How to Find Child Pornography on the Internet- Part II: a brief history of obscenity

Posted: May 20, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: XXX | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

It would be illegal to tell you, even if I knew. That’s right, according to the Supreme Court of the United States of America (SCOTUS), merely telling you how to get it would be against the law. Pandering. How did we as a country get here?

All links are to Wikipedia.

Way back in December of ninety-one (that’s 1791) the beloved Frst Amendment became a part of the bedrock upon which this nation was subsequently built. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” If you go in order of listing and interpret priorities from that, freedom of speech is our most important right, second only to freedom of (and from) religion.

The right to free speech has never been absolute. There are limits. Over the last two hundred-plus years SCOTUS has handed down decisions letting us know exactly what those limits are.

How many limits to free speech can you name? You probably know that it is illegal to yell FIRE in a crowded theater, but only on certain occasions. It is NOT illegal to do that when the theater is on fire.

Defamation, incitement to riot, false advertising- there are a few others, but not very many. SCOTUS has been extremely reluctant to abridge speech. Child pornography is speech, and it is very much abridged. How did we get here? Here is the abridged version.

What is speech? Speech is not just “talking.” Flag burning is speech, and in Eichman the right to engage in this type of speech was affirmed. This decision was in 1990- two hundred years after the right to free speech was ensconced. Eichman not only struck down the Texas law prohibiting US flag burning, it finally codified “expressive content” as speech (burning, e.g., not just talking). Pornography is expressive content.

But if expressive content is protected, what’s the problem with pornography? Well, thanks to Robert Eli Stanley, nothing. You have a constitutionally protected right to privately possess porn, based on the first amendment AND fourteenth (commerce). (Justice Hugo Black even threw in the fourth- search and seizure.) Up until Stanley in 1969, Roth had been the major obscenity case. If something were obscene, it was not protected speech. This obscenity principle will come into play decades later regarding child pornography, which is not protected today even if it is not obscene. But we get ahead of ourselves.

Stanley (remember Stanley?) had been arrested for private possession of rolls of film and a projector, all of which were in his own home, the films resting in a drawer under some socks. They were found on a search warrant for something else. There’s a whole other question of whether search warrants constitute the right of law enforcement to go on a fishing expedition, but that is the topic for some other blog. What was decided in Stanley was that possession of pornography for private use was A-OK.

Remember I said that previous to Stanley, it had been Roth? Roth (the man) published a quarterly journal called American Aphrodite, which included photographic images of nude and scantily-clad women, and sent it out through the mail- the United States Postal Service. Roth (the case) affiirmed that the government could ban obscenity, but narrowed the definition of obscenity from what it had been. In other words it made it more difficult to prove something was obscene, but once proven, it could still be banned- completely. That was in 1957; the last time obscenity had been defined for legal purposes before that was exactly one hundred years. In England. The Obscene Publications Act.

The two things that must be mentioned as part of this ancient history lesson before we rejoin the drama that has been occurring in our (and/or our parents’ lifetimes) are these: Regina v Hicklin and The Comstock Act. The Obscene Publications Act was the greatest thing since the Vagrancy Act. The big test of it came when Hicklin published a pamphlet talking about how Catholic priests were misusing the confessional booth to get women to speak and act in obscene ways. Ironically, the pamphlet was deemed obscene, and Hicklin remained the test for obscenity for a long time hence, carrying over into the Colonies and beyond.

You might remember Comstock as being associated with Birth Control and Abortion. In addition to Obscenity, it outlawed the sending of contraceptives through the mail, or even information about contraceptives and abortion. Comstock was generally understood to uphold the Hicklin Test s the basis for determining if something were obscene, but in Rosen it was made official.

On April 24, 1893, Lew Rosen in New York mailed or caused to be mailed (to George Edwards in New Jersey) a twelve-page booklet of text and pictures about a woman in a cab, the cab, the driver of the cab, and the horse. It was considered so obscene, it wasn’t even admitted into evidence (at least not at the SCOTUS level). So, Rosen v United States reaffirmed precedentially that obscenity existed, and that banning it was legal and for the public good based on the Hicklin test of whether something could “deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences.” That was historical definition Number 1.

Definition Number 2 was Roth:

Roth repudiated the Hicklin test and defined obscenity more strictly, as material whose “dominant theme taken as a whole appeals to the prurient interest” to the “average person, applying contemporary community standards.” Only material now meeting this test could be banned as “obscene.”

