Counsel Claims Change In View On Homosexuals

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30947, 31 December 1965, Page 14

Counsel Claims Change In View On Homosexuals

(N Z. Presis Association) NAPIER, December 29

A general liberalisation in the attitude towards homosexuals was claimed by Mr J. D. Donovan in the Magistrate’s Court at Napier today in his plea for suppression of the names of men before the court on indecency charges. Three men, two of them married, appeared before Mr W. K. L. Dougall, S.M., for sentence on charges relating to indecent acts with other males.

The Magistrate agreed to suppress their names—but said he was doing it because of the children of the married men.

“Irrespective of what 1 might think personally the law is there and it is my duty to enforce it," he said. He sentenced a 43-year-old married man to three months imprisonment on each of three charges of doing an indecent act with another male.

A 40-year-old single man was sentenced to a similar term on each of two charges

of doing an indecent act with another male.

A 29-year-old married man was imprisoned for three months on a charge of permitting a male to do an indecent act upon him. All the sentences are concurrent. Mr Donovan, who appeared for two of the men, said there were facts before the Magistrate that would allow him to take a less serious view than possible a few years ago. The act itself had reduced the previous maximum penalty of 10 years to five years. “It goes even further than that with members of the public who have given the matter thought,” he said. He said there was a general liberalising of the attitude of the public and the Legislature towards these offences.

Both men had had good jobs and had been prominent in community affairs and in neither case was there any question of corruption of young people, he said. Sentencing them, the Magistrate said he could not overlook the fact that they had used a public lavatory as their “base of operations.”