Yes, you know who I am talking to, pornophiles! Those who even occasionally DL porno from web sites, even at work. Well, your days are numbered if the Mittster and his minions get into power, and drag us all back to the days of the GOP Taliban. Not only will these "small government" conservos seize or outlaw contraceptive devices, or make them unaffordable - but they'll also be invading your bedroom, family rooms, and computers to seize all porn that doesn't meet their standards - i.e. passing all "obscenity" tests.
The word is out, and evidently (unlike most U.S. media sources) Reuters got wind of it first: To wit, the Republican Party added the following to its party platform: “Current laws on all forms of pornography and obscenity need to be vigorously enforced.”
"Vigorously" opens up questions concerning the scope and intensity of prosecutions for the Reepo -driven Feds, but a good idea is to recount what transpired under the two former Bush regimes: Bush I, and II. In the first case, an excellent CBS '48 Hours' from 1991 investigated the scope of federal (e.g. FBI, LAPD) investigations and also featured actual interviews with agents on what they were looking for and what they deemed "obscene" or unlawful. (One guy said any film or video showing a woman with a rope on any part of her merited the 'full hammer of the law'). The other suit laughed when asked what he thought about porn being a "victimless crime". He said that "in his book" there was no such thing. Somewhere, some poor female was being roped into doing this nasty stuff (no pun intended).
Then, under Bush Jr. the federal anti-porno "Kraken" was unleashed again to go after whoever the Bushie moralists deemed fit to prosecute. A useful legal artifact from Bush II-era prosecutions is the Cambria List, created in January 2001, after Bush was inserted into power (by 5 Supremes) laid out by adult industry lawyer Paul Cambria. It details the sex acts that Cambria advised pornographers to avoid in order to prevent prosecution. Any porno film makers around if the Romney zombies get in would do well to revisit it, as well as any putative porn consumers.
Basically, the basis of the Cambria list encompasses what Salon. com columnist Tracy Clark- Flory refers to as "current hallmarks of the industry" - mainly anything at all disclosing or showing "fluids" in any form whatever. These sort of infractions ("felonies") would get you 5 years in the pen and a $250,000 fine. Hence, all bukkake would be outlawed as well as any spitting (even for use as a lubricant) and milk-lactation too. Thus, anyone caught with so much as one downloaded photo of a woman expressing milk from a breast could face the maximum. A video would be even worse. The GOP high-minded moralizers, like Paul Ryan and Todd Akin (authors of H.R. 3805) have no problem denying abortion to a woman that's been raped and thereby ultimately has to be subjected to lactation too, they just don't want the latter shown, period.
This is assuming they prosecute "vigorously" as they insist from their plank they will. And what about the economic cost? Evidently, it doesn't matter - even 1.2 million part time and full time jobs - so long as the moral crusade is a success. What is essentially a $4.9 billion a year industry (according to Flory-Clark's sources) would be decimated. Likely the only survivors would be Hefner's 'Playboy' and a few vanilla outlets like 'Vivid'.
Now, IF these Goopers are elected, and I hope to hell not for different reasons - like preserving Medicare so I can obtain any further cancer treatments, or medications etc. I need - they might wish to examine actual research which discloses the extent to which the availability of porn cuts down the incidence of rape. (In which case we'd cease having these ludicrous debates about "forcible" rape vs. "non-forcible" etc.
The fact is, as noted by Nadine Strossen (Defending Pornography : Free Speech, Sex & The Fight for Women's Rights, Scribner 1999, the more freely available porn remains, to both men and women the more the rape -sex abuse stats recede.
And don't believe for a second she spares any ammo for liberals. She goes after two of the most notorious anti-porn fanatics in history in the late Andrea Dworkin and Catherine MacKinnon. Starting on p. 113, 'The Anti-Male Angle in the Feminist Pro-Censorship Position', Ms. Strossen delivers a startling takedown of "MackDworkinism": the retarded notion that porn represents ongoing violence against women and women are doing it against their will.
Meanwhile, Jon Katz (Virtuous Reality - How America Surrendered Discussion of Moral Values to Opportunists, Nitwits & Blockheads like William Bennett, Random House, 1997) observes that with the rise of "MackDworkinism" the left could no longer be depended on to fight for free speech, or even recognize there is no reliable consensus on what constitutes decency or "filth". Hopefully, female liberals are smarter this time around, for this election. He also quotes some of the idiocy in Dworkin's Pornography: Men Possessing Women, i.e.
"We all know that we are free when the pornography no longer exists. As long as it does exist we must understand that we are the women in it.. "
I would have told Dworkin, especially if still alive today, that she and her sisters will really know they are free when the Repukes no longer want them to remain barefoot and pregnant, with all their contraceptives outlawed or made unavailable - because the Reepos prefer accidental births to family planning.
If Romney and his Reepo zombies and Nazis get in they will also want to consult Strossen's book (ibid.) where she observes that in all cultures and societies where porn has been most freely available - women have been most liberated. In all those where it's been most repressed, the opposite has been true. In other words, it is a key barometer for women's emancipation - apart from the fact that many women (as she noted) enjoy it too!
Sadly, the GOP moralists likely won't do this. It is more to their liking to destroy an entire industry and all its jobs - leaving tens of thousands more unemployed - than to get off their moral high horses and research the actual evidence. As in the case of global warming, the Reeps don't wish to be bothered by the facts, they're guided only by their ideologies, beliefs.
Final note, one device bruited about to ferret out online porn users-consumers is a variant of the 'Carnivore' program that surfaced during the Bush II years. It will be able to tap into any computer, with the right 'back door" and track every download direct to the user's IP or actual address.
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