Poverty eradicated, Cancer cured, the respective Wars on Terror and Drugs already won, our government’s new kick is to charge pornographers with indecency. (H/T: Agitator.) Yes, your tax dollars, hard at work, arresting people for porn. Not child porn. Adult-porn. Made by adults. Sold to adults. The “I can’t define indecency but I’ll know it when I see it” argument defies even the loosest standard of objectivity, upon which laws in a free society are to supposed to be based.
Any “indecency” law outlawing a qualitative assessment of a given action. Sex is not outlawed, only some types of sex, under some circumstances, at some places, sometimes. On the contrary, murder is always against the law. Everyone knows what murder is, and it’s the same for everyone, whereas, everyone’s standards of what is and is not decent varies to some extent. With murder, even if you don’t believe it’s wrong, you still understand what it is, and that it is illegal. The same black-white distinction cannot be made about “indecency.”
Something about personal liberty, privacy… voluntary association, trade, consentuality – …. must… repress … classical liberal notions of freedom…
An an indictment unsealed yesterday, Five Star Video, LLC, of Tempe, Arizona, and Phoenix residents Christopher Warren Ankeney and Kenneth James Graham were charged with four counts of using an interactive computer service to sell and distribute DVDs containing obscene matter – identified as “Gag Factor 18,” “Filthy Things 6,” “Gag Factor 15″…
According to the indictment, JM Productions and Norton distributed to Five Star via UPS various obscene films in DVD format that were in turn sold and distributed to the public by Five Star, Ankeney and Graham via UPS and the mails.
If convicted, the defendants face a maximum penalty of five years in prison on each of the obscenity counts
Setting aside the various constitutional and/or ethical issues at stake here, I think this press release leaves at least one question unanswered.
What happened to “Gag Factors 16 & 17” ?
