Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Unnatural act

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was No consensus keep The Land 20:17, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Unnatural act

Little more than a slang term used as a pejorative by certain groups to label practices they disagree with. No worthy content / unencyclopedic DanielCD 14:29, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

• Delete dicdef, immediate NPOV problems (how does one define "natural") JFW | T@lk 15:01, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
• Delete or at most Transwiki to Wiktionary. --Pboyd04 15:43, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
• Keep if you bother to read the article it quite explicitly says it does not mean the opposite of "natural" in this context.Jcuk 22:28, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Comment Not that it's relevant to the issue of deletion, but the usage of this term to decribe human behavior hasn't got a passing relationship with whats natural. It's a pejorative, plain and simple, meant to insult. --DanielCD 01:56, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
    • Of course. IMHO "insult" and "pejorative" are grossly understating the case. The legal establishment wasn't talking about insults, they were talking about felonies that could and occasionally did result in jail time. Let's all stop a moment to give a tip of the hat to Alfred Kinsey; I'm not sure people under forty understand just how important his work was. Dpbsmith (talk) 22:03, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. Not a slang term but a quasitechnical term. I believe it was (and probably still is, statutes not being frequently updated) the official term used in police reports, legislation, etc. Not being a lawyer (IANAL just doesn't sound appropriate here!) I can't tell you precisely what the official definition was, but it probably had a very clear one (which likely varied from state to state and jurisdiction to jurisdiction). Could become a decent article if anyone wanted to research it. Dpbsmith (talk) 00:50, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
• Comment. Huh. I said it "probably still is" in use. Take a gander at General Laws of Massachusetts. "Chapter 272, Crimes against chastity, morality, decency, and good order. Section 35 Unnatural and lascivious acts: Whoever commits any unnatural and lascivious act with another person shall be punished by a fine of not less than one hundred nor more than one thousand dollars or by imprisonment in the state prison for not more than five years or in jail or the house of correction for not more than two and one half years." There are also references to "Whoever has sexual intercourse or unnatural sexual intercourse," to school bus licenses not being issued to anyone "who has been convicted of the crime of rape, unnatural act, sodomy, or the use, sale, manufacture, distribution, possession with intent to distribute, or trafficking of any of the controlled substances which are unlawful under the provisions of section thirty-one of chapter ninety-four..." Dpbsmith (talk) 01:27, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
• Comment The New York Times, March 22, 1927, page 1: Browning Wins Suit: Gets a Separation: No Funds for Wife. This was the notorious Daddy Browning-Peaches Heenan affair. Judge Seeger wrote: "Nor is there sufficient testimony to establish defendant's charges of abnormal and unnatural acts and practices." I don't know what Seeger meant by that, but I'm sure that he and the readers of the Times did. Dpbsmith (talk) 01:15, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. Legitimate legal terminology, still in active use. -Colin Kimbrell 17:32, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.