In the swing of things..

This is perhaps a little bit cheeky, but who couldn't laugh at this weekend's story on page 22, in the West Australian, 'Swinger jailed for running sex parties'?

53 year old Chinese university professor Ma Yaohai has been sentenced to 3 1/2 years for helping to organise like minded "swingers" for group sex parties.

21 members of Ma's sex club were convicted of "group licentiousness" - the first time anyone in China has been prosecuted under the 1977 law.

The court case prompted a lot of interest in China, with many Chinese siding with Ma and objecting to an overreaching "nanny state".

Ma had his own 'spin' on the situation, before his sentence. Ma said he had no regrets. "Why should I feel regretful for this?," he said. "It's totally their fault for bringing my privacy in bed into the public. I didn't know about the crime before".

Humour aside, the article makes one question how much control governments should have over what consenting adults do in the bedroom.

The article claims that an online survey, conducted by Sohu.com showed that 60 per cent of roughly 20,000 respondents thought the verdict was unreasonable because the swingers were all consenting adults.

Who are we kidding? this is China! 20,000 Chinese people doing an online survey is hardly a measure of the nation's feelings towards something that would probably be considered controversial in the western world. I'd question the validity of the claim that "many Chinese are siding with Ma", with only 0.02% of the population participating in the survey!