So, it was Rosen that validated Comstock and enshrined the Hicklin test which was based on English Law, but it was Roth that later changed it. We’ve gone from obscenity being anything that could deprave an already weak person to using average people and the standards in their communities as being the best judge.

Enter Miller. (Don’t get me started on Memoirs v Massachusetts.) Fanny Hill.
Miller v California 1973 is a very interesting case. SCOTUS affirmed the lower court, and so held that Miller was guilty of mailing obscenity, but went on to refine the definition of obscenity, thus changing things from then on. The definition morphed once again, this time from “Community Standards” (Roth) to the Miller Test.

The Miller test was a three-pronged standard which built on Roth but included the additional criteria, all three of which needed to be met:

1) Whether “the average person, applying contemporary community standards”, would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest,
2) Whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by applicable state law,
3) Whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.

By applying greater definition to the “Community Standards”… er, standard, it actually opened the door- some might say floodgates- to a far greater number of prosecutions for obscenity in the years subsequent than had been brought in years previous.

Miller in 1973 brings us up to the Sexual Revolution. Some might say that it drops us smack-dab right in the middle of it. The most popular pornographic film of all time Deep Throat came out in 1972. The Miller Test was used in the obscenity trial of Deep Throat.

Fast forward (about a decade) to New York v Ferber.

Approximately two hundred years after the country’s founding the highest court in the land is specifically addressing child pornography head-on. Finally! (Though not for the final time.) In 1982 SCOTUS says in Ferber that child pornography does not have to be obscene in order to be speech unprotected by the first amendment. States may criminalize the manufacture, sale, distribution, and possession of child pornography even if it is not obscene by the Miller test. Even if a bunch of average people agree- however reluctantly- that a particular work of child pornography has merit, a state may still ban it. The court offered the follwing four reasons why states might want to do so (plus a kicker):

1.The government has a very compelling interest in preventing the sexual exploitation of children.
2.Distribution of visual depictions of children engaged in sexual activity is intrinsically related to the sexual abuse of children. The images serve as a permanent reminder of the abuse, and it is necessary for government to regulate the channels of distributing such images if it is to be able to eliminate the production of child pornography.
3.Advertising and selling child pornography provides an economic motive for producing child pornography.
4.Visual depictions of children engaged in sexual activity have negligible artistic value.
5.Thus, holding that child pornography is outside the protection of the First Amendment is consistent with the Court’s prior decisions limiting the banning of materials deemed “obscene” as the Court had previously defined it. For this reason, child pornography need not be legally obscene before being outlawed.

I find #5 to be a tad confusing. It seems to say that child pornography is not protected because it is obscene, and therefore it does not have to be considered obscene to be unprotected. Huh? (Associate Justice Byron White wrote the majority opinion.)

My cognitive limitations aside, what strikes me about this pentasyllogism is that it explains how merely having and looking at images is harmful. The claim that simple possession is very different from production or distribution (remember Stanley?) does not hold. My inference is that even if adults who acted or posed in adult pornography are harmed by the mere viewing of that pornography by others later, the adult(s) depicted were capable of legally choosing to be depicted.

I’m not done, but we’re going to have to stop there for now. There’s lots more to come. We still have Ashcroft, PROTECT, and Williams to get to, et al. There’ll have to be a Part III.

Let me wrap this up by referencing the Wikipedia page having to do with laws around the world regarding child pornography. Some nation-states criminalize the production, sale, and distribution of it, but not the possession for personal use; they’re legally stanleyfied. It seems that we here in the USA should have figured all this out a long time ago, but it takes as long as it takes.

In Part III we will finish the eighties, cover the nineties and zerozies, and catch up to today in the teens.

But first: Did you notice that child pornography is legal in Uganda? Isn’t that one of the countries where homosexuality is punishable by death? And how about New Zealand? Just clicking on a “YES” button on a page that says, “If you click yes to go to the next page you will see child pornography” is apparently enough to get you busted even if there was no child pornography on the next page! And Russia? It’s legal! Japan, too! Denmark, no, contrary to the reputation it enjoys. Sweden? No; it was illegal, then legal, then illegal again.

And just as no discussion of child sexual abuse is complete without discussing child pornography, so too must child prostitution and sex trafficking of minors be brought into the conversation. You can’t be “against” one and “for” another; they are all abuse, and they are all connected.

This series stops short of condemning all adult pornography and prostitution, though it is hard to make the case that those things are good, and very easy to make the case “con.” For now they must be classified as future post fodder.

And it is not just a problem in some of these United States (all), but it is a worldwide problem. Just as how different laws in different states here sometimes create cross-border migration, clearly the differences in laws among nation-states are creating that on an international scale today as well.

