Warning: This diary includes language of a frank and explicit nature. It is not prurient but includes slang terms for various sexual acts.
Now that I've got your attention, I'd like to talk about porn. The Bush Administration has made it a priority of the Justice Department to shut down pornographers. Indeed, one of the fired US Attorneys got in trouble for not making obscenity cases one of his priorities.
This is hardly the most shocking development to come out of this presidency. As social conservatives, I'd be shocked if they had anything good to say about pornography. Paying people to have sex, filming it and then selling the tapes to other people who will derive sexual pleasure from witnessing the acts is not all that popular with Focus on the Family.
Nor is this the most dangerous policy to come out of the White House. Cough Iraq cough.
But it is a disturbing trend. Here's why:
For sake of clarity, let's get a few things defined. When I am talking about pornography, I mean legal pornography. This does not include child porn, videos of unsimulated rape or torture and bestaility. Actually not all states agree on the legality of beasitality, especially when the male animal is doing the... Sorry. bad image. For more on this subject read this article on Slate.
Anyway, legal pornography involves legal sex acts between consenting adults.
But in the most recent federal case, United States of America vs. Paul Little, a/k/a Max Hardcore, they are extending the obscenity laws to include legal pornography that includes certain fetishes.
The Justice Department is focusing their efforts right now on "extreme" or "deviant" pornography. These seem to involve fetishes that I'm guessing the majority of us find disgusting or downright bizzare.
I don't understand how people find things like water sports or fisting sexually exciting. For that matter I still don't get the foot thing even though I had a boyfriend in college who was a serious foot fetishist.
What I do know is that when it involves consenting adults, it is or should be legal. So why is the pornography associated with it considered obscene and illegal?
The federal obscenity laws, or the Comstock Laws, are vague. The federal law bans the mailing of obscene, lewd, lascivious, indecent, filthy or vile material. Since the law was written, the courts have wrestled with defining "obscene." The current legal test is
1)That the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest; AND
- That the work depicts or describes in a patently offensive way, as measured by contemporary community standards, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable law; AND
3)That a reasonable person would find that the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political and scientific value.
By these standards, a film where one person urinates on another in a fit of sexual excitement could be considered obscene, but a person urinating on someone wearing a George W. Bush mask as a sort of political statement would be okay.
Justice Potter Stewart had the most quotable test for obscenity when he wrote that "hard-core pornography" was hard to define, "but I know it when I see it."
This leaves the legal definition for obscenity extremely vague and open to interpretation and now the Justice Department is pushing to broaden that definition.
Here's why I am worried:
1) This is only the first step
No one who has spent time following this administration's poilices would believe that they will stop with golden showers. They do nothing half-assed. If they get a favoraqble response to initial cases, it gives them the ability to expand their reach.
Today it's fetishes, tomorrow it's homosexual sex, until one day Patick Swayze's groin is covered by a black box in Dirty Dancing.
2) Criminalizing images of the act is the first step in criminalizing the act itself
The Bush Administration and social conservatives want to outlaw "deviant" porn because it makes it easier to outlaw the acts themselves and because it marginalizes the practitioners. It was only three years ago that SCOTUS finally ruled that Texas's anti-sodomy laws are unconstitutional. The decision was 6-3.
Call me paranoid, but give us a few more years of Republican rule and I see a reversal of that decision.
Now I wouldn't equate homosexuality with sexual fetishes completely, but my boyfriend certainly felt as though his fetish was a part of him and inescapable. And if my tastes ran that way, I'd probably want to have foot porn available to me.
3) Abortion
Okay. This might be a reach. I am no political theorist or constitutional expert, but a quick look at the history of the Comstock Laws and the current text of the obscenity statute is troubling.
When originally passed in 1873, The Comstock Act banned the mailing of any "obscene, lewd, lascivious, indecent, filthy or vile article, matter, thing, device, or substance." It also banned the mailing of any information regarding contraception or abortion. After a federal appeals court ruled in United States v. One Package of Japanese Pessaries that the government could not interfere with doctors providing contraception, that part of the law was functionally dead. It was finally stricken from the federal code in 1971. (By the way, a pessary in this case is a term for a type of diapragm or cervical cap.)
What does remain in federal law is a ban on
Every article, instrument, substance, drug, medicine, or thing which is advertised or described in a manner
calculated to lead another to use or apply it for producing abortion, or for any indecent or immoral purpose; and
Every written or printed card, letter, circular, book, pamphlet, advertisement, or notice of any kind giving
information, directly or indirectly, where, or how, or from whom, or by what means any of such mentioned matters,
articles, or things may be obtained or made, or where or by whom any act or operation of any kind for the procuring
or producing of abortion will be done or performed, or how or by what means abortion may be produced, whether
sealed or unsealed; and
Every paper, writing, advertisement, or representation that any article, instrument, substance, drug, medicine,
or thing may, or can, be used or applied for producing abortion, or for any indecent or immoral purpose; and
Every description calculated to induce or incite a person to so use or apply any such article, instrument,
substance, drug, medicine, or thing
Though no one tries to enforce this aymore, you can bet that if someone tried to remove this portion of the statute today, Republicans would have a hissy fit. This language was left in for a reason. It awaits a time when the makeup of SCOTUS has changed and the rights of women no longer hold any weight. In the event that SCOTUS overturns Roe v. Wade, this statute could be used to prevent Planned Parenthood and other organizations from offering information and help for women who want to travel to a state where abortion is still legal.
4) Fucked up Priorities
In 2005, The Washington Post reported that agents were being diverted from antiterrorism activities to anti-pornography investigations. Or as one agent put it:
"I guess this means we've won the war on terror," said one exasperated FBI agent, speaking on the condition of anonymity because poking fun at headquarters is not regarded as career-enhancing. "We must not need any more resources for espionage."
The memo the Post found then stated:
"Based on a review of past successful cases in a variety of jurisdictions," the memo said, the best odds of conviction come with pornography that "includes bestiality, urination, defecation, as well as sadistic and masochistic behavior."
So in this most recent case we see that the administration's goals are right on track. Despite the ridicule and the general lack of enthusiams from the rank and file in the FBI, the prosecution of porn has finally reached the point where they are getting indictments.
Throughout the US Attorney scandal, the White House and it's defenders have claimed that the President must be free to choose US Attorneys who will follow his priorities. Here is a clear example of his priorities. Not terrorism. Not drugs. Not immigration. Not violent crime.
Porn.
Conclusion: In Defense of Porn
Hi. My name is Elizabeth and I watch porn. Not every day. Not every week, but at least once a month. By myself or with a partner. I like it. I've liked it ever since I found a dust covered stash in my parent's bedroom when I was 12.
My tastes are rather pedestrian. (Did I just make a foot joke?)
I don't like fetish porn, or gay porn of either persuasion. I just don't find them stimulating. But I have seen examples. Ever click on a link you shouldn't?
But I can say that if I did like them, I'd want them to be available.
Porn is timeless and universal. From the stories and depictions of lusty satyrs in ancient Greece to Hindu temples covered in tantric poses and copulating couples, every age and every generation wants porn. It may go underground, it may be banned, but it is always there.
Trying to ban it is ridiculous and pointless. Someone will always find a way to film sex and distribute it.
A war on porn is as futile as a war on drugs or terrorism. You can fight it all you like, but sexuality, a desire for escape or pleasure and violence are basic human conditions. You can attack and legislate and prosecute, but you can't win.
And when it comes to legal consensual porn, it isn't a war they should win.