Written Word Prosecuted for Obscenity
Folks, i’m not here to deliver unto you a history lesson. I’m not here to explain the ins and outs of the american judicial system, but I’ll summarize a little bit of the important stuff for you.
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.
Lets focus a while on that ‘free speech’ section and that ‘press’ section.
In the 200+ years that America has been around one thing has been upheld by the courts again and again and again, that is the freedom of the written word. When the written word was considered ‘obscene’ by some and tried in court, the first amendment always came to the rescue. I’m no lawyer and can site no cases, but i’m sure one of you good folks can.
Fast foward to the bush’s administration, its time for the written word to be challenged again. It seems the FBI task force on obscenity has challenged a STORY website, which contained NO obscene pictures of any type;
According to a posting on the site’s main page, Red Rose Stories is facing obscenity charges for posting stories that allegedly involved bestiality, water sports, scat, bondage and domination, S&M, slavery, threesomes, orgies and sex with children.
According to Rosie, who runs the site, such topics have opened the door to her prosecution.
“Trust me on this. I found out the hard way. I never thought I’d be in trouble for the written word,” Rosie told XBiz via email. “I had no pictures of a sexual nature on my site, adult or otherwise. [It seems] the only legal sex stories are those that involve a man and a woman consenting to missionary position sex in a dark room.”
Now dont get me wrong here folks. I do NOT condone sex with kids. I dont condone stories about it. I dont condone rape fantasy or anything else of that nature. I dont sell it, i dont distrubite it, I dont link to it, I dont want it as a part of my life.
But what I do want is to know that the written word is safe. I want to know that if I wanted to write about a love afair between two consenting 16 year olds it would be safe. I want to know that if I wanted to write about an abuse survivor who was raped as a child I dont have to worried about being censored. I want to know that if a man rapes a woman somewhere in this great country of ours that CNN wont be afraid to report it, or afraid to share the details.
That’s the point of that amendment. That’s the point of freedom of speech.
It is a part of the course of the constitution that sometimes we are forced to protect even the slimiest and worst of us all. You have to stand up for the worst examples so that the milder examples dont become the worst examples. You have to fight for the most extreme freedoms in order to maintain the most conservative ones. Thomas Jefferson knew this. He wrote of it many times. Many of our forefathers did.
So, when in the course of our country these things happen I am encouraged to fight it, to spread the word. I hope that you feel the same.
The article as written by xbiz. Take a look.
I hope that this goes right up to the supreme court and I hope those good folks shit all over this bust, I really do.
I want to know that tomorrow if I want to say that Dick Cheney is a cocksucker or President Bush likes it up his shitter that I’m free to do so.
Even as I type those words and get ready to hit publish there is a twinge of fear. A twinge of guilt. That’s not freedom. The idea of the FBI knocking on my door because I said that Bush and Cheney are cockbuddies breaks my heart, it truly does.
Especially since I’m pretty sure they tug each others junk from time to time.
October 10th, 2005 at 6:58 pm
Pretty fucked up, indeed. The United States used to be a free country. With those fascist perverts running it, it has taken a big step back. Back to … I’m not sure it has been as nutty before, except for a few periods of prohibition and communist witch hunts. Well, back to the puritan times of the 1850s, I’d say. The founding fathers, on the other hand, would rotate in their graves if they saw how their constitution has been subverted.