First Amendment forfeited for porn

It’s been 2 years since President George Bush took valuable resources from the Department of Justice (you know the guys who protect us from terrorism) to form his anti-porn squad and well… I would say the shit’s hit the fan, but some of you might like that and I don’t want to forfeit my website.

Since its creation 3 separate adult videos companies (Extreme Associates, Movies by Mail, and Max Hardcore) have been brought up on obscenity charges for everything from fisting & water sports (and I ain’t talkin’ about boogie boarding) to rough sex & simulated murder.

Last week Lady Liberty got donkey punched.

Judge Susan Bucklew found Paul F. Little aka Max Hardcore guilty of being too hardcore. Little was fined $15,000 & sentenced to 46 months in prison (and not the good kind filled with hot lesbians). Little’s attorney argued “Urine and vomit, our argument is, isn’t sadistic or masochistic.” But Bucklew remained unconvinced, “I don’t even think this is a close call. This is clearly degrading, clearly humiliating and intended to be so.”

If humiliation is the litmus test, we’re all screwed!

That means no more hair pulling, spanking, mushroom stamps, bukkake, and certainly no more ‘whose your daddy?’ and the less popular “squeal like a pig!” At this rate it won’t be long before we’ve got PG porn… oh noes, it’s too late (www.PGPORN.tv).

2-D and 1-D fiction isn’t safe either.

In Iowa, Chistopher Handley is facing 20 years for possessing manga that includes drawings that appear to be depictions of minors engaging in sexual conduct. And last summer Karen Fletcher, webmaster of Red Rose Stories a site which featured stories (not pictures, stories) describing sexual molestation and violence against children, was sentenced to 5 years probation.

All of these cases are being tried based on the dubious Miller Test:

(a) whether “the average person, applying contemporary community standards” would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest.

(b) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law.

(c) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.

Violates standards. Is offensive. Has value. Am I the only one whose teacher told them ‘you can’t define a word by using that word’?

Is the classical painting The Rape of Ganymede that depicts Zeus in the guise of an eagle raping a boy obscene? Is the Bible, which contains the incestuous story of Lot obscene? Or is the Koran that tells how Muhammad consummated his marriage with his 9-year-old wife Aishah obscene?

“If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the Government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable” (Supreme Court Justice Brennan, 1989).