If you are only here to find out how to find child pornography on the internet, my best advice would be to find someone online whom you think has some, and just ask. But before you do that, google “child pornography arrest” and read about the thousands and thousands of people who have been arrested in their homes for having it on their computer. Most of those folks made contact with a member of law enforcement and got a lot more than what they wanted. Some had collected hundreds of thousands of images of child sexual abuse and videos, but others had less than a dozen. It only takes one.

And please check back for Part III; the reason for making this into a series is the phenomenal popularity of Part I (relative to the other posts here- very modest numbers, but still).

You Must Change One of Your Core Beliefs. Yes, You.

Posted: May 18, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: XL | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment
    This is a flowchart
  1. Worldview/ Soul/ Subconscious
  2. Core Beliefs
  3. Opinions, Perceptions, Biases, Addictions, Preferences…
  4. Feelings
  5. Action and Activity

This flowchart is extremely useful. It explains that our actions are a natural result of our thoughts and feelings. Make a change at any level, and everything below that changes.

You are free to believe whatever you want to believe, think whichever deep or mundane thoughts please you, feel however you feel, but when it comes to observable behavior, that’s everybody’s business. Even in nation-states that are very repressive, you may think subversive and treasonous thoughts all day long, just don’t behave them.

Our legal system here in the USA mostly has to do with behavior. Sure, there is the concept of mens rea, which distinguishes a stabbing from a surgery based on intent, but it really comes down to actions. Hate your neighbor all you want, just don’t stab him… without a license.

We all want as much freedom as possible. Certainly we want to hold whatever beliefs we do, as well as think and feel according to… well, according to those beliefs. There’s a part of each of us that would love the freedom to do whatever we want to do, but most of us have accepted that each of our freedom to do must be balanced with everyone else’s freedom not to be done to.

That’s a nice theory, but it is a very messy practice. Every day all kinds of folks decide that they are going to appropriate rights for themselves that they fully understand society accords them not. They break the law.

Our society tolerates an enormous amount of lawlessness in the name of freedom.

What if we could all still be free, but no one would break the law?

People who don’t want to break the law, i.e., hurt another person, are still free. They are exercising their freedoms responsibly. They are not merely controlling a desire to hurt others, they don’t have the desire to hurt others in the first place. There are some people who do not have any desire to hurt, exploit, take advantage of, or trample the rights of anyone else. That core belief is just not there.

Core beliefs are learned. A better term is that they are taught. A still more precise term would be to say they are installed. If a society can install one set of beliefs, it can install a different set. But since it is the society that would be doing it, it would need to be a different society in order to produce a different outcome. And you can’t create the alternate outcome without alternate input. (The only way out of the Army is to be crazy, but you would have to be crazy not to want to get out of the Army… so you have to stay because your insanity is a normative response. Apologies to Joseph Heller)

One very easy way to stop child sexual abuse would be to stop any kind of abuse of anyone.

We could do this (stop all abuse) not on the level of behavior (stop hitting him), not on the level of feeling (take a deep breath so you can calm down and won’t have to hit him), not on the level of thoughts (don’t hit these guys over here, hit those guys over there), but on the level of core beliefs (hitting is always wrong).

Once you have a core belief, you are completely free to act any way you wish to according to that core belief. You do not perceive that you have given up any freedom, you are acting freely according to your convictions. What you don’t understand is that your convictions aren’t yours; they are someone else’s that were installed in you. All core beliefs are installed; none were “freely” chosen.

How do you know who you are? Someone told you! 99% of who you think you are is messages that you internalized about how you were (and are) supposed to think, feel, and behave.

A morality born of love for others- love for one’s neighbor that is as great as love for one’s self- has no need of the law.

There are some who say that the instinct for self-preservation is the ground of our being; that any moral, economic, or political system that does not start there cannot be considered rational. How can we take seriously any system that does not recognize the age old fight for survival- a fight that has always involved inequality. According to this core belief, love of neighbor is great but must always be trumped by love of self. (Apologies to Ayn Rand.)

It depends on what the unit of survival is. Survival of whom… or what?

Up until this moment in human history the old core belief that it was OK to abuse some people worked well enough. To be sure it had definite disadvantages for those that were abused. (It also had less obvious disadvantages for the abusers.) Claims can be made that quality of life has gone up, albeit unevenly.

