Yet Another Obscenity Trial? We Should Be Ashamed

I like porn, but to watch it in the circumstances described sounds like one of the punnishments in hell!!!

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Any wonder in that general area
are the headquarters of the mercenaries
and christocrats ?


http://www.blackwaterusa.com/
------------
http://www.cbn.com/

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Imagin, the US government, along with a hand full of people, deciding for you what you can read, see on TV, and movies allowed to be played, and soon even what you think! Welcome to the New World Order, American style.
Once the looney Christian Religious Right get their way, all you'll be allowed to read and watch would be bible and christian influenced videos.
What a sick country.
I'm glad I don't live there anymore!

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NM

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for the owner .......I have nothing but contempt for the jury,the prosecutor,and the town for allowing that to happen. All of them are idiot sheep.(IMHO).

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The people who prosecuted have a clear prurient interest in other people's sex life. This should be emphasized again and again. They are flaunting their sexual obsessions. They are asking that their sex lives be publicized.
For further suggestions see
randomabsurdities.wordpress.com

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They have their purity and obscenity police and now apparently so do we.

I'm sure Osama Bin Ladin is very proud of the Bushys.

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I was shocked to learn of this blatant attack on the first amendment. Where were the ACLU?
Once again prurient self righteous hypocrites are able to impose their twisted sense of "morality" on other law abiding citizens of the United States with the full complicity of 'the law'. This is totally outrageous and this needs to be fully investigated by the UCLA. Yes, the authorities of Staunton should be deeply ashamed and should be exposed for what they are. Enemies of Freedom of speech and expression. Shame, shame and SHAME on them all.

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How do the citizens of this berg think they came into being? Were all their mothers virgins?

Is having a climax (or two) inside the city limits a felony or misdemenor?

Alas, the Internet abounds with much worse. Are the citizens now ready to "tear down this cable"?

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Of course, I meant to say the ACLU...Sorry.

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Well, first, something big government proponents do not yet get.. Some issues are the domain of the community. Obviously, some communities do not want porn in their environment. I dont see how this is a legality case as much as a zoning law!

I saw almost this exact case in the town where I live in North Western NJ. Except the town didn't take the porn video/toy store to court for selling their goods. They just refused to allow them to open because of their sign. Seems it was too large (large is good in porn). Then they found some zoning laws.etc.etc.

What's really crazy about this is that we can watch people killing each other on TV, footage of death and destruction from Iraq but not two people having sex.

Values in America are screwed up for sure!

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and I'm glad that AlterNet is publishing his articles. I wish progressives were more engaged in resisting these attacks on our rights and sexualities. These people who worry that sex undermines American society make me wonder about their own notion of sex. Can you imagine a film being "accused" of causing masturbation instead of being congratulated? Thanks Marty Klein,
Sue Katz

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... sound like a four-letter word. They say it like its the squishiest, most putrid form of life ever to utter an opinion. When what they mean is, anyone who dares to believe they have personal rights that aren't scribbled in a bible.

The ACLU should step in. And Larry Flynt, too -- 'cause that whole town CLEARLY just needs to get laid.

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It's interesting to note that the people who are so concerned with what people are watching in the privacy of their living rooms and doing in the privacy of their bedrooms are aligned with and supported by the party that is in favor of "minimal government". Apparently, the Repuglicans are in favor of peeking into your windows as long as you don't peek into theirs. When it comes to things they disapprove of, there's no hesitation in establishing a nanny state.

Another funny thing is that it's all these "upright and moral" citizens are so adept at imagining depravities that would never occur to the people they're scrutinizing. After all, when a guy watches porn and finishes whacking off, he's more likely to want to roll over and catch a few Z's than go out and force his attentions on someone else.

