Federal Anti-Obscenity Program Comes Up Limp

kotj.mf writes "The New York Times reports that the Federally funded anti-Web pornography campaign run by Morality in Media, a conservative religious group, has yet to result a single prosecution for obscenity, despite having generated more than 67,000 citizen complaints. The group, better known for its campaign to have Cosmopolitan removed from supermarket checkout stands, is pushing the Justice Department to more aggressively pursue cases against what it sees as 'a prime threat to society, the growth on the Internet of sexual material involving consenting adults.'"

Comments

Federal Anti-Obscenity Program ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Great idea, it is about time they did something about those religions spreading filth.

oh.. wait.

Re:Federal Anti-Obscenity Program ?

[PopeRatzo]

Federally funded anti-Web pornography campaign run by Morality in Media, a conservative religious group

Read that over a few times. If it doesn't make your skin crawl, then you really need to read up on your Constitution and maybe a few articles by some Founding Fathers.

Re:Federal Anti-Obscenity Program ?

[sizzzzlerz]

Have you been asleep for the last 6-1/2 years?

When the decider's attitude is that the Constitution is just a damn piece of paper, why should something like this surprise anybody. Compared to his other desecrations of that document, this is nothing.

Federally Funded??

[eggoeater]

Can someone explain how the federal government can fund a program whose sole purpose is clearly in violation of the first amendment?
The right-wing religious nuts can do whatever they want with their own money, but this seems like a phenomenal waste of my tax money.

Re:Federally Funded??

[Dolphinzilla]

I just can't believe that there is a good paying job out surfing porn sites - and to think I have been doing it for free for years

Re:Federally Funded??

[spikedvodka]

Hrm... can anybody find more information about this program, I'm thinking it's write my congress-critter time again, because this is crazy. a funding number, anything? /me goes to find an old American history textbook, photocopies the constitution, laminates it, and places it in a UV-Protected, inert atmosphere environment. Might just be the last copy we see.

Re:Federally Funded??

[tji]

Have you not been paying attention? Funding "faith based organizations" was the first thing Bush did after he got elected in 2000.

Congress initially denied funding, citing the separation of church and state, and Bush bypassed them via an "Executive Order".

Welcome to the theocracy.

I guess they see how well all those middle-eastern governments are working, and want to bring the same thing to the U.S.

Anti-obesity laws

[ATestR]

At first glance, my brain interpreted this headline as "Federal Anti-Obesity Program..." Whew! For a second there I thought that the government was going to come after us for eating too many twinkies during those late night coding sessions.

So much idiocy, so little time...

[PontifexPrimus]

The article is so full of I-want-to-bash-my-head-against-the-wall idiotic ideas that I really don't know where to start.
So I'll just pick one tiny quote:

Would-be complainants are also advised not to trawl for obscene Web sites, noting that "men are particularly vulnerable to pornographic addiction." Identifying Internet smut, the site advises, is best left to professional law enforcement personnel.

Who have to be blind, deaf eunuchs. Because that's the only way to be sure. Dammit, I have to add one thing:

Mr. Peters said he was confident that officials would eventually assume their responsibility and go after what he described as a prime threat to society, the growth on the Internet of sexual material involving consenting adults.

Ok... what exactly is wrong with consenting adults??? How can you get any more puritan than that? Is he really that much out of touch with reality that he can even begin to think that there's anything wrong with that and furthermore, that HE SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT???
Ahemm... sorry, but the degree of mental retardation needed to keep such views in today's society keeps astounding me.

Re:So much idiocy, so little time...

[A beautiful mind]

Ok... what exactly is wrong with consenting adults???

Nothing. The trouble is with misinterpreting 2000+ year old religious texts and trying to expose the same distorted sense of morality upon everyone else. Fundamentalists (and generally religious people to a lesser degree) are contradicting themselves on so many levels that they were an AI, they'd have ended up with their circuitry in flames.

Re:So much idiocy, so little time...

