Gay Inmates Granted Conjugal Visits
Gay and lesbian prisoners in California will be allowed overnight visits with their partners under a new prison policy, believed to be the first time a state has allowed same-sex conjugal stays…
Overnight visits, which can be up to 72 hours long, have been allowed in California since the 1970s, Ms. Thornton said, and are conducted in units inside prison grounds, often trailers. While suggestive of sexual activity, the visits sometimes include several family members, including children.
“It’s not exclusive to conjugal activities,” Ms. Thornton said.
Gay and lesbian inmates were not allowed visits from their partners because only spouses were recognized as “immediate family.”
Several categories of inmate are not allowed the visits, including those on death row, sex offenders, those serving sentences of life without parole, and those who have been violent with minors or family members. Prisoners also must have been on good behavior, with no violations.
The new policy was required by California’s 2003 domestic partnership law, but state authorities have been dragging their feet for nearly four years, and only grudgingly agreed to implement changes after threats of legal action by the ACLU. Still, certain musky, gimlet-eyed observers feel that the penal system has just made Candyland a bit too sweet.
For instance, well known heterosexual Ace from Ace of Spades (”Turned off by cunninglingus? Eh, a lot of guys don’t dig that. Who the hell knows what’s going on down there. It’s like H.R. Geiger giving up ink and canvas to work in the avant-garde medium of Play-Doh and bacon.”) explodes the myth of punishment by incarceration:
Eh, why not? They’ve been allowing involuntary shower-room gay conjugal visits for hundreds of years.
Free cable… internet access… well-equipped weightrooms… murder-groupie pen-pals… gay conjugal visits…
Pretty much prison is nothing but softball, Cinemax, and sodomy all day long.
They should stop calling it “prison” and start calling it “The Most Wonderful Place In The World.”
I’ve always thought of prison as a grim, violent, soul-eroding kind of place, but let’s look at it from Ace’s perspective: Locked up with 2000 other men who share your interest in bodybuilding and disdain for Alien-style genitalia? Free cable and internet access? A place where sodomy, like Breakfast at Denny’s, is available all day long?
Plus, you receive bundles of passionate, stream-of-consciousness letters written by emotionally disturbed women that make your own posts look magesterial by comparison. And Mom’s not around to yell at you for watching Passion Cove and Hotel Erotica with your underpants hobbling your ankles.
Ace may be on to something, but further research is clearly needed. I suggest we hold a fund-raising drive to send him to that Prison Fantasy Camp in Afghanistan.