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This and similar issues are happening all over the blue law, Christianist south. Here in hot and heavy Augusta, GA, the public is laughing/crying over the millions of taxpayer dollars being spent to prevent a porn store from opening in one of the worst parts of town. Using the same arguments of course. Puritanical, cob up their ass, sexual hysteria. A truly responsible fed would step in and declare blue laws unconstitutional and defend the right of adults to make their own choices about consumption, religion, morality and sexuality. Obviously.The south is a key battleground on progressive issues like religion, sexuality and the environment and we desparately need better representation by national organizations to reverse the stranglehold of the extreme corporate, religious and political right.

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http://www.vsdbs.virginia.gov/

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"Prosecutor Robertson argued that "You've never seen anything immoral in Staunton until this store came here," and "It was wrong for this community, obscene for this community."

I've been to Staunton on numerous occasions, I can tell you that the prosecutor has obviously never stepped out of the court house and looked around, ever.

What about the fact that Staunton is the major cross-roads for illicit drug trafficking? I-81 and I-64 both pass through the staunton area. Vast amounts of meth and cocaine pass through Staunton on their way to the rest of the east coast. How is this not immoral? How can Roberts justify wasting the tax payers money on this sham of a case? Wasting all this money when there is a quantifiable danger to the community?

This is proof that this "City" is fukked: the citizens would lynch you if you burned an American flag, but when a Prosecutor tramples all over the Constitution they do nothing.
Its a yellow ribbon instead of a swastika round these parts.
Look around in staunton sometime you'll see 1984 in 2008.......

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.......to help with their porn trials. Not really, but it would get him the fuck out of our neighborhood here. He's just up the road at Pepperdine and you can smell the hypocrisy and Christianism 20 miles down the Coast Highway.

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we had a Prime Minister (President) who said, "the state has no business in the bedrooms of the nation". Too bad American leaders fail to express the same truth for fear of losing a few votes.

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In Alabama it is illegal for a woman to purchase a dildo. The state legislature decided that they know better than the women in Alabama what the women in Alabama should or should not insert into their pussies. I guess the legislators, mostly good Christian men, didn't want the competition.

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The DOJ involves itself all the time in local prosecutions of doctors who treat severe chronic pain with opiates. They use the same tactic of hypercharging things that will never work, even with the dumbest, most biased jury or judge. They also "assert" when their charges have been shown, beyond a reasonable doubt, to be untrue. People get convicted and go to jail, sometimes for decades, because of DOJ lies.

Welcome to the DOJ, porn lovers.

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That man is being threatened with one of the greatest injustices imaginable: Being jailed and innocent when the jailers are the lawbreakers. I hope he is spared that as an appeal to a higher court will likely overturn this travesty. If I don't miss my guess somebody out there is going to learn the difference between law and belief to the tune of millions...

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Marty Klein's article on the trial in Staunton made me wonder. Was he objecting to a violation of the First Amendment or was he claiming that obscenity should be unquestioned? Claiming that Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, and other of our founding leaders would be embarrassed by the court decision at Staunton is nothing more than Klein's assumption. I believe it is an incorrect assumption that has been used to make Klein's opinion seem valid. Is obscenity legal or not? I think we ought to be allowed freedom, but I do NOT believe we have a right to protect obscenity or associate that type of protection with freedom itself--as if obscenity was a legal right. Our problem is that many of us cannot agree on exactly what obscenity is, and if it does or does not have any impact on the future actions of its viewers. I have read such studies that have alerted me to the fact that obscenity is bad for us physically, as well as morally. What proof does Marty Klein have that obscenity is not harmful? Americans have the right and responsibility to resist and condemn acts of obscenity. But who defines what is obscene?

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to go after a seller of a porn movie, in which only consenting adult humans are featured? So let me get this straight - human trafficking and sex slavery has become an American and worldwide criminal epidemic, most of which involves non-consenting women and children who were kidnapped or tricked - but THIS is what they are using our tax dollars to go after?? Absolutely outrageous. If they are so concerned with criminal enterprises, they should first investigate the BushCo cabal that hand-picked all their DOJ department heads and instructed them to pursue political witch-hunts. Then, they should turn their attention to one of the biggest global crime syndicates ever, the C.I.A.
Of course, I won't be holding my breath on that...

