the brown rabbits will live to sully your mind another day.

I kinda let this one slip by me without pause for celebration, but it should be noted that, a couple of weeks ago, The Supreme Court shot down the Child Online Protection Act once and for all. And seriously? Thank your pan-theistic diety(s) of choice the First Amendment still means something around here.

COPA, on the surface, looks like an anti-internet porn law. Had it been upheld, it would have banned all *commercial* websites from posting any "material that is harmful to minors." Now, I'm not entirely clear on what "commercial" means as, these days, anybody who feels like earning an extra 17 cents per month can rent out ad space on his or her blog. And "material that is harmful to minors" is only the most vague phraseology the drafters of said Act could possibly have conjured (good little lawyers, they). But it does remain clear that the folks pushing this legislation really had no respect for the civil liberties of American private citizens whatsoever.

As I mentioned a couple posts ago, I got all bent out of shape when the Internet Dude accidentally turned on some porn-blocks on my building's system. On principal, I can't think of a single scenario in which it's OK to impede people's internet searching capabilities in their own homes... but I was even more irked when I discovered how much great stuff gets caught in the net when such systems send out their censorious little tentacles. For a whole weekend, I fumed over being denied access to all the blogs listed over there in my "In Which People Wax Erotic" blogroll. And that was just a weekend! Imagine the caterwauling you would have heard from me if the porn-blocks had been permanent!

Another problem is that it's not just sex blogs and tittie flicks that would get sloughed away in the blast this internet firehose of a law would let fly. Plaintiffs in this case included not only a sampling of queer-themed and gay rights sites, but also such mainstream media venues as Salon.com, The New York Times Co., and even Reuters. Doubtlessly, all these organizations saw red (and not red lights... never enough red lights.) when they realized that this law would prevent them from discussing sexuality on the internet for even non-prurient purposes.

Now, heaven knows, I'm not drawing any kind of line here-- far be it from me to say that it's OK to legislate actual internet porn, but not more "respectable" media explorations into sex. It's not appropriate at all for the government to interfere with the porn-viewing habits of private citizens. Or to prevent those same citizens from culling informative text about sex from the internet. And beyond that, I continue to fail to see how shielding children from all sexuality at all times, from every source available is a) possible or b) "protecting" them.

But I've said all this before. Over the course of three blogging years and myriad potty-mouthed posts.

Suffice it to say that, although this blog will never be considered "commercial," I still can't help but feel that this wise decision on the part of the Supreme Court protects me and my right to say whatever nasty thing I feel needs to be said in a public forum. And it protects my right to choose for myself the shape of my own internet. For that, I'm grateful.

And to that end, here're a couple celebratory dirty pictures:





("+" and "Ooooups" via Herr Buchta )

Why I wish old, fat Sicilian Republicans would stay the fuck out of my bedroom: An Open Letter to Justice Antonin Scalia

(I'm hoping this will be the final installation of this long series of muddled-thinkingish posts that I've been making about prostitution, and by extension, all victimless crime. As I think this gets at the heart of the matter, I'm hoping I can lay the issue to rest for a bit.)

Dear Your Honor,

It comes to my attention that you and I do not define morality in the same way. This troubles me because you, sir, are in a position to steer public policy in the direction of your definition far more expeditiously than I am. I am a lowly diletante-ish social commentator to an audience of a handful of friends. You are a Supreme Court Justice. I don't much like my definition's odds in that match-up. Do you?

Allow me to define moral behavior as I see it. It's really very simple. I think it's wrong to hurt people. That's it. That's the sum total of my dogma. If I were to extrapolate a little, I would concede that sometimes it's necessary to hurt other people, but in such cases as it's necessary, one should apply all due diligence to minimize the hurt inflicted. And one should also take responsibility, in whatever form it takes, for said inflicted hurts. Now, this guiding principle isn't so far off of the Biblical Golden Rule, "do unto others as you would have them do unto you." But my dad has always had what I think is a very wise and elegant spin on the Golden Rule. He's often said, "Do unto others as they would be done unto." And I think the distinction is, indeed, golden. Put another way, not everyone wants to run his or her life in the way that I run mine. Not everyone wants the same things I do. Therefore, it would be inconsiderate, indeed, to inflict my preferences upon a person who would not choose the same things for him or herself. Surely, you see my point.

To provide an example of how I see my idea of morality in action, I would like to describe how I feel about driving a car. As I see it, every time I put gas in my car, I'm inflicting pain on other people. Therefore, it is immoral of me to drive a car. Allow me to explain: in the short term, both American and Iraqi people are being killed so as to provide for my continued ability to purchase gasoline to fuel my car. It is oil money that's funding this war in which we're entrenched and, insomuch as I give my money to the oil industry (and worse, own stock in an oil company), I'm contributing to the deaths of those people. In the longer run, I'm contributing to the depletion of natural resources and the pollution of the Earth's atmosphere. Sooner or later, that's going to inflict pain on pretty much the entire population of this planet, as, collectively, we're working very hard to render it uninhabitable by human beings. And so, for driving a car, I feel considerable moral anguish. I am selfish, though, I would rather not get up at 4:30am in order to have time to take the shuttle from my condo complex to the metro station, take the metro into DC, and then take a bus into Georgetown for work every morning. And so, I keep my car until I can figure out a way to afford living and working nearer a metro station. This is what I consider "living in sin."

Your idea, Justice Scalia, of sin includes butt-fucking. And incest, adultery, polygamy, prostitution, masturbation, obscenity (whatever that means), using sex toys, and of course, everyone's favorite, same-sex marriage. Now I might entertain an argument for considering incest to be harmful to other people-- genetic mixing within a very small pool often leads to entirely avoidable birth defects in the spawn of such pairings, and, well, let's face it: most incestuous relationships include an adult and a child who is probably too young and too under the authoritarian thumb of said adult to have the capacity to consent to such activitities. In some circumstances, yes, adultery can hurt one or more people-- if multiple consents are not acquired prior to engagement in adulterous behavior. But can someone please pause for a cotton-pickin' minute to explain to me who gets hurt by jacking off? Or even by butt-fucking (aside, I mean, from whatever minor abrasions might befall the anal opening, of course)?

