California Law

[gekko]

I find the permission to engage in consensual, homosexual or heterosexual, sex in prison to be inconsistent with the concept of punishment. Given the segregation by gender that is encoded by law, providing condoms means condoning sex in prison, and infers chronically unfair treatment of heterosexual prisoners: no sex for them, unless they submit to being ass raped.

Your argument is that you would discriminate in favor of homosexual prisoners? Nice. Why not ask institutional discrimination, condoned by the state, in more ways, eh? Drop all pretense, and advocate separate but equal, back of the bus, and Jim Crow laws while you are at it.

Occhi

I don't mind punishing prisoners, and I don't have a problem with restricting the liberties of prisoners. You've been sent to prison for a reason. Being sent to prison means separation from society, and that includes separation from sexual partners. If that means no sex for you, tough.

However, I also think that people locked up for long periods of time without contact with sexual partners may choose to engage in sexual activity with whoever is around. And I think that condoms should be available to anyone who wants them, because preventing the spread of STD's is inherently a good thing.

If someone can offer a realistic alternative to prevent people in prisons (or elsewhere for that matter) from spreading STD's, I'm all ears. If someone can offer a realistic alternative to stop sexual assaults from occuring in prisons, please pass it on. But I don't understand why giving prisoners the option of using condoms is such a bad thing. Witholding their use is not going to make sexual activity disappear from prisons. Condoning their use can restrict the spread of STD's.

gekko