Ok, so as I'm riding the MBTA in to work this morning reading my Metro newspaper, I come across the article "Court: Sex with corpses is illegal"
Apparently until yesterday's ruling, sex with dead people was technically legal in the state of Wisconsin.
The last sentence of the article was, in my humble opinion, the most hilarious sentence I've ever read in my life:
In yesterday's 5-2 decision, the high court said Wisconsin law makes sex acts with dead people illegal because they are unable to give consent.
Yes folks, it was a 5-2 ruling. So 2 people ruled in favor of allowing sex with dead people. W. T. F.
But to make it even more hilarious, the reason they decided it was not kosher was that the dead people could not give consent. L. O. L.
We live in a funny world...
21 comments:
Hmm... What about if the executor of the estate gave consent on behalf of the deceased?
lol
lol Wisconsin it's the last place I would visit after death:
http://meefo.com/?pid=9920
Man Has Sex With Dead Deer
"20-year-old Bryan James Hathaway of Superior, Wisconsin allegedly had sex with the deer corpse after he found it on the roadside on October 11 this year. Authorities say he told police that he noticed the deer lying in a ditch, and then moved the corpse into the woods.
He is charged with 'sexual gratification with an animal' – but in a magnificent piece of legal footwork, his attorney argues that he can't be guilty of that crime, because a carcass isn't an animal"
I find really strange the fact that people may feel attracted to corpses, but I don't see the point in this law. If someone is into this stuff let him/her be happy as long as it doesn't cause any harm to other people.
What is the next step, to banish "sex" with other inanimate things like dildos or inflatable dolls? I think people should stop trying to impose their religious beliefs on others by creation absurd laws.
Next they might have trouble with people giving consent before they die
So much for that realdoll I was saving up for. It can't consent either. :(
what other reason would you give?
if you want to use "it's obviously just not right" then you're on a slippery slope that reminds me of the times when sex between different races or same sex couples was illegal.
it's consent that matters, nothing more. this is why there are no longer laws making zoophile acts illegal in many countries - because animals can't give consent and are covered anyway
but yes, 5:2? wtf.
If you think about it it's not that funny.
They have to base the judgement on existing law. And if it's not explicitly forbidden in itself what else would they base the judgement on then the fact that corpses can't give you permission to penetrate (<- is that political correct enough?) them.
meh, dead people don't care what is going on with them. and if somebody would give his or her consent, say, written on a piece of paper before dying - i'd have nothing against it.
2 to 5 makes perfect sense, i'm surprised that it was not 3 to 4 or even that somebody really bothered to create a law for that. you americans, you :)
So, technically, sex with a dildo should be illegal because a dildo cannot give consent? You're right, we live in a funny world...
Just because 2 people disagreed with the ruling doesn't mean they think sex with dead people should be legal. After all, you yourself just disagreed with the ruling by laughing about the fact that it was because "dead people can't give consent".
What grounds would you want them to have given? Your reaction and mine may be "Well, ew, it's just gross", but that's not in itself a reason to make something illegal. (The laws against homoerotic activity lasted for as long as they did on nothing much more than lawmakers going "Well, ew, it's just gross").
Yes, the verdict may sound stupid, but Judges cannot rule against something because it seems morally wrong. There must be a reason, and in this case, it was because the corpses could not give consent. It would perhaps be interesting to read the dissenting decision though.
I wouldn't mind. When I die, do whatever you want with my corpse. It adds value if someone is happy, and it really doesn't hurt anyone :-)
I would have voted in favor, too, and why not? There shouldn't be any laws against acts that hurt no one. Sure, the people who do this are sick bastards, but I'm not their nanny, and neither should the government be.
The "what if you give consent before death" question has been thought about before.
I guess it's generally established that people need to give consent to what happens to their corpses after death - otherwise you wouldn't need organ donor cards, and robbing graves to sell medical cadavers would be fine. So I guess it makes sense that such consent would be required for having sex with dead bodies, too.
I don't know that the same reasoning would apply to sex with animals, though - after all, you can kill and eat an animal without its consent.
http://www.songmeanings.net/lyric.php?lid=3530822107858583893
http://www.lastfm.se/music/Cat+Rapes+Dog/_/Dead+Boys+Don't+Say+No
I wondered about this: after I die, why should I care if my body is buried in a five stars grave, cremated or just let rot? I will be dead, so will NOT care.
The same about someone having sex with my dead body... is not like I would feel violated as I will be dead already so not feeling anything.
Yeah, my family maybe would care at that point, but this will be their problem, not mine (as I would be dead).
Well, it's like this, you see... Until somebody actually has sex with a dead person, and somebody else gets upset about it, there's no reason for there to be a law about it. And, in fact, there is still no law about it in Wisconsin, just a precedent. A disturbing precedent in my mind, because sex toys, like corpses, are inanimate objects unable to give consent. If the basis of the conviction is that the object the person is having sex with can't give consent, I think that's a bad conviction. Courts are not in the business of writing laws, only enforcing them. For what it's worth, I think this was enforced poorly. I'm on the side of the other 2 judges.
I have to agree with the others that say that if you were going to rule that sexual self-gratification using a corpse is illegal, the only vaguely logical ground would be that the corpse can't give consent (well, I take that back --- arguably you could make a public health argument). However, given that a corpse is an inanimate object, surely the only legal question ought to be property rights --- who owns the corpse?
to the people bringing up objects like dildos: they aren't direct subjects of the law. objects are covered by laws governing ownership rights, so you would have to have the consent of the dildo owner to use it... which i find perfectly valid.
It is indeed funny. In Japan, this kind of "crime" had been explicitly denied by the Supreme Court in 1968 (1998/11/16, for reference).
Though, "concent by dead people" issue is not only about sexual matter, but also about, say, ownership/donation of body organs and tissues. This kind of argument is complicated (and probably has some different axes of evaluation in each nation). It is (or was) sort of hot topic anyways.
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