As per this article from The New Republic, it seems that your definition of morality continues to hold sway. "Morality" pertains to "public decency," whatever the hell that means. This article cites political theorist, H.L.A. Hart, saying that Hart "famously insisted that law could only ban immoral acts that caused tangible harm to others." Now, while Hart appears to be on the right track here, I would argue that there are no immoral acts that do NOT cause tangible harm to others. The tangible harm is, in fact, what makes an act immoral. Now, this article is basically arguing that the idea that "the promotion of morality [is] one of the government's most important duties" is not so passe as I might be inclined to hope. Its gist is that your response to the Lawrence v. Texas ruling that legalized butt-fucking ("This effectively decrees the end of all morals legislation.") was both preemptive and alarmist. And that might be true, except that butt-fucking isn't harm-causing and therefore isn't immoral and therefore has not a damn thing to do with "morals legislation."

Now, I would like to argue that your concept of morality does, in fact, hurt people and is therefore not moral at all. It is, in fact, completely immoral. Essentially, the laws that you position directly under that dubious umbrella of "moral legislation" all seek to restrict the private freedoms of American peoples. They seek to curtail our most basic civil liberties. The Declaration of Independence provides for our "inalienable rights:" "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." You remember, I'm sure. You, yourself, Your Honor, claim to prefer a most literal interpretation of legislation. So, what then if a person's idea of pursuing happiness includes butt-fucking? Or whoring? Or marrying someone of the same gender? How is the declaring of this so-called "moral" legislation valid something other than an intentionalist (as opposed to a textualist) interpretation of our government's inceptionary documents? Beyond that, how is denying a person their pursuit of happiness anything other than injuriously immoral?

I've written several motley and muddled blog posts about prostitution and how conflicted I feel about it not being legal. In truth, I recognize more than one facet of the issue-- to the point that I cannot definitively aver that prostitution is completely, totally, utterly 100% victimless. But, in an effort to remain true to my previously described coda, I think the greatest harm is inflicted via punishments to the women who claim this occupation. Please consult debauchette for more elucidation on that point.

Fundamentally, however, my feelings about prostitution are merely incidental to the heart of my argument. I've pussyfooted around this idea through the course of numerous posts. It's not really that I'm so terribly concerned about the fact that anti-prostitution legislation inflicts more terror and misery upon so many women-- many of whom are already disadvantaged. It's that I'm perfectly petrified that your idea of morality is already so codified into our legislature that it imposes itself upon my most basic liberties.

In the deepest, darkest recesses of my soul, maybe I'm not such a good little liberal after all. It seems that, the older and/or more informed I get, bigger and bigger chunks of my consciousness fall in line with the civil libertarians. A few years ago, I remember reading this very well-reasoned article in The Nashville Scene. It makes many, many good points. The article in its entirety is well worth reading, especially for folks of your ilk, Justice Scalia, but at the end of the piece, Roger Abramason, it's author, has this bit of advice for us bleeding hearts:

"If you are of a more liberal persuasion, the chances are that you think I'm only talking to social conservatives and their fellow travelers. Well, you're on the hook too. Because if we're going to truly start leaving people alone, that means we're going to have to actually leave people alone. We're going to have to let them make their own decisions, let them screw up on their own. And we're going to have to resist the compelling urge to use the government (there's that phrase again!) to pick the pockets of people who don't engage in self-defeating behaviors to compensate for those who do.

Because you can't have it both ways. You can't say that people should be left alone to behave the way they want but then make everyone else pay for the effects of that behavior. If, for instance, someone pisses away his check at the horse track, that's his own problem and not anyone else's. That means no assistance, no benefits, no nothing. Are you prepared to go that far? Because that's what leaving people alone means. If you're not prepared to go that far, then, to put it bluntly, you're not any better than the puritanical right. As the philosopher Erich Fromm once wrote, "if you want a Big Brother, you get all that comes with it." As for me, I'll pass.

I believe in personal responsibility. I really do. That's why I agree with Abramson when he says we need to refuse to allow our government to monitor private acts-- particularly as it pertains to sex. I may not agree with him when he advocates rescinding the benefits given to the underprivileged, but I do agree that much of that "morality legislation" discourages us from experiencing the natural consequences of our poor behavior. And I also believe that some of the things that you'd toss into that "poor (or stupid or disgusting or wrong or whatever) behavior" category seem perfectly acceptable to me. So, when you make laws that infringe upon my ability to take responsibility for my own actions, you're also infringing upon my basic freedoms. I resent the fuck out of you for that.

I'm not a child. You can trust me do to everything in my power to refrain from willfully inflicting harm upon my fellow humans. And if I can't refrain, I'll try really hard to mitigate the harm I can't help but inflict. I promise. That's not a burden I take lightly. All I ask is that you consider, even if it's just for a moment, that your respective concepts of right and wrong are, from an ethical standpoint, wholly arbitrary and based in an old-world religiosity to which many, if not most, Americans do not subscribe. And who are you to inflict your purely subjective and debatable ideas of morality on the rest of us? Who are you to contribute to law-making that restricts ALL of our behavior based on your very limited ideas of propriety? You are just one person, same as me.

Please. Just think about it.

Brownly and tanly yours,
M

(In my fantasy about Scalia reading this letter, he gets visibly uncomfortable, shifting his considerable heft in his over-sized leather desk chair, every time he reads the word "butt-fucking.")