Thursday 14 May 2009

A forty-shrieeeker anniversary.

Our blogging buddy JJ over at unrepentantoldhippie reminds us that today, May 14th, is the 40th anniversary of the passage of the Criminal Law Amendment Act
... an omnibus bill that introduced major changes to the Criminal Code of Canada. It was introduced as Bill C-150 by then Minister of Justice Pierre Trudeau in the second session of the 27th Canadian Parliament on December 21, 1967. ... The bill was a massive 126-page, 120-clause amendment to the criminal law of Canada. It proposed, among other things, to decriminalize homosexuality, allow abortion and contraception, ... The bill was described by John Turner, Trudeau's successor as Minister of Justice, as "the most important and all-embracing reform of the criminal and penal law ever attempted at one time in this country". Trudeau famously defended the bill by telling reporters that "there's no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation", adding that "what's done in private between adults doesn't concern the Criminal Code".
The usual bunch of no-choice, abortion-criminalizing, meretricious, homophobic, fundamentalist religious zygote zealots will gather on Parliament Hill, their numbers swollen by the busloads of Catholic school students converging on Ottawa to provide better optics. Sure hope that Gawd doesn't rain on their parade.

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