forever, but it has probably grown increasingly complicated over time. Why?

Also, if ever one of these laws are broken but all parties are consensual, it is unlikely that the violation will ever come to the attention of the authorities, in which case the laws don’t matter… but then I suppose law, whose purpose is to protect people, would therefore not be needed.

I’m curious to know what any reader has to say about this subject, so please leave a comment if you have something to say. What do Canadians want from their legal system?

IMAGE CREDIT:here