MetaCatholic

One of the more bizarre stories around is this one from the BBC.

A man caught trying to have sex with his bicycle has been sentenced to three years on probation. … They [the cleaners] used a master key to unlock the door and they then observed the accused wearing only a white t-shirt, naked from the waist down. The accused was holding the bike and moving his hips back and forth as if to simulate sex.

Now, even if the man was, as he claimed in his defence, drunk at the time, it’s certainly an odd thing to do. There are clear traditional arguments saying it’s immoral and sinful. But I can’t help feeling this should not necessarily have anything to do with the law. The man was in his own bedroom, behind a locked door (and didn’t hear the cleaners knock before they used their master key). I find it difficult to see that using a bicycle as a sex toy should be a criminal offence.

Worse, he’s also been put on the Sex Offenders register for three years. The point of this register is to protect the public, by making sure that those who commit sexual offences against people, that is, especially rapists and paedophiles, should have their whereabouts known to the police at all times. It is, then, one more name for the police to check out when investigating possible crimes and dangers in their area, and therefore, checking this man out will potentially be a waste of police time in a more serious investigation of an attack on a woman or a child. Nor, if he moves house, will they be issuing a “Lock up your bikes” warning!

But the main reason I think this story worth commenting on is that it illustrates the problem of assuming that law and morality should coincide. I hope our laws will always be moral, but in a society of very plural moralities, it is difficult to say that the law must reflect the morality of any particular group.

If this act had taken place in public, it would be different, since there is a reasonable expectation that a whole range of private acts are inappropriate and offensive to many when carried out in the common public arena, and therefore (irrespective of their own morality) they infringe the moral rights of others to go about their life and business freely. But it took place in private, and Mr Stewart’s practical and legal problem was that he hadn’t sufficiently safeguarded his privacy.

It seems to me, that in a whole range of areas in a pluralist society, we see and will see more and more cases which will cast an ever brighter light on the murky relationship between law and morality, and we had better start sorting our principles out on the easy cases, before breaking our brains and hearts on the difficult ones.