L3 Civilisation Britain since 1945 Exposé marks

L3 Civilisation, Britain since 1945.

Here are the marks (on 20) for the exposés we have seen so far.

Lucie M. 12

Julia B. 16

Zuzana J. 13

Nika S. 13,5

Claire B. 13,5

Fatma L. 11

Malory M. 14
Elsa 14
Audrey 11

I will be putting up your marks for the classroom test very soon.

Editorial: Crime and sin

Originally published on 5 September 1957

The Wolfenden Committee's report on homosexual offences and on prostitution is out at last, after three years' preparation. The committee take their stand, in both sections of their report, on a principle of fundamental importance. They distinguish between crime and sin, and regard as criminal only those acts, however sinful, which do injury to someone other than the sinners, or which are an offence against public decency. From this principle spring the two most striking recommendations made – that homosexual acts done in private between consenting adults should cease to be criminal offences, and that prostitutes convicted of soliciting several times should be liable to penalties of increasing severity, rising to three months' imprisonment for the third offence, in place of the present derisory forty shillings. To many people it must seem that two homosexuals acting together, however discreetly, are on a lower moral level than a prostitute looking for a customer. They may be, the committee would say; but they injure none but themselves and leave public decency intact. Therefore their sin is not a crime. Only one member of the committee, Mr Adair, formerly a procurator-fiscal in Glasgow, dissents from this cardinal principle. Yet if it stands the main recommendations based upon it must surely stand, too.

The proposal regarding the acts of consenting adults is not so startling as it seems at first sight. What the committee propose is in fact the law to-day in France, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, Denmark, and Spain. The complex of offences commonly known as "gross indecency" have been illegal here only since 1885. Yet the issue is not quite clear-cut. Two points in Mr Adair's dissent deserve particular consideration. One is that two homosexuals, living together, might escape prosecution by committing no overt acts in public, and yet so flaunt their way of life in other respects as to be offensive or demoralising to others. Is there any way in which such conduct could be defined as an offence against public decency, which in effect it is? Secondly, he points out that a homosexual who knows that while he acts discreetly he is not liable to prosecution loses a strong motive for seeking medical or other assistance in lessening his desires or strengthening his resistance to it. There is perhaps a certain inconsistency here between the committee's attitudes to the homosexuals and the prostitutes. The threat of severe sentences for soliciting is defended on the ground that it will induce prostitutes to accept the guidance of a probation officer rather than go to prison. Does not the same argument apply to the homosexual, who may need expert aid just as much as the prostitute does?