Posts Tagged ‘police’

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Another Thoughtcrime Victory! Manga Porn = 15 years

Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009

Just when you thought it was safe to possess a pen and paper, we hear about the disturbing case of Manga1 collector Christopher Handley’s prosecution and guilty plea (disappointing the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund) for violating the 2003 Protect Act, which outlaws cartoons, drawings, sculptures or paintings depicting minors engaging in sexually explicit conduct, and which lack “serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.” The maximum sentence is 15 years. It’s likely that Handley pled that down significantly.2 What did he possess to get him in so much trouble? Depictions of cartoon children being sexually abused.3

Some call him sick for collecting such things. Some feel he should be locked up. They feel that sick things should be prohibited. What is this really a case about? Sexuality? Pedophilia? Puritanism? Regardless, there has been an uproar in the comic book community, and the point I made last December is being reiterated.4 My “underage” stick-figure sex depiction (daring someone to prosecute me) has been, in a variety of ways, repeated.5

Where’s the victim? The ink? The paper? Are the prosecutors the type of people who believe that fictional characters have feelings or rights? And why isn’t everyone who has a copy of Nabokov’s Lolita (in book or movie form, or, heck, is there a graphic novel?) currently being prosecuted? Heck, why isn’t the government clamping down on Amazon and Barnes & Noble for selling both artistic and literary depictions of underage sex, rape, and torture? If you think it doesn’t exist, if you think it’s not purchasable by the general public, perhaps you’re the myopic kind of person who would cheer to see Handley thrown in jail while you simultaneously forgive the Catholic Church for harboring men who actually stuck their penises in the mouths and anuses of the innocent boys in their care.

Was that statement too obscene for you? Funny, because it really happened to real children by real priests (and lots of other people who don’t even know what Manga is). Why on earth would a man like Handley, who merely possessed drawings of things you don’t like, be subjected to more years in prison than the men who perform the acts you cannot bear to read upon REAL CHILDREN? That, not Handley, is what is disgusting in this society and world. Perhaps if Handley suddenly found Jesus he would be treated with real justice in a nation that touts its freedom of thought while failing to practice what it preaches.

Worth reading is the BoingBoing post about Handley’s unfortunate situation. Also some of the comments are right on target, and I’m going to quote a few of my favorites right here:

-verde-

Thought Police at the door sir:

-Have you ever in your head pictured an infant being raped?

-No.

-Not even now that we brought up the subject?

-Well, mmm I guess so.

-Could you come with us?

—

-spazzm-

And who exactly decides what is artistic or immoral?

Erotica is artistic, porn is immoral, smut is illegal.
Erotica is what excites me, porn is what excites you, smut is what excites them.

—

-anonymous-

One of the questions I have is why the assumption is that such content serves the sole purpose of titillation or arousal for the reader. Yes, its principle intent may be that, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the reader views it that way. I have books of Toshio Saeki’s work that I have brought back from Europe in the last ten years (and not without concern they would be confiscated at customs or worse). His work is *extremely* difficult to look at, and often incorporates children in sexual situations with adults. I do not find this at all arousing, and in fact, I find it shocking and disturbing. But I find his work incredibly beautiful, challenging and it inspires me to ask questions of myself as I look at it. So, where is that part of it? We must be allowed to examine the work of others that we ourselves may not agree with or even like…And I don’t want to live in a world where we’re not allowed to express even the darkest parts of our psyche…which no one is above. Some just keep it to themselves better than others.

Spare the whole “it inspires others to act”. Pete Townsend has a quote about that.

Then there’s that whole problem of suppressing thoughts and artistic expression. You know. That kinda poses ongoing problems. Telling people what they can / can’t think / express / consider doesn’t really work so great.

And, I highly agree with what was said earlier about cultural misunderstandings related to the taboo depiction of pubic hair making these characters appear to be children.

This is tragic. Very scary, very sad that he pled guilty without proper counsel. (I’m a mid-30’s white female, btw).

