LOS ANGELES: California has made it illegal to remove condoms while having sex without oral approval, a practice known as “stealing”.
Governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill on Thursday which classified condom removal without approval as a “sexual battery”.
“By passing this bill, we underline the importance of approval,” the Governor’s office said in a tweet.
Cristina Garcia, a member of the California Assembly who introduced the bill, said it ensured that “stealing not only immoral but illegal”.
California’s law is the first in this country to ban “steal” specifically, which can expose partners for unwanted pregnancies or sexually transmitted diseases.
Under the bill, someone does a sexual battery that “causes contacts between sexual organs, from which condoms have been removed, and the intimate part of others who do not verbally approve the omitted condom”.
The perpetrator is responsible for the sentence damage to be given by the court.
The practice of “stealing” attracted attention in the United States after a paper was published by a doctoral student, Alexandra Brodsky, in 2017 in the Columbia Journal of Gender and Law.
Brodsky’s paper notes that there is an online forum that provides information about how to successfully “steal,” some of them are then closed.
California made it illegal to remove condoms without approval
