Word: coding
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Trudeau attracted attention by his courage in steering through Parliament three unpopular measures: stricter gun-control legislation and reforms of harsh laws against abortion and homosexuality. Against critics of the liberalized homosexual law, Trudeau demonstrated his sense of irony. "Are we going to put all sin in the criminal code?" he asked them. "If so, it would be a pretty thick book. The state has no business in the nation's bedrooms." At a Liberal Party convention in April, this kind of talk earned for Trudeau the rapt gaze of a nationwide TV audience. He outmaneuvered a brigade...
...sanctuary dates back to Mosaic law, which held that fugitives from the laws of man could take refuge at the altar of God, who, as the ultimate source of justice, would protect them if they were innocent. Christianity broadened the idea to include protection of the guilty. The Justinian Code of the Byzantine Empire, for example, denied church sanctuary primarily to criminals convicted of high treason or sacrilege. In medieval Europe, churches were allowed to protect convicted criminals-like Esmeralda, the condemned witch and murderess of Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame-on condition that they forfeit...
Fear of Censorship. Certain treatments of homosexuality, of course, are as old to movies as the custard pie. Effeminacy always brought out the vitriolic best in comedians, particularly in pre-code days. Both W. C. Fields and Chaplin made the dandified sissy a prime object of putdowns and pratfalls. But a serious, forthright approach to sexual inversion was slow to appear. When Hollywood first filmed Lillian Hellman's The Children's Hour in 1929, fear of censorship forced Director William Wyler to substitute an innocent boy-meets-girl plot for the original lesbian relationship. When Billy Wilder made...
...times have changed again in Russia. After four years of study, the Supreme Soviet is about to enact a new Family, Code, the object of daily dissection in Izvestia over the past six months. One of its main provisions removes the burden of shame that was the inevitable legacy to illegitimate children of Stalin's wartime mating call. It not only provides for financial support when paternity can be established but, more important, permits unwed mothers to make up a father's name to put on their child's birth certificate and other documents. In Russia that...
Forces of Erosion. While reaffirming the family's importance, the new legal code makes only a modest start toward protecting marriage from the forces that are eroding it, among them crowded housing, low pay and a divorce rate that has risen above the U.S. rate (2.8 divorces for every 1,000 people v. an estimated 2.7 for the U.S.). Divorce is forbidden when the wife is pregnant and until her child reaches its first birthday. The code calls on judges in the People's Courts to reconcile couples seeking divorce. It also provides for a waiting period...