[howlingmadhowie]

not quite. i think it has to be a mob of angry men come to gang-bang your male guests. which sort of reminds me of a falcon film i saw while researching material for morality in media.

Re:So much idiocy, so little time...

[TubeSteak]

Is he really that much out of touch with reality that he can even begin to think that there's anything wrong with that and furthermore, that HE SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT??? Have you seen what the Parents Television Council (PTC) has done with the FCC? They single handedly make up >90% of the complaints to the FCC... and the FCC responded with fines.

What the guys and gals at the Morality in Media group don't seem to get is that the Justice Dept is not the FCC. The DOJ doesn't file criminal charges based on the number of complaints.

But if you look at the PTC & FCC, you can easily understand where they got the idea from and why they thought would work.

Re:So much idiocy, so little time...

[Kjella]

Perhaps they should form their own state, I suggest in that in their declaration of independence they put the following:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the repression of other people's pursuit of Happiness."

Obviously there's some limitations like your right to punch ends at my nose, where you're infringing on others' rights. And I can think of a few edge cases where I'd put other concerns like polluting the environment, cruelty to animals and such things ahead of your right to pursue happiness, probably a few things that are highly self-destructive like heavy drugs too. But if there's no really compelling reason to prohibit it, everyone should be free to pursue their own happiness. I really wish that they'd put that somewhere in the constitution, even if nothing as a preamble. Certainly the 9th amendment is way too weak if that was the intended meaning.

You were shoved headfirst through sombody's vagina

[Cordath]

To all the religious nutjobs out there I have one thing to say:

You were shoved headfirst through someone's vagina. Why are you acting so dignified? (source: xkcd)

But seriously, think of it this way.

On TV, children will see many thousands of simulated murders long before they're old enough to buy porn. If they copy what they see on TV, it means death for someone and jail for the kids.

It is illegal for children to see even just one simulated sex act before they're of age. If they do manage to get their hands on some and copy what they see, the worst thing that can happen is that they pick up a couple STD's and have a kid.

Now, which of these things have the bible thumpers made their top priority?

Pass the buck

[poptones]

Look: the SOB said, BEFORE HE WAS EVEN ELECTED THE FIRST TIME, "what this country needs is a little less free speech."

He said this. Openly, in response to attack ads against him. He told everyone where he stood before he even had the chance to govern.

And then these IDIOTS elected him.

Twice.

So whose fault is it that the Constitution is a forgotten document? Our schools are failing us - have been for years. And that ain't shrub's fault. I cannot stand the guy - I personally think he is a traitor to the US Constitution. But it's not like no one knew where he stood. The fact he could even have been elected is a sign of deeper illness in our nation, and we serve no good by blaming everything upon the latest symptom of this disease.

Re:Pass the buck

[BunnehWyld]

Look: the SOB said, BEFORE HE WAS EVEN ELECTED THE FIRST TIME, "what this country needs is a little less free speech." He said this. Openly, in response to attack ads against him. Not to sidetrack the already-sidetracked discussion, but you wouldn't happen to have a source for that, would you? See, I voted for him the first time. If I'd ever seen that, I wouldn't have. I'd like to know where I wasn't paying enough attention to, so I can do better research for the NEXT election.

Re:Pass the buck

[howlingmadhowie]

oh, but there's enough evidence to call you spineless cowards for not doing anything about it.

Re:Pass the buck

[Marcika]

This wasn't exactly what he said, I think... One famous statement, however, was about the parody site www.gwbush.com, and was described by the Washington Post as follows:

When asked at a news conference in May what he thought about the site, Bush let loose, saying it was produced by a "garbage man" and suggesting that "there ought to be limits to freedom" -- a line Bush's online critics have vowed to never let the world forget.

Re:Pass the buck

[cicatrix1]

I'm not entirely sure you understand democracy. Every person over 18 in this country is "a party to getting the assholes in office" -- regardless of who you voted for, and whether or not you even voted at all.

