In Colorado, most things that can be done, with prevention precautions in place, are open. While there is no way to ensure zero risk of infection, deciding whether an activity is worth the risk is an individual decision…
— from a Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment press release, ‘Risks and benefits of activities during the COVID-19 pandemic’, June 16, 2020
If you listen to the public health experts, you pretty consistently hear that “We all need to have fewer interactions with fewer people while maintaining social distancing”. That philosophy recently produced some curious legislation in the UK, where the government really, really wants people to maintain a social distance.
New COVID laws in England have made it illegal for couples who live in different homes to have sex indoors and stay overnight. (Sex outdoors was already illegal.) Previous ‘Health Protection’ regulations had banned people leaving home without “reasonable excuse”, but those rules have now been replaced by strict controls on where people can… spend the night, for example.
The amendment to the Health Protection Bill states:
“No person may participate in a gathering which takes place in a public or private place indoors, and consists of two or more persons.”
I suppose it might be challenging to have a ‘gathering’ (either indoors or out) with less than two people, but English legislators apparently want to make things exceedingly clear when it comes to COVID regulations.
The amended bill further clarifies the situation:
“No person may, without reasonable excuse, stay overnight at any place other than the place where they are living.”
Both parties participating in an intimate evening ‘gathering’ can be fined fined £100 (That’s US $124, as of Thursday’s conversion rate.) You can cut the fine in half if you pay it within 14 days, which is something of a deal, considering that some relationships don’t even last 14 days.
But remember, you both have to pay the fine. (Unless you’ve come up with some previous arrangement.)
The part of this law I wonder about is the “reasonable excuse” part. How reasonable does an excuse need to be, before the government considers it “reasonable”? Could someone madly in love with their partner, for example, claim to have a “reasonable excuse”? This gets into some tricky territory, because — as we know all too well — love itself is anything but reasonable.
We can thank our lucky stars we live in a progressive place like Colorado, where indoor gatherings of up to ten people have been allowed for weeks now, opening up all kinds of possibilities if your tastes lean towards kinky behavior.
And we ought to thank the courageous patriots who freed us from oppressive British rule back in 1776, for those kinky possibilities.
American independence has never looked so good.