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ReichWingers only find you 'angelic' if:

- you're in a coma
- you're in a uterus

what do these have in common?

you're PHYSICALLY INCAPABLE if not mentally of engaging in any act of Free Will.

if you are in any other state? they have VILLIFIED every other form of PERSONAL CHOICE or VICE to either social exile or criminal prosecution.

which makes you VULNERABLE should be ever wish to be a PEOPLES' REPRESENTATIVE.

consider what happens when a nation has no WILL TO PRIVACY & desires government to stand between the PEOPLE & corrupt Monied Power

The Thieves of Virtue: criminalizing vice functionally ABORTS representative government ...

be aware!

Taking Liberties

AT&T thanks the Blue Dog Democrats with a lavish party - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com
China's All-Seeing Eye : Rolling Stone, Naomi Klein
With the help of U.S. defense contractors, China is building the prototype for a high-tech police state. It is ready for export.

New Spy Software Coming On-Line: "Surveillance in a Box" Makes its Debut - by Tom Burghardt
But just in time for a new administration (and the bundles of cash always at the ready for the expanding homeland security market), comes a complete "surveillance in a box" system called the Intelligence Platform!

According to New Scientist, German electronics giant Siemens has developed software allegedly capable of integrating

...tasks typically done by separate surveillance teams or machines, pooling data from sources such as telephone calls, email and internet activity, bank transactions and insurance records. It then sorts through this mountain of information using software that Siemens dubs "intelligence modules". (Laura Margottini, "Surveillance Made Easy," New Scientist, 23 August 2008)

New Scientist reports that the firm has sold the system to some 60 countries in Europe and Asia. Which countries? Well, Siemens won't say.

However, privacy and human rights advocates say the system bears a remarkable resemblance to China's "Golden Shield," a massive surveillance network that integrates huge information databases, internet and email monitoring, speech and facial recognition platforms in combination with CCTV monitoring.

Designed specifically for "fusion centers" or their European/Asian equivalents, the Intelligence Platform promises to provide "real-time" high-tech tools to foil terrorist plots before they're hatched (or keep tabs on antiwar/antiglobalization activists).



pay attention.

because the ReichWing IS PAYING ATTENTION TO YOU & YOUR REPRESENTATION.


┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄
BlueBerry Pick'n
can be found @
ThisCanadian
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" ... tolerance of intolerance is cowardice... " ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
"We, two, form a Multitude" ~ Ovid.
┄┄
"Silent Freedom is Freedom Silenced"
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All the moral depravity I see being demonstrated here is coming from those at the DOJ. Two illegal wars, 12 million illegal immigrants, failing educational system, failing infrastructure, failed drug war, failed war on terror, voter supression, hate mongering, civil liberties being stolen, criminal behavior in the West Wing and this is what our tax dollars are being wasted on? What a bunch of dim witted, socially stunted, witch hunting, morally immature, boneheaded, brain dead, self righteous ninnies we have running this country.

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Jee wiz, Im disappointed, i thought for sure someone would weigh in on this with a few choice quotes from the bible proving beyond all doubt that we who have peeked at or dove in head first at a few "adult" films will all be going to hell posthaste. Perhaps these people are not paying attention to where we already are. If your religion tells you that you are not to "watch" and you want to, then that repression has to express it self in some other form. I know!, get a gun and blow sombodys head off, that should balance the scales nicely.
PS for the benifit of those with squeamish digestive tracts i have omited the X rated version of my comment.

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Response to naked asses in small town America and the jackasses at AlterNet who think it matters...

Although I'm no prude or walking example of upright morality, having at various times in my life, watched an unknown quantity of porno movies, worked in a topless casino, worked in the Playgirl Club in Orange County, California and otherwise, visited the "seedy side of life" from time to time. However, I don't believe the fundamental premise of this article is either insightful or very accurate.