Re:Pass the buck

[WedgeTalon]

I've never understood that whole "vote thrown away" mentality, becuase - by extension of its own logic - even voting for the "major party" that LOST is a vote thrown away or wasted.

Re:Pass the buck

[PopeRatzo]

I think it's all more complicated than you guys are making out.

In the US, the very fabric of the reality we perceive as citizens is corrupted by a complicit media that supports authoritarian mercantilism, by presenting "news" that consists of dire problems over which none of us can possibly have any control or influence. It puts the voting population into a level of anxiety where all they want is a big, tough daddy who will keep the (mostly imaginary) wolves away from the door.

Anything remotely like a discussion of issues that are important to our lives is immediately obscured by talking about one side being "corrupt" or one side being "cowardly". Even the notion that every issue has "two sides" is a huge canard, which serves to make everything into a simplified binary boxing match. Any discussion between two politicians or two opinions is "scored" by talking about who is "on defense" and who is "on offense".

In other words, we are being fed a steady diet of bullshit, intended to keep all of us as far away from any active involvement in our own governance. In this way, the ruling class of America, the rich, the powerful, the members of the "families", the "insiders" manage to keep us safely out of the way so they can create and manage a system where they can have their own sweet way.

Think about this: A President and Vice-President are elected. The President is from a family whose wealth comes primarily from the oil business and the Vice President is the CEO of a corporation that does (among many other things) large-scale operations of the oil business. Within months of the election of this administration, we invade a country that happens to have one of the largest oil reserves on the planet. Within a few years, the entire war is being managed by the very same corporation that the Vice President was the Chief Executive Officer for, from providing food and laundry services for soldiers to transportation services to security and management of (naturally) those huge oil reserves. For the next several years, while the war escalates, the oil industry shows record profits at a level never before seen.

If you happen to speak to a member of the news media or any other "opinion leader" such as the many establishment political bloggers, and you simply mention the fact that 1) two oil men get elected to the White House, 2) they start a war in the country with massive oil reserves, and 3) the industry from which they come shows the greatest profits ever seen in the history of mankind, those establishment "opinion leaders" will look at you like you must be some sort of tin-foil hat wearing conspiracy nut for simply stating a few basic facts.

My main point is that even with the above set of facts, even though you'd expect a vigilant news media to be screaming their bloody heads off over the fact that something has happened in this country that you would barely believe possible in some tin-pot dictatorship, this "fourth estate" completely ignores the entire issue. Afraid to be called "the liberal media" by a bunch of bullies that have planned for years to destroy any semblance of an independent journalist class, the media, completely cowed, simply looks away. In shame over their complicity in this horror-show, they turn the entire experience into a political tit-for-tat where there are "two sides", equal in every way. They try to tell us that the Truth lives in some fictitious "middle ground" that has never existed.

Finally, before we start to assign blame to lazy Americans who voted for Bush even though they knew he was a two-bit tough-guy who would give our country away to corporate interest while stomping all over the Constitution, we should remember that staying on top of what's really going on in our government is practically a full-time job and most of us are just trying to get from one day to the next without losing our homes or our shirts. An economic reality created, by the way, by the very powers who are trying to keep us out of their

USA & Australia

[Frankie70]

Long back, people from England emigrated to Australia &
the USA. All the convicts were sent to Australia. All the
religious kooks were sent to the USA.

Most Australians are thankful for this luck of fate.

Re:Contemporary community standards

[Alchemar]

If it only offends a small subset of the community, who could it violate community standards? If that many people are looking at this stuff, then by definition it is no longer obsene.

Consentual sex is a problem now??

[Jugalator]

What's the problem with sex among consentual adults?

It's the non-consentual sex they should be worried about.

Root Causes.

[headkase]

Puritanism (v.): The overwhelming fear that someone, somewhere, is having a good time.
Really, just because they feel guilty over any pleasure (because we were bad and got kicked out of the garden of eden so we don't deserve them in the eyes of god or something like that) doesn't mean that every pleasure should be struck from acceptable social behavior especially when they really are a vocal minority.

