From the mentality that gave us "don't ask, don't tell."

Teacher arrested under peeping-tom law - Yahoo! News

Ware was charged under a 2001 law meant to protect people from ultra-small cameras that can be used to peek into dressing rooms or up women's skirts. Under the law, filming a person without consent for sexual arousal is a felony.

...but merely watching teenagers wrestle and perform gymnastics in skintight Lycra fetish gear is perfectly OK - as long as you refrain from obviously masturbating.

Every time the Olympics or Pan-Am games comes around, we are treated with front-page crotch shots of apparently pre-pubescent gymnasts, who's fan bases sound as if they are not entirely unaffected by the Reuters-supplied "upskirt" images.

While it's admittedly impressive that these hormonally-depleted dwarfs can plant their tushies on their cutely pigtailed heads while doing a hand-stand, a side-view would be more impressive and less... suggestive.

But then, American Anti-pornography laws have always seemed to be less concerned with protecting women and children from sexual exploitation and more concerned with the social threat of calling attention to the plight of the exploited. So we all are supposed to pretend that there is no possibility that anyone looking at such displays of sweaty hard bodies rubbing against one another and posing to display their perfectly sculpted backsides would ever, ever cause the minds of good Church-going PTA members to stray. Proof to the contrary - as the above story shows - is entirely unwelcome!

Under current law, you can get far more time for possessing photographic evidence of a child being raped than for actually raping the child. Believe it or not. The penalty in law for raping your OWN child is often far lower than if you molest another person's child. But preserving evidence of EITHER act - that's FAR worse. You might make use of it in some socially-unapproved way, like, say, busting a child rapist.

It makes me question the legislative intent, and this new law causes me to wonder even more, along with the real (as opposed to the touted) morality of our nation.

I've been through the wars on this issue, from nearly every angle. I spent several years working in the capacity of online councilor with people who had grown up being molested and raped every day, people who finally broke down under the pressure of not being able to talk about it, people who faced crushing scorn and disbelief from entire organizations dedicated to spreading the idea that any allegation of incest was either the lie of a spiteful child or a therapeutically-suggested "false memory."

And the whole time there was a flood of evidence over in alt.pictures.binaries.erotica.children.

But it's illegal for a survivor of such an event to have a photo proving that it occurred, much less computer records of the sort of search needed to find one, that's right out. "It's MY picture" is not an exception under the law, making this the one sort of crime where a search for evidence of a crime is in itself a crime. I find it increasingly difficult to believe this is an unintentional situation, especially in light of Right-Wing Christianist movements to legitimize and sanctify their patriarchal "ownership society," in which women and children can legally be kept isolated from any reality checks. This is why I'm deeply suspicious of the motives behind most homeschooling movements and most voucher programs. I've seen the alternatives they recommend as being more godly or "accurate." And I thought a public education was an exercises in badly presented social propaganda.

Prudery kills. Toxic secrecy kills. If you disbelieve me, check the suicide statistics for abuse survivors. Or spend an hour a week manning a suicide hot line.

It's a hell of a price to pay for the benefit of those folks who would prefer to believe that we ever lived in Mayberry.

tag: covert pornography, sexual ethics, Morality, Ethics, Republican Values, pornography laws, prudery, patriarchy