—

-anonymous-

Wow. I guess I better get ready for prison. I drew a picture of myself having sex with a cartoon girl (…after cutting her cartoon head off). By this standard, I’m guilty of sex crimes against children. I didn’t even get to “play doctor” as a kid. :(

If we really wanted to protect children, the US Catholic Church should be (temporarily) shut down and have all the clergy FBI checked and registered (fingerprints and DNA, you pervy bastards). Let’s start with the real criminals. Remember the psychologist in Happiness who was a pedophile? He jerked himself off to a male teen magazine in the back of his car (one of my all-time favorite cringe comedy moments). Those are the PEOPLE you should be worried about having pictures fuel their desire. It won’t be the loli.

I am a victim of child sexual abuse in two ways. I was abused as a teen, and my first attempt at intercourse was destroyed by my adult partner’s sobs of physical and psychological pain. She had been raped as a young girl. I carried that crushing guilt with me for several years after that.

Show me comics/drawings of someone’s fantasy/nightmare of raping and killing children, I may enjoy it. I may abhor it. I might fantasize about killing the person who made it. I might masturbate to it and cry afterward. In the privacy of my home and in my mind, I should be able to do anything I want with it.

Should I go to jail for thoughts?

In the meantime, I’m going to be renaming all of my folders “midget porn.”

—

-Redsquares-

In other news, millions arrested for owning copies of Gauguin’s works and early sketches.

I’d hate to see what happens to Scheile collectors.

God dammit, under this sort of law, my paper on Bellmer I wrote for art history is enough to throw most of that class in jail. Dude drew bisected nude girls, in a clearly sexualized nature. Damn good drawings, aesthetically and technically: well done, good composition, and were done to fuck with the Nazis to boot, but still… what does that prove?

It’s obvious you are a sick fuck, no matter what the hell you do. Someone, somewhere, is against it for the pure purpose of being against it, the only question is: can they convince others to be against it too?

—

-blueelm-

What a strange situation. It was my understanding that the posession of photographic child pornography was illegal because it encouraged the assault and mistreatment of the children in the picture. In other words it is documentation of abuse.

It is a strange and tough argument about manga and I don’t know exactly how I feel, but while our children are fetishised to a large degree in the US there is a distinction between a predatory pedophile, your nasty uncle, and people who collect drawings of little girls being split in half by squid with hardware. I’m not sure that the latter influences the former, as the person molesting one’s child is more likely to be a good friend or spouse than a sexually-frustrated comic collector.

I think the Gacey clown of pain model sticks in people’s heads, but remember that he actually interacted with kids… not drawings of them. Secondly while we may be stigmatizing our kids by putting them in beauty pageants and American Apparel ads, the objective of some one who compulsively rapes small children is not to worship the adult-like beauty of a little girl but rather to have sex with her because it fufuls a compulsive need. As far as sympathy for them, I’m not sure about these teach-a-lesson type laws, but I see no problem with confining a serious enough offender from the rest of society, but some one with some drawings? Really?

By the same token it makes me sad that there is probably some one who has actually raped a little girl who will serve less jailtime than this guy will for having some troubling drawings. As far as the drawings, as an artist, I can’t help but think that these things must be tolerated.

—

Okay, that’s enough for now. Check out the BoingBoing comment thread and KOS for a lot more on both sides of the issue.

If you have some extra money, donate it to CBLDF. If you know someone who is about to get in trouble for possessing cartoons (or a book, etc.), refer the person to CBLDF and the ACLU.

  1. “Comics and print cartoons (sometimes also called komikku コミック), in the Japanese language and conforming to the style developed in Japan in the late 20th century.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manga [<]
  2. Here’s a link via Wired of his actual plea agreement. I think he screwed himself. [<]
  3. I’m sure that statement will get some unwanted Google hits to my blog. [<]
  4. If you missed it, the argument was about Lisa Simpson, the cartoon character, being depicted in sexual situations, and a law in Australia was being applied. My earlier article also referred to the U.S. Protect Act and related laws that have arisen in the Handley case. [<]
  5. No, I’m not taking credit for it, but I did post it in December, damnit! [<]

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Posted in Government, Law, Sexuality | 3 Comments »

Police Hunt for Boy Fleeing Diet and Exercise

Thursday, May 21st, 2009

Forces nationwide on alert for mom, son who are on the run.
obese
(Image is ubiquitous, represents but does not depict child in question)

Health and faith clashed in the courtroom, with police on the lookout for a Minnesota mother who fled with her obese 13-year-old son rather than consent to a diet and exercise program.

A court-ordered BMI examination on Monday showed that Danny Hoosier is severely obese, with a score of 43, and that he would likely die from the symptoms of obesity if he did not receive physical and diet therapy.

Before she fled, Caileen Hoosier, a Roman Catholic, told a judge that she wished to treat her son’s obesity with spiritual healing methods advocated by an American Spaniard religious group known as the Nameless Band.

Danny has severe childhood obesity, a highly curable form of obesity when treated with a regimen of diet and exercise. But the teen and his parents rejected the regimen after a single workout session followed by having to eat broccoli. The boy’s mother said that exercise and putting healthy substances in the body violates the family’s religious convictions.

Authorities are alerting the public to report the mother and son’s whereabouts, if seen, and that they have frequently been sighted at McDonald’s drive-thrus. 1

—

Seems silly, no matter how you look at it, eh?2

—

Isn’t this mother’s action equivalent to post-partum abortion, or should parents be allowed to “care for” their children in whatever manner they feel appropriate? What do the Libertarians say about this?

In addition, isn’t it curious how it seems that religion gets a free pass in many aspects of law and society (e.g., tax breaks, requiring monotheistic belief for public office, hate crimes based on religion, general inability to criticize religion, lighter sentences), but when society doesn’t agree with someone’s specific actions, it condemns those actions, even if they were motivated by sincere religious conviction?

Broken down, here’s what it means: Religion does not give you a free pass. Accepted religion does. That means someone’s dancing a jig on the grave marked “R.I.P. First Amendment.”

Speaking of the First Amendment, does this case threaten to violate it in the reverse respect? In other words, by not allowing someone to practice their religion as they see fit (no matter how kooky we perceive it), isn’t that “prohibiting the free exercise thereof”? Heck, perhaps the First Amendment does need an overhaul. It obviously doesn’t take into account all the wacky religions out there, and all the wacky people who do crazy things in the name of their religion. What the Supreme Court and others say is, “Oh, the founders didn’t mean absolutely no prohibitions! There has to be some reasonable guideline to keep the kooks from doing really crazy stuff.” Hmm, I wonder who establishes those guidelines. Could it be… mainstream Christians?

Either we need to eliminate reading between the First Amendment’s lines, risking religious justification for all sorts of heinous acts, or we need to eliminate religion as a justification for any action. In other words, if an act is harmful, it’s harmful. If it’s not, it’s not. Religious conviction should not be able to adjust that fact.

—

UPDATE:

Believe it or not, my satire has manifested in reality.

From CNN:
Authorities arrest mom for medical neglect of 555-pound teen

South Carolina authorities have located a 555-pound teenager and his mother, who faces a charge of violating a custody order, police said Thursday.

obese-reality
Alexander Deundray Draper, 14, “is possibly at a stage of critical health risk,” social services said.

Alexander Deundray Draper, 14, of Travelers Rest, South Carolina, and his mother, Jerri Althea Gray, were located at about 4:30 p.m. near a laundromat in Baltimore, Maryland, by the Baltimore County Sheriff’s Office, said Matt Armstrong, a spokesman for the Greenville County Sheriff’s Office in Greenville, South Carolina.

…

“The understanding was that the individual was of the weight where it was decided by medical authorities that he needed treatment that was not being provided for by his mother,” Armstrong said.

Earlier in the day officials said the boy “is possibly at a stage of critical health risk.”

Gray was supposed to appear in family court Tuesday with her son and failed to do so, the sheriff’s office said. During the family court hearing, the boy was ordered into state custody because of medical neglect, as well as his mother’s failure to appear. The Department of Social Services then contacted the sheriff’s office, authorities said.

The warrant said Gray was served with papers Monday and told to report to court for a hearing in which the department would seek state custody of Draper. “The defendant has avoided the custody proceeding and has concealed the child,” the warrant says.

Wow. Or is this more satire? How can anyone be sure?

  1. Yes, this is satire. Yes, I have to say it. The real subjects of this insanity are Colleen and Daniel Hauser. Daniel has Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a highly curable form of cancer when treated with chemo and radiation. His parents did, in fact, reject chemo after only a single treatment, and now mother and son are on the run, and the court has issued an arrest warrant for her arrest. [<]
  2. Note that my perhaps even more subtle satire here deals with the fact that in the real case, the mother said that putting toxic substances in the body violates the family’s religious convictions. When I read the story, I wondered how much fast food the kid had eaten (and how much more he’ll be eating on the run). We’re constantly putting toxic substances in our bodies. Quite a bit of it is natural. What the mother really meant to say is that under circumstances of her choosing, she’ll allow her god to kill her child, because that’s what Jesus would do. Or Abraham. Or someone ancient. She shouldn’t interfere. Funny how she still manages to find a way to ingest food. You know, if God wanted her to survive, she wouldn’t have to eat food at all, or take any action whatsoever to preserve her own life. Fucking hypocrite. [<]

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Posted in Government, Law, Religion | 5 Comments »

February Friday Fun

Friday, February 27th, 2009

What kinda stupid stuff has the government been doing lately? Let’s find out on February Friday Fun.

First, we start off with the imbecilic local government in Clearwater, Florida, who first fined a store owner for having upon his store wall an image of a fish of the type that he sold in the store (violating a code against store owners having on display a depiction of something the store sells — uhm, that makes sense), and then was fined yet again for him covering it up with a naked picture of his wife! No, just kidding. Actually, he was fined again for covering it up with the U.S. Constitution. According to the St. Petersburg Times, the ACLU is suing the city of Clearwater, alleging that it has violated the shopkeeper’s First Amendment rights. Pshaw. What First Amendment?

What First Amendment?

Next, Vjack asserts that a qualified apology (a non-apology apology) isn’t really an apology, especially with respect to the kind of public apology that seems expected from those responsible for what is being claimed to be a racist cartoon. Although Vjack has his points (when doesn’t he?), the most interesting part of his article is the comments, which lean toward suggesting that an apology isn’t necessary at all. Particularly in cases where either the meaning is misunderstood, or if the would-be apologizer meant to do whatever it was that caused offense. I agree with Vjack that people should take responsibility for their actions, but I also don’t think that people should apologize for something non-existent caused by a misunderstanding, when there was no intent to do harm. But I mean that as a general principle — no “default” knee-jerk apologies; that doesn’t mean there aren’t cases where it’s in everyone’s best interest for someone to make a real, formal apology. Unfortunately, though, in this world, an apology, even when there’s no actual harm or intent to harm, is often perceived as pleading guilty, and it’s possible that the idea behind not giving a “real” apology is really just a way of saying, “Look, this isn’t what you think it is, and if I apologize for it, you’ll think you were justified in thinking it was what you think it is.” Apologies shouldn’t be evidentiary (except maybe while being interrogated by police), but they are.

This burns. Jesse at Rant & Reason brings to light the fact that a sole Colorado legislator voted against a bill that would require HIV tests for pregnant women (to ensure the health of the foetus/baby), specifically because HIV “stems from sexual promiscuity” and that he didn’t want to “remove the negative consequences that take place from poor behavior and unacceptable behavior.” What a crock! Read the article if you want to be further disgusted by the inhumanity of some of the idiots we elect to represent our interests.