A small solution

[an.echte.trilingue]

Well, it is a couple of months until we hit the ballot boxes, but in the mean time, this is how I voiced my discontent:

1. Go to the complaint submission site and submit a complaint.
2. Put the url obscenitycrimes.org in the Report URL box.
3. Under the "type of obscenity" check box, check "other" and place this text in the description box: "Obscene waste of my tax dollars and obscene violation of the first amendment

I know that it won't do anything, but it makes me feel a little better anyway.

Re:You were shoved headfirst through sombody's vag

[couchslug]

Someone who believes the universe is a divine monarchy can never honestly embrace secular democracy.
They can use it to gain power, but that does not involve a personal buy-in.
The nature of deistic religion means that one is either a Fundamentalist or a hypocrite, and any squalling to the contrary may be regarded as a delusion or a lie.

"Now, which of these things have the bible thumpers made their top priority?"

Controlling sex gives social control of the tribe. Encouraging violence towards opponents expands tribal power. Never forget that we are dealing with the belief systems of desert tribesmen, no matter what the modern veneer. Judge them by their works, be they Taliban or Talibaptist.

On /. we worry about non-consentual abstinence.

[SmallFurryCreature]

I think we deserve a goverment grant to fight this non-consentual abstinence among the community! At the minimum community service sentences to those who continue this harmfull practice against innocent slashdotters!

Although I am willing to settle for that list of porn sites. Could they rank them so I don't waste too much time to get too the good stuff?

My porn collection...

[zugurudumba]

... they'll have to pry it out of my cold, dead hands.

Re:You were shoved headfirst through sombody's vag

[CosmeticLobotamy]

While I'm not a supporter of the anti-obscenity crowd, the difference is fairly clear. There is no natural, overwhelmingly powerful drive to murder every hot girl that will let you.

Federally funded Evil and Damned Mythology Groups

[OldHawk777]

Dogma Idiot Priority (DIP) "Morality in Media, a conservative religious group" seeks to combat consenting adult recreation, while damning children to the pedophiles on the internet and in public. Hell, it looks like they should start by trying to close down places of dancing and mixed sex social environments/events.

DIP Morality in Media, a conservative religious/mythology group seeks to combat consenting adult recreation, while damning children to semi-illiteracy, oppressed dogma believing, poor/diseased health street urchins, and exploitable cheap labor for US & EU citizens of recognizable value. If you don't have what it takes to instill irrational fear into poorly educated people and/or at least an ability to legally extort from the poor and middle class citizens to make a living; well then, you need to be more subservient to the people that are of value to the new world order.

DIP Morality in Media, a conservative religious/mythology group seeks to combat abortionist, freewill, free-speech, human-rights ... while assenting by silence (obscene lip-service [AKA: virtual BJ]) genocide, famine, child pornography, spouse abuse, slavery, criminal wars, pollution, corruption in government ... for their personal (not godly) interest on earth.

Oh; NOW I SEE, all pseudo-religious/mythology groups are like BinLaden's terrorist groups with cruelty, suffering, injustice, evil ... as their most trusted and important tools for their common good and the oppression of humanity.

I have always said; "I would respect mythology/religion groups/members more than null/zero... if they would (legally binding) sign/line up to adopt and raise as their own, all abandoned children on the street and in all orphanages globally (young and old, healthy and sick, Moslem or Jew, ...) providing the care of a family and good educations for all." Opposing abortion is 180degrees out from taking responsibility for the children alive today.

For ("the prime threats" to US, EU, ... societies) Christian popes/bishops, Baptist ministers, Hebrew Rabies, Islam Imams, and/or any other pseudo-religious/political person to pontificate/fatwa about the wrongs of abortions and the evils of other nations/religions, and then not actively support and enforce laws in their/other nations around the world to end starvation, slavery, pollution, genocide ