January 23

Events

• Current events

• 1978 - A more reasonable vision of the law as it should be - In a discussion of a New York statute concerning consensual sodomy published by the New York Law Journal on this date, Judge Taylor argued that private, intimate, consensual sexual conduct not harmful to others does not violate public morality and is protected by the right to privacy. Further, he argued that a minor cannot be treated as a delinquent by the courts if the behavior in question is legal if carried out by adults. This interpretation of the law, as well as others, have been seen as ones that protect the right of privacy for minors in a way that could be construed to cover even their freedom to engage in sexual activity. At the very least, it strongly suggests that a case for harm in a sexual relationship is necessary to establish before being able to treat it as criminal, and should not be the default position.

• 1999 - Why use logic when you don't have to think at all? - Australian Member of Parliament Trish Draper announced on this date that she would urge Prime Minister John Howard to ban the showing of Adrian Lyne's recent screen version of Lolita. She said, "I don't want any depiction of pedophiles out there to encourage or normalize what is a despicable and predatory act." Draper offered no evidence whatsoever to support the idea that such films encourage anything (other than buying popcorn). She also failed to say why films about armed robberies, rape of adults, or murder should not also be cast from the face of the earth. Sounds like she has some unresolved "issues" to me. Not so incidentally, the book on which the film was based was not attacked by Draper, and had been on sale for half a century all over Australia.

• 2002 - What? We have to prove something now? Damn! - The Supreme Court of the United States upheld the Kansas "sex predator" law in 1997, a law that allowed the indefinite confinement of "violent sex offenders" beyond their prison terms if they suffer from mental abnormalities making them likely to commit similar crimes in the future. On this date the Supreme Court ruled that the States would actually be required to prove that an offender has a mental illness that causes serious difficulty with self control before being able to lock them up, reversing what had been common practice in many states. They decided that child molesters and other sex criminals must be treated the same as other people singled out for involuntary commitment. "They created a new subclass of people and felt that because of the nature of their crimes, that in and of itself was enough to justify hustling them off to a mental hospital without proving a serious mental illness," said Kansas lawyer John Donham, who won the case on behalf of his client, a convicted sex offender who was held after his sentenced had expired.

Deaths

• January 23, 2014 - Jesse Ryan Loskarn, 35, (chief of staff to Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn)