Bacon's crusade against onanism yields interesting results

It's been nearly a year since Sen. Bob Bacon, D-Fort Collins, took his crusade against onanism to the state Capitol.

As we noted in 2008, Senate Bill 235 was introduced "to ban public masturbation because [Bacon believed] that Colorado's [then current] definition of public indecency [was] not good enough to fight this most disgusting scourge."

Prior to the bill's passage, both public indecency and indecent exposure were banned. However, the law only explicitly prohibited sexual acts with another person or public masturbation while unclothed. Well, now six months after the new statute went into effect, we were curious - just how many people were nailed under the new statute? It's not exactly clear.

According to state judicial records, since July 1, 2008, 78 people have been charged with 110 counts of public indecency in 17 counties. Prosecutors aren't required to specify a subsection under C.R.S. 18-7-301, the state's umbrella public indecency statute, so we can't conclusively say whether or not Bacon's legislation aided in the quest to end lewd and lascivious public behavior. Of the charges that do specify a specific infraction, however, none reference Bacon's new provision. But our research did reveal a few interesting patterns in the data.

Thirty-six of the 78 cases were filed in Adams County, making it appear that the county northeast of Denver is a hotbed for, well, lewd exposure, public intercourse or other unspecified sexual acts. Even more curious is the fact that 18 of the cases were filed within two days of each other, and it turns out that's no coincidence. The Adams County Sheriff's Office says this string of arrests stemmed from an adult movie theater and patrons who were enjoying the film a little too much.

Last year, under the Dems' rule, the focus was on public masturbation. This year, it's cat identification Oh well, what's a $604 million budget gap anyway?