Not Just Americans

The Daily Telegraph reported on a British couple in trouble with the community. Adam Hinton, 32, is banned from the apartment belonging to his girlfriend Kerry Norris, 29.

It seems the couple is not very decorous. The neighbors have been complaining for years, since 2006 in fact. They play loud music, headboards bang, and there are screamed obscenities. Also, Norris sunbathes naked.

Residents went to the Brighton and Hove City Council and asked for an injunction for the couple to tone it down a notch. They did not comply and so a second request was made. Now Hinton is not permitted within 100 metres of Norris' home.

And, of course, children and their sensibilities were invoked in the complaint with a neighbor pointing out a small child should not be subjected to the obscene verbiage.

Well, how did this happen? I thought the United States was the only country worried about the sex lives of other adults. Here it turns out other countries can be just as worried as the Puritanical Americans.

Brighton and Hove is located in southern England and the article was found at The Australian.

It seems to me, we Americans are pointed to as the quintessential up-tight idiots of the planet. Yet I've never read about a community banning two adults access to each other. Oh, we sensationalize sex at every opportunity. The headlines are full of public officials in extra-curricular sexual mishaps. It seems having a 'love child' is pretty standard fare from Jesse Jackson to John Edwards. Then there are Governors who tell the world and their wife at the same time they are leaving to join their gay lover – cuz who doesn't want to hear that in front of live cameras?

No, sex is the same around the world. And nosy neighbors and voyeurs are the same around the world. We love the stories of sex gone wrong for those people because it makes us feel better about the sex at our house, which is usually less spectacular than in the movies. Or novels. Or poetry. Because it is the normal everyday experience to think someone somewhere is having more fun, we like to make sure those fun-loving folks get their come uppance.

So all you loud folks out there, don't use louder music to cover the noise, move the bed away from the wall, and for goodness sake, stop screaming – especially dirty stuff. WTF is the matter with you?