I've studied a lot of American history, perhaps more than most and I seriously doubt that Jefferson or Madison or Franklin and the rest of the violent revolutionary herd would be interested in defending the unbridled "right" to display what most citizens deem to be pornographic. It seems logical to me, that if a majority of citizens in a small town would like to keep the atomosphere free from brothels and related businesses, they have a right to do so. After all, there is plenty of porno available on the internet (so I am told) and, anyone can drive or fly to another city if they can't control their unbridled urges and choose to continue to engage in such adolescent and childish behavior as watching other people have sex. Talk about a waste of valuable time.

Just who decides where sexual lines are drawn in a modern society? For example, is it okay to film small children having sex with animals and freely hang such photographs up in the town square? How about so-called "blue" films that show actual rape, murder and torture? Or, why not just photograph the local junior high school cheerleaders taking a shower and proudly display the photo on a large banner in next year's 4th of July parade?

After all, it can be logically argued that adults promoting promiscuous behavior are also promoting AIDS and other serious diseases, not to mention, promoting broken homes and the probablitiy of children losing one or both parents and if nothing else, promoting a very bad example for our children to follow. How fair is it to children, for their community to stamp a big "okay" sign on consenting acts of unbridled adultery?

So, who gets to decide where lines should be drawn? Who gets to decide what is and is not harmful to society in general, in particular in the light of the modern AIDS epidemic? How we can expect our teenagers and pre-teens to not become pregnant, if we freely display our own inability to control ourselves for all the world to see?

And, I fail to understand why a supposedly "progressive" website like AlterNet is so overly concerned about a porno movie being banned in small-town America, what with all of the maiming, raping, pillaging and killing going on in Iraq, Philadelphia, Detroit, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

It would seem there are better ways to waste one's ink and more important issues to waste it on. Or perhaps, someone should just tell this author and the editors of AlterNet to grow up.

Who can say for sure?


Thank You, Sincerely
Richard Aberdeen
www.FreedomTracks.com

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Last I looked, (admittedly @15 yrs ago) the only large institution in Staunton VA was a Supercenter (that could have held the whole town and where they probably voted) and the Yellow Freight terminal on the outskirts of town, and thus within walking distance of 'downtown'--a geographical location only, believe me.

It's a real pretty tiny town, and somehow I feel safe in refusing to believe that people don't watch videos of people screwing. How the hell would they know how to 'do it'? (They sure don't TALK about it--but that's Freedom of Speech and a whole 'nother issue!)

If the ACLU does come down there, be advised: they grow some MEAN DOGS in Staunton--and they usually let them run loose. Last I saw, anyway...

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What if a couple, consentially have sex and film it. Are they now in possession of prosecutable contraband in this city/town?

What a great use of law enforcement and justice department resources.

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in city limits...why did they give the store owner a business license? seems the town set him up...and wow! can you imagine - hey dude, what'r ya in fer? - selling sexually explicit material that featured only consenting adults. yikes!
hope the prosecutor in staunton doesn't use the public library!

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It's not just the right wing that is anti-porn. A major branch of feminism, starting with Gloria Steinem in the late 1960's (and she's still anti-porn today), and extended by Catherine MacKinnon, and Andrea Dworkin, has long held that any published material picturing women and used by others for sexual stimulation "objectifies" women, causes sexual abuse, violence, and other crimes (for which there is no proof), etc. Andrea Dworkin penned the famous line "Pornography is Rape." Their attempts to make all erotic images illegal failed in the US in a landmark court case (with civil libertarian feminist Wendy Kaminer arguing on the other side against censorship), but they succeeded in outlawing all porn in Sweden. Left standing in the US are vague statues against "Obscenity." IMO, it's violence and greed which can be obscene, not sex, and porn is the oldest art form.

I wrote an essay about this at Anti-Porn.

Also, some leftists, mostly Trots, like Robert Jensen of UT are strong anti-porns. He's blamed it for war crimes. I think there are more obvious things to blame for that.

Libertarian Socialist Chomsky thinks porn is offensive, but he opposes all censorship.

