Page:NCGLE v Minister of Justice.djvu/71

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Ackermann J

enactment.[1]

[76]There being no similar provision in relation to acts by women with women, or acts by men with women or by women with men, the discrimination is based on sexual orientation and therefore presumed to be unfair. The impact intended and caused by the provision is flagrant, intense, demeaning and destructive of self-realisation, sexual expression and sexual orientation. Because of the infinite variety of acts it encompasses


  1. Cameron above n 23 at 455 where the following is stated:

    “The results of this enactment have at times been comical. Its jurisprudence includes a solemn decision by two judges of the Supreme Court that ‘a party’ did not come about when a police major, visiting a well-known gay sauna in Johannesburg for entrapment purposes, barged in on a cubicle where two men were engaging in sexual acts and turned on the light. The court held—in a liberal decision—that the two men’s jumping apart when the major switched on the light prevented a ‘party’ from being constituted. [S v C 1987 (2) SA 76 (W) at 81I–J.] The outcome is a happy illustration of the absurdities attempts to enforce laws of this kind necessarily give rise to.”

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