As I re-Tweeted on Twitter the other day, Christopher Hitchens was on Lou Dobbs (no, not like that!), and I’ll let PZ Myers at Pharyngula give the rundown, because I’ve had a shitty week. The issue is the UN’s proposed resolution banning blasphemy. (It’d make it a crime in the U.S. to criticize religion (specifically Islam). WTF!). Fuck Islam. Fuck Mohammed, Muhammed, Muhammad, Mohinder, whomever. Where was that First Amendment again? Oh, that’s right, we don’t have one. Fifty-fucking-seven nations supporting this!?!? If it passes, the U.S. should leave the UN. “Universal human rights exist whether religion recognizes them or not,” says Hitchens. Woot.

Oh, hey, remember when I said that there’s no First Amendment? I meant that we civilians, we “people” don’t have First Amendment rights. Apparently, though, government entities do. WTF? According to The Legal Satyricon, the U.S. Supreme Court has unanimously held “that a city’s government has a right to decide which donated monuments to display on municipal property.”

Americans United for Separation of Church and State suggests dropping prayers and invocations at political rallies. “The only thing worse than having these prayers in the first place is to have them vetted, because it entangles the White House in core theological matters.”

And that’s it for this first and last edition of February Friday Fun, which is just some name I made up just now, because “Daily Dose” was just too alliterative for me.

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Posted in Government, Religion | No Comments »

Is the Work Week like Christian Life?

Wednesday, February 11th, 2009

We so desperately wait for the weekend. We trudge through the week as if it’s the most painful experience ever, and then we thank God it’s Friday, spending a few days doing whatever we can to squeeze in some down time, just so we can drag ourselves back to work again on Monday to replay the whole routine.

Of course, not everyone suffers that way. Some really enjoy their work weeks, and some have entirely different work schedules. However, it’s a widely known phenomenon, at least in the U.S., to dread the work week while longing for the weekend. Is there, then, a parallel between the work week and Christian life?

Christians trudge through life while constantly enduring the idea that they’re guilty of original sin that they, themselves didn’t commit, but for which they somehow feel responsible. Then they lay upon themselves (and others) a heap of additional sins for a multitude of acts generally related to pleasure, all with the idea that not to do so would threaten their chances of success in the afterlife.

Just like work weekers, they look forward to the end of suffering — the eternal weekend. Of course, the nice thing about a real weekend is that we actually get to experience it. We know first-hand that it exists, and how to get to it. And we know that it has an end (and we start over again — perhaps real life is more Hindu or Buddhist in structure). Christians, on the other hand, have not experienced eternal life. They don’t know first-hand that it exists (no, even if God whispers assurances in your ear, that’s still not first-hand). Perhaps these longings are somehow more than parallel. What if they’re related? Maybe after generations of toiling away at work that ultimately brings more work, more pain, and more suffering, the longing for relief has created in many minds a supernatural explanation for the ultimate question of “Why?” Why do we have to suffer — well, to get to the next weekend! To get to the weekend to trump all weekends, the afterweekend!

From the perspective of an everyday worker — coal miner, cashier, police officer, garbage collector — it’s not hard to imagine how and why that connection occurred between the toil of daily life that, from generation to generation, seems merely to repeat and end with death, and the hope of something more than that as, perhaps, a way to excuse or reward for the suffering.

So, how do non-believers deal with the prospect that things are exactly as they appear, that we work our butts off in life just to survive and possibly create a glimmer of happiness, only to end it all as worm food, with nothing else? I think the answer depends upon whether the non-believer was ever a believer. The pure atheists (I’ll just use that term for people who are born and raised without belief in a god, and have never experienced that belief) I’ve spoken with seem to love life. They endure the sufferings, but try to make life better for themselves and those around them. I don’t believe that they even consider an afterlife as a possibility — they deal with what they know or what they can know, and they don’t seem to expend any energy trying to manipulate what they cannot know.

