More Internet (and Cell Phone) Sex Policing
Thursday, March 26th, 2009 by Harry LewisThere is a move afoot in Massachusetts to — well, it’s hard to tell from the early reports what exactly the legislation would do. Perhaps to punish people who abuse the elderly and the disabled; perhaps to ban pornography involving the elderly and the disabled. Who knew? I certainly didn’t, but an accompanying sidebar in the Herald reports that 20% or more of Japanese porn involves the elderly, and says ‚Ķ well, I will just quote the headline: “‘Wheelchair vamp dwarf’ porn is big business online.”
The problem is the casualness with which the officials quoted — one District Attorney, one a state representative — are ready to lump these forms of pornography in with child pornography. “Kind of a no-brainer,” says the state rep. Maybe a law is needed here somewhere, but please DO try to use your brain. Child pornography has extremely serious penalties, and is illegal to possess, on the logic that a child can never be a willing participant in the creation of the pornographic material — something plainly not true for the elderly and the disabled. (If child pornography is purely synthetic, so no children were abused to produce it, it may actually be legal. Unless it’s obscene, the problem with child pornography is not with adults seeing it, it’s with what had to be done to produce it.) Frankly, I doubt that any more laws are warranted. Harvey Silverglate has it right:¬†‚ÄúIt seems to be the latest in a long effort to broaden the definition of obscenity. We‚Äôve already got (laws) against coercion. Why is that not adequate?‚Äù
Certainly the morals police are at work in Pennsylvania, where schools are seizing cell phones, looking for naughty photos on them, and then coercing the students depicted in those photos into re-education camps about sexual evils. Some students are fighting back:¬†Students Sue Prosector in Cellphone Photos Case. These students are taking some risks, because of the severity of child pornography laws; like defendants in copyright cases, there is an overwhelming incentive to accept whatever deal is offered rather than go to trial, even if — as this story claims — the photos are in some cases nothing worse than a couple of girls at a slumber party, shown from the waist up, wearing bras. (Ah, says the prosecutor, but he, at least, found the photos “provocative.”)
And do we really think it should be part of the schools’ job in “protecting” its students to go through everything on their cell phones? Of course, that is nothing less than any U. S. border guard could do, under orders issued by the Department of Homeland Security under the Bush administration. (How about repealing that one, Mr. Obama?) Is this the way of life we want our children to grow up accepting as normal — even as good?