Posted on 09/13/2004 7:12:39 AM PDT by presidio9
Having sex with corpses is now officially illegal in California after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill barring necrophilia, a spokeswoman said on Friday.
The new legislation marks the culmination of a two-year drive to outlaw necrophilia in the state and will help prosecutors who have been stymied by the lack of an official ban on the practice, according to experts.
"Nobody knows the full extent of the problem. ... But a handful of instances over the past decade is frequent enough to have a bill concerning it," said Tyler Ochoa, a professor at Santa Clara University School of Law who has studied California cases involving allegations of necrophilia.
"Prosecutors didn't have anything to charge these people with other than breaking and entering. But if they worked in a mortuary in the first place, prosecutors couldn't even charge them with that," Ochoa said.
The state's first attempt to outlaw necrophilia, in response to a case of a man charged with having sex with the corpse of a 4-year-old girl in Southern California, stalled last year in a legislative committee.
Lawmakers revived the bill this year after an unsuccessful prosecution of a man found in a San Francisco funeral home drunk and passed out on top of an elderly woman's corpse.
The new law makes sex with a corpse a felony punishable by up to eight years in prison.
I guess the Democrats on the committee felt the guy was just engaging in another wonderful lifestyle alternative. Isn't the rich tapestry of diversity a wonderful thing?
Of course if you live in San Francisco you are exempt. The mayor will decide. LOL
Oh. My. God.
yea, well I am sure there are some spouses out there ready to file a complaint! LMAO
Is Arnold Necrophobic? What does the Corpse Coalition think about this?
FYI ping.
Calling the ACLU
Sounds discriminatory to me. Why shouldn't I be able to choose a mate, necrophilee-style.
All I can think about is the the Robert Schimmel line about a guy who goes before a judge for animal necrophillia:
"Your Honor, I thought it was a alive."
Gee, next they'll tell us that you can't murder or rape in California.
What a stupid law. It's not like the corpse is going to mind.
It doesn't matter how many times you pander to the Dead-American lobby. They ALWAYS vote for Democrats.
I'm surprised that a common-sense bill like this stalled in a legislative committee last year. What could possibly be the objection?
I'm even more surprised that California didn't already have a law like this on its books.
ewwww
It is discrimination! A corpse should be able to do whatever it wants to.
Have a Twinkie even.
Long as it's not shaken.
"Who is harmed? And, while there certainly is no capability for the corpse to explicitly give consent, there is certianly no ability for the corpse to withhold consent, either. Further, once an individual has expired, so, too have that individual's rights expired. The corpse is a pile of 'unviable tissue' with no more 'rights' than a fetus.
"And as to the matter of corpses who had not achieved the 'age of consent', upon the moment of their demise, it might be technically permissible for an individual to retain the corpse for the requisite amount of time to ensure that the 'age of consent' requirements have been satisfied.
"The High Court's ruling in the above stated areas, does not presume to supercede local health codes, laws and regulations governing the disposition of dead bodies and mortal remains. And while individuals may have certain rights to carnal accommodation through the utilization of mortal remains, these rights do not presume to trump the rights of a community to regulate the important public health issues surrounding the disposition of corpses."
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