Quote Originally Posted by joeltion View Post
And no. Nothing obligues you to look at anyone in the street. If you find something disgusting/scary (a burn victim, a clown, a spider, a huge dog) a good citizen should simply look away. He has no right to control or tell people what is forbidden or shouldnt be done. Thats why we have laws and discrimination is a crime in a developed country. As I said, nudity and sex are covered by law. The reason you shouldnt overlook those cases is because they are crimes, not because of being gross or because you dont like them. Good citizens should always report crimes. Your example is moot.

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Whatever the case, I dont think "what makes me feel comfortable" can never be a parameter for anything. Be it in private or public. You may ask politely that people stick to your personal standard, but you have no power to impose them or even demand them. Nobody has nor should have that power on any kind of environment. Thats why we have laws (not that anything the law says is ok either, specially on cases where it allows discrimination).
Even if we take it as read that nothing that is not illegal is objectionable (flawed on a number of levels, but let's run with it for now), most societies have public decency laws. The law therefore takes the view that when you're in public you are subject to certain responsibilities not to act in a way which will offend those around you. It places the onus not on the offended party to look away but on the offending party not to offend them in the first place. It's the same principle as applies to pretty much all criminal law, really: the same one that means that the right to swing a club ends where someone else's face begins. The public sphere is considered a common "face", and consequently club-swinging (or in this case, performing acts of private intimacy) are frowned upon.

As to "what makes me feel comfortable", often such laws are vaguely drafted to allow a wide degree of discretion on the part of what is prosecuted, and what offences people get convicted for, to allow for various contexts and elements of intent, but also to reflect whether anyone was actually offended or likely to be offended by it. This permits for different venues and audiences (a nudist beach vs a children's playground) and also for changing social mores. But social mores pretty much amount to the sum, or perhaps average, standard of "what people feel comfortable with". So I don't really see any problem at all with considering that and making judgments on an individual level, at least to the extent of defining what you're ok with and what you feel is acceptable public behaviour. The individual view is relevant in determining the common one, even if it's not the standard.