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What I find appalling is how sexually immature and sexually ignorant people are. Vanilla porn is not a problem. Tho, I think for the most part porn provides it's male viewers with a very distorted view of female sexuality. The problem not being addressed in a mature or intelligent way is porn that blends sex and violence. I want to protect the rights of porn that doesn't use violent imagery against women. But if we are ever to have a society that respect's women and a society that doesn't tolerate sexual violence (rape and domestic violence are rampant in this country) then we need to say no to violent women hating porn. Also, we need to protect sex workers. Legalize prostitution and provide health care and legal protection to sex workers.
But, in a country that is so sexually immature we can't even have the necessary discuss without bible thumpers pushing their outdated immature morality on the issue, crying out to ban all porn.If the Virgina prosecutors office is really concerned about porn they would support the rights of sex workers and distinguish between vanilla porn and violent porn.

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You can't blame the government for the idiocy of that jury. Shame on them.

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Like Hollywood doesn't have any gratuitous sex scenes featuring silicone-injected bimbos. I'd rather watch the amateur stuff any day. At least the actresses are honest about who they are and why they're there. Just because the Tinseltown titties are making more money, doesn't automatically put them in a classier category.

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determine years ago that basic, run of the mill porn (which this was, based on Dr. Klein's description of it) was NOT obscene?

If that's the case, how was this guy convicted? And shouldn't he appeal based on previous federal court rulings?

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This is truly a sad, appalling and utterly pathetic twisted road of malicious behavior we as a country and as individuals are being dragged down by small minded individuals whose lives are so boring that they have nothing better to do than to push their views and opinions onto everybody else because they are so scared of change or anyone thinking differently then them that the only way they can function and feel "normal" is to control everything and everyone around them. It doesn't matter to them that what somebody else chooses to do, read, or participate in willingly and causing no harm to anyone or anything but actually being enjoyable and only involving those who chose to participate. You can go out and shoot someone, get drunk and kill someone driving, hire someone to hurt someone, commit fraud, forgery, steal thousands of dollars, rape someone, kidnap someone or mentally and physically abuse someone and the punishment for these crimes is a slap on the wrist, some time behind bars and out in a few years, but dare you choose to do something to yourself that brings you pleasure and causes no harm or ill will to anyone what so ever and you are locked up forever and the key is thrown away.....now what is wrong with this picture?!?!

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Under stare Decisis, the doctrine of statehood and necessity, all you perps have much to learn. What becomes prosecutable becomes law, the government was never stupid under its imperatives. Anyone figure out what the hulla balloo is about anyway, our gooses were all cooked when women chose to dispense with morality, their natural allies in lifes trials and have sex with the golden calf. You go girlz, the bulls will always follow the herd.

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Yes, this lawsuit is ridiculous. It is an embarrassment to our town.

As a Staunton resident I can assure you that those who support this are in the minority.

If you came here you'd encounter some people with conservative views. But it is unfair to smear the entire town as backward; I personally see more support for progressive and liberal causes. Staunton is a great place.

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how the author, a sex therapist, can think that there is no negative consequence to pornography. People are people. Won't people start to believe that adultery, prostitution, etc. is normal and okay because people are doing it on film? People will begin to wonder what it's like to actually be a porn star and think that that is a perfectly acceptable occupation. Porn should not be mainstream because of it's negative consequences. Then again, as long as it's hidden in a back room and out of sight...where you HAVE to go and look for it... there shouldn't be a problem with selling smut. Just my 2 cents.

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As soon as I read this article I thought to myself, "now there's a "Dr." who's been published in Playboy." And sure enough, he has. Of course the the government shouldn't prosecute people for selling regular porn, but I wouldn't take this guy's word on the details of any such case.

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It was unfair to have to watch porn this way. Every person made to watch this porn should have been made to watch it alone while naked like most people do when watching porn or at least with another sex partner, however these juriors don't sound like they would even have sex period.I don't care for porn but envy those that do.

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