Claims can also be made that it has always been this way. The Holy Bible starts out with the very first two humans on earth having two children, only to have one of those brothers rise up and slay the other one! (“O, my offence is rank. It smells to heaven. It hath the primal eldest curse upon’t, A brother’s murder!” Hamlet)

Even Greek mythology starts out with the Olympics of Dysfunctional Families. The scene starts with Gaea the Earth. Then Uranus the Sky and Gaea the Earth fell in love. One thing led to another and Gaea became Mother Earth. All subsequent living things on Gaea loved their mother and feared their father. The first six children Gaea had were the Titans. (They married six Titanesses, natch.) Cronus, the youngest and strongest Titan, battled his father Uranus and won! (Uranus had been quite a butthole.) Gaea then went and married Pontus, the boundless seas. During the rule of Cronus, mortal men did not kill nor steal from each other. But Cronus was kind of a butthole, too. He was afraid that one of his sons would do to him what he had done to his own father. So every time his Titaness wife Rhea gave birth, he swallowed the little Godlet. He had five in his tummy, when out of Rhea’s tummy came a sixth. This time, however, she managed to hide her child from Cronus, giving him a rock wrapped in a blanket to swallow instead of the baby Zeus. Zeus grew up and successfully overthrew his father with more help from Rhea, et al (και άλλοι). There was a period of struggle for power, but eventually things calmed down again and Zeus ruled. Zeus shared power with eleven other Gods, and chose Hera, his youngest sister, to be his queen. Zeus loved Hera, but had a lot of other wives and liked to go down to greece disguised as a mortal to take human wives from time to time. Hera was very jealous; even Zeus, who was more powerful than all the other Gods combined, was afraid of her temper.

I could go on and on. Hera tries to catch him in the act, etc, and does. The point is that right from the get-go, there’s been fratricide, incest, infantophagea, divorce, spousification, dungeons and torture chambers, deceit….

Where are the myths where there was no fall of man, no titanic screw-ups setting us all on the wrong course ever since? Where is the myth where everyone who was around in the beginning had core beliefs that valued their neighbors’ interests on a par with their own?

Perhaps the world is supposed to be screwed up! Perhaps the world will always be screwed up and that is what the world is for! If the world were not screwed up, it would be heaven.

So, to get back to the Randian question of “What constitutes survival?” it seems that an identification of the individual as the unit of survival only leads to chaos, as illustrated in various creation myths as well as the history of civilization. Certainly, some individuals do manage to survive in this model, for a time. I believe there needs to be two other elements added to this “unit of survival” definition in order to make it rational: Society and Environment.

I will forego a lengthy defense of these, only saying that all three- the individual, society, and the environment- should be weighted equally in any rational morality.

Either there is an afterlife or there isn’t.

  • Some people claim that if there is no supernatural realm, then morality is a cruel hoax perpetrated on the weak and ignorant. Without any Divine justice, anyone can just do whatever they want.
  • Others claim the very opposite- that it is the fantasy of a supernatural existence that is the crux of all our problems! If people would get their feet on the ground and their heads out of their asses, we could make some progress on real world concerns.

These are core beliefs and not both can be true; well, not both completely true, but what if they were each somewhat true. This is the psactampa unifying theory of everything.

This explains why Unity North Tampa Church (of metaphysical spiritual Christianity) might have a hard time dealing with a potential threat to the children in the church, and why a Baptist church down the street and a Catholic church around the corner might have the same problem. It explains who needs to change, how and why.

If you think that what happens in this world doesn’t matter because:

  1. Only your life with God in heaven along with the other chosen few matters, or
  2. This world is not real because matter doesn’t matter/ only Spirit is real, or
  3. There is only this world and this one life, so take all you can while you can, then

you are wrong. If you agree with any of those three, then you are the problem. You are contributing to an unsustainable morality, and you need to change at least one core belief- the one listed with which you agreed. I am going to tackle the second one because it is nearest and dearest to the heart of psactampa.

You may not use spirituality as an excuse for egoism. Oh, OK, go ahead.

Of course everyone freaks out when they learn that we create (co-create) reality with our consciousness. What was your first thought when you heard that? “I’m going to create a billion dollars!” Or maybe you wanted a massage for an hour once a week. Maybe you’re a parent of young children and you just wanted an hour, and that’s as far as it went! The key to understanding this isn’t so much that you can have what you want, but that what you have is a perfect expression of what you believe you should get. Your life circumstances reflect (“express” is more accurate, as they are emanating from you) perfectly your core beliefs. So… why not change your core beliefs and manifest that dream car? Make it a knowing/having/deserving car instead.

As long as you’re changing core beliefs so you can get that car, take a look at the other core beliefs. We attract what we give energy to with our thoughts, feelings and convictions. Are we attracting threats because of old fears?

