Vegas Sculptor’s Blog

You know what I like about the internet? You can get news from all over the world. Well that and the whole “nekid pictures” thing, but I digress.

Being able to read news from all over at least reassures me that the U.S. is not the only country that’s going crazy these days. It would seem that judges are making crazy decisions all over the world, but the U.S. and England seem to take the cake for the craziest judges.

For instance, according to the Daily Mail, recently Lord Justice Hughes, Mr Justice Treacy and Sir Paul Cresswell of the Court of Appeal overturned the conviction of Kevin Bassett aged 44. Mr. Bassett had been convicted by a lower court of using a video camera hidden in a plastic bag to take shots of a swimmer.

“At the original trial at St Albans Crown Court, a bather told how he spotted Mr Bassett as he swam at the Grange Paddock Complex in Bishop’s Stortford, Hertfordshire. ‘I noticed a middle-aged male on a bench holding a plastic bag,’ he said. ‘I noticed a hole at an angle pointing towards myself and my daughter.’”

Needless to say the bather was incensed that his daughter might be being video taped, so he approached the man who at first denied having a camera. He later admitted to the pool manager: “I did have a video. It wasn’t the little girl. It was the man I was interested in.”

Mr. Bassett was convicted of voyeurism, put on the sex offenders’ register for five years, and banned from using a camera or recording equipment in public unless it was clearly on display. He was also told by the judge, “It is by good grace and good luck that you were not lynched that day.”

In overturning the conviction the Justices found that, “The 2003 Sexual Offences Act specifies that ‘private parts’ must be exposed for voyeurism to have taken place. Only women, it seems, have breasts that can be seen in a sexual light.”

Now correct me if I’m wrong here, but Mr. Bassett, who admitted he is a homosexual, was filming this guy for some reason. Is it too hard to believe that reason was sexual? It would seem to me that at least as far as Mr. Bassett is concerned women’s breasts may not be sexual but men’s might be.

If you are secretly filming topless women you are a voyeur and subject to punishment. If you are filming children, clothed or not, you are assumed to be a pervert and subject to punishment. But if you are aroused by men and secretly filming them then no crime has been committed??

If you are secretly video taping anyone, shouldn’t that be wrong? On the other hand, if you are openly using a camera on a public beach, should it be a crime if you film women or children? If, as in this case, there seems to be a sexual aspect to the filming shouldn’t it be a crime regardless of the sex of the victim? If you are secretly filming someone for sexual reasons do they need to be exposing “private parts” for you to consider it voyeurism?

One of the pioneers of the civil rights movement died last week. Mildred Loving, born Mildred Jeter, died at her home in rural Milford, Virginia. She was 68.

The name is probably not familiar to you. She wasn’t one of the people you saw on the news every night. According to the Associated Press, “Shy and soft-spoken, Loving shunned publicity and in a rare interview with The Associated Press last June, insisted she never wanted to be a hero — just a bride.”

Like many in the movement she did something that today, thanks to her, would not even be noticed. She married her childhood sweetheart.

What made her story important was the fact that she was black and her husband, Richard Loving, was white. In 1958, the year they married, interracial marriage was against the law in Virginia and many other states. They traveled to Washington D.C. where they were able to obtain a marriage license, married, then returned to Virginia to live.

According to the L.A. Times, “But in Caroline County word spread to the commonwealth’s attorney, the equivalent of a district attorney, that the two had married. He obtained a warrant for their arrests. One July night, the Lovings woke up about 2 a.m. to the see the sheriff and deputies surrounding their bed, shining flashlights and demanding to know who Mildred Loving was.”

“Loving explained: ‘I’m his wife.’ Richard Loving rushed to show the men their marriage certificate. The sheriff was not moved. ‘That’s no good here,’ he said.”

“‘They told us to get up, get dressed. I couldn’t believe they were taking us to jail,’ Loving said.”

“The Lovings were indicted by a county grand jury and pleaded guilty to violating the 1924 Racial Integrity Act, another version of the state’s anti-miscegenation law. Judge Leon M. Bazile sentenced the couple to a year in jail but suspended the sentence for 25 years on the condition that they leave the state and not return together during that time.”

The couple moved to Washington D.C. and lived there until, in 1963, she wrote to Robert F. Kennedy, then the U.S. attorney general, and asked for his help. The Justice Department referred the couple to the American Civil Liberties Union, where attorney Bernard Cohen and later Philip J. Hirschkop took on the case.

“On June 12, 1967, the Supreme Court ruled 9 to 0 that Virginia’s laws were aimed at white supremacy, were unconstitutional and violated the 14th Amendment.”

“Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote in the opinion that marriage is ‘one of the ‘basic civil rights of man,’ fundamental to our very existence and survival. To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as racial classification embodied in these statutes . . . is surely to deprive all the state’s citizens of liberty without due process of law.’”

The couple returned to live in Virginia, and sadly Richard was killed in a car accident in 1975. Mildred never remarried.

This story brought up many issues in my mind. For one thing it shows the difference one person can make. One person, taking a stand, in the face of overwhelming odds, can change the course of history. Yet today we see vicious attacks against anyone who dares voice an opinion regarding topics ranging from religion to race, from war to same sex marriage.

I also wondered about the issue of marriage. Having been married twice, I wondered how difficult mixed race marriage is. My first wife was from a very different background than I, and I believe these differences contributed to the failure of the marriage. When you consider the different racial backgrounds coupled with the disapproval of a large segment of society, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be strong enough to survive.

I also wondered how very different this story would have been had it happened today. What reads as a classic love story where “love conquers all”, would have a very different outcome today.

Today Richard Loving would have been thrown in jail for being a child predator! You see, Mildred was 11 and Richard was 17 when they started dating. Back then people didn’t have the opinion that young people were incapable of making decisions about who they loved. Back then the idea of “childhood sweethearts” was not a dirty thing. Back then people had bigger fish to fry!

How do you feel about this? Were the Lovings heros? Because of the difficulties involved would you advise young couples against mixed race marriage? Was Richard a pervert for getting involved with an 11 year old? Do you think that as a society we need more adherence to the law no matter what, or more dissent against laws that we consider unfair?