Former believers, on the other hand, vary, usually depending on how deeply involved they were with their religions and how long it’s been since they’ve deconverted. Many I’ve spoken with have expressed a profound sadness at the loss of potential afterlife, as if even though they recognize and admit that there probably is no afterlife, it’s something that, when absent, creates a sort of empty spot in their psyche — suddenly, it seems, the reason and relief of suffering has disappeared, and there’s nothing to replace it. I, myself, felt that way for a while after my deconversion. I felt almost as if by not being willing to believe, I was sacrificing my chance at some eternal afterlife. An afterlife that I seriously doubted existed, but that I sincerely hoped did. I have relatives who would probably, if pressed, call themselves deist or agnostic, who, I think, still feel longing for an afterlife, for a heaven of some sort. I cannot condemn them for such longing.

It took me a long time to get over those feelings, and I’m honestly not sure I am completely devoid of them now. I don’t believe in an afterlife, and I certainly don’t believe some interventionist deity is judging my life in order to place me according to divine will into either some fiery pit or cottony heaven. As a matter of fact, I wouldn’t want that at all, even if by thinking it, I could make it happen. I’d much rather be the final arbiter of my own life — did I make this life worth it, or did I toil in a monotone assembly-line of day-to-day, week-to-weekend, decade-to-decade, life-to-death?

State of Protest

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Posted in Atheism, Religion | 4 Comments »

To Sue or Not to Sue… The President

Monday, December 29th, 2008

Camps are forming among the irreligious, based on Michael Newdow’s most recent attempt to break up the government-religious relationship — he’s suing President-elect Obama. Well, not directly, but effectively, through his lawsuit against the use of the term “So help me God” and inaugural prayer. Newdow and others claim that Obama and related officials should leave behind all semblance of religion when ascending the platform that will officially designate Obama as the next President of the United States.

Friendly Atheist is one prominent member of the camp that supports such a notion. He states:

There’s no reason Barack Obama should be swearing an oath to God when he takes office. (If he chooses to do so personally, that’s his decision, but it shouldn’t be part of the official ceremony.) There’s also no reason we should have prayers — in this case, Christian ones — at the inauguration.

Although Friendly Atheist believes that the lawsuit stands about the same chance as Newdow’s failed 2004 lawsuit of the same calibre, he thinks that the upside to such litigiousness is that it brings attention to the secular versus religious issue with regard to government.

On the other side of the aisle is Atheist Ethicist, arguing that because this is an issue of freedom of speech, it should not be fought with violence, but, instead, with speech. Violence, he says, because the court enforces its decisions with the force of the government (i.e., police), in the form of intimidation and sometimes actual force. The proper way to act in retaliation of the decision to meld the pulpit and the presidency is to condemn and criticize, but not prohibit the speech of others, particularly the president’s. Essentially, if we act through the courts to stifle the president’s ability to say a prayer or swear to God, then we make a mockery of our own arguments to protect our own right to not pray or swear to God.

Both arguments have valid points. It’s a good idea to bring to America’s attention that we haven’t always been a “Christian” nation, and that, as Friendly Atheist notes, our allusions to the biblical God were all fabricated and implemented fairly late in U.S. history. And it’s also proper for us to enforce the notion that government is supposed to be separate from religion, at least with regard to endorsement. On the other hand, it’s potentially risky to establish a precedent that we wouldn’t want applied to ourselves or to others, regardless of their belief.

I’ll add something to this. Obama won’t be passing any laws during the inauguration. The First Amendment protects us from Congress passing law respecting an establishment of religion. It’s got nothing to say about the president being sworn in by the Chief Justice, or about an invocation, or if the president-elect wants to wear a turban or a cross or a clown suit.

So, which argument is stronger? The one supporting the lawsuit or the one opposing it? Is there a limit to which rational people should go in pursuit of separation of church and state, and is this the limit?

-Procrustes

State of Protest

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Posted in Government, Religion | 7 Comments »

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