Are we attracting threats?

Unity philosophy and being a victim are incompatible. People get hurt because they attract harm by giving energy to negative thoughts, feelings and beliefs. people who are victimized brought it on themselves- or spiritually volunteered for it- by what they co-created energetically. All consquences are just feedback from the universe letting you know if what you are doing is getting what you are wanting. If you don’t want to be attacked, stop believing in- giving energy to the thoughtform of- attack.

So if someone is victimized, what does the Unity practitioner do? Loves everyone, and reaffirms the wholeness (and holiness) of the person who perceives themselves to have been hurt. Prevention and risk mitigation are fundamentally contrary to the philosophy of Unity. To guard children agains abuse, it would require a belief in abuse, as well as giving energy to the whole thoughtform of victimization happening in the church. You see?

 Victimization in the Unity church can only happen if we believe it can happen, so don’t think about it!

But if they don’t think about it, plan against it, educate and train themselves regarding it, then they are leaving the children wide open to exploitation. Or would all that just be energetically attracting an abuser? Maybe what makes the children most vulnerable is worrying about abuse. Perhaps children are best served by thinking only happy thoughts, and then teaching them to stay happy and positive after abuse. (Sarcasm alert!)

It’s a pickle! Unity folks are already all about changing core beliefs in order to make their lives and the world a better place. They are way better at it than atheists and other religions, imho. But it is exactly this culture of giving everybody the benefit of the doubt, thinking happy thoughts all the time- and being each other’s coaches to help in doing the same, and transcending more traditional models of institutional structure that are so often seen as unnecessarily limiting that lays the groundwork for a child sexual abuser to use a Unity church as the perfect hunting ground.

Nobody ever has to confront anyone else because there are no enemies except one’s own limiting beliefs!

Even if one buys into the idea shared by so many Unity people (and other New Thoughters and New Agers) that the Soul is real, while the body and the Earth not so much, there is still a purpose to one’s being created and a reason for incarnating onto this plane of existence. How can we say to the children that we didn’t protect them from a sexual molester because we were too busy being spiritual? That’s obscene! That’s the same evil that pastors and priests have been using to prey on children for centuries, but with a new-age twist.

It is possible to be so spiritual that you’re no earthly good.

“No one is criticising the Dalai Lama for being spiritual and not crusading against child sexual abuse.”

  1. You’re not the Dalai Lama. (If you are, well, “Hello, Dalai!”)
  2. He gets a ton of criticism and always has. Every leader does, especially spiritual ones.
  3. If you want to handle crimes differently than the rest of society, congratulations, you are a cult.

I understand that you want society to be more like you. Guess what? So does everyone else! (It’s like being a foodie.) Pedophiles actually lead the way in being convinced that society is fundamentally wrong. If you have a good record in this area, the burden is on you to prove it.

  • Otherwise you are just another church that teaches that being in denial of things you don’t like is the best way to function.
  • Otherwise all the advice to trust one’s intuition, inner guidance, and higher self is just bullshit.
  • Otherwise the only thing you are transforming is a society of laws against childhood sexual abuse into a playground for abusers.
  • Otherwise you are hypocrites- the one form of life lower than a molester.

Balancing the Evil of Sex Abuse with the Good that Sexual Abusers Do

Posted: May 14, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: S | Tags: , , , , , , | Leave a comment

ImageOne thing that you hear a lot when a minister, teacher, or coach- especially if it is a coach who created a foundation to help disadvantaged youth- gets busted for child sexual abuse is that bad things the person did should be weighed against the good.

Ministers who help countless people in a variety of ways can always count on some of them to come forward and put in a good word. Teachers who are beloved by the students and did so much for the community can count on some to focus only on the good. Coaches like Jerry Sandusky, who created the Second Mile Foundation ostensibly to help kids, can always count on some not to understand that the whole reason for creating the foundation in the first place was to get other human service organizations to funnel vulnerable children right to him!

For some predators their whole public life is a role play which enables the more private part- the child sexual abuse- to happen. What if they do some good during their public life? What if, while faking being good, they actually do good?

This post proposes that we separate the action from the motivation. Any good actions may stand as good, but any good intentions must be stripped from the molester. It would be- and is whenever it happens- atrocious to suggest that the fake front an abuser presents to the world is in any way indicative of redeeming moral character.

Do not insult victims of childhood sex abuse by explaining to them that their attacker is basically a good person. If the attacker really is a good person, he (or she) will spend the rest of his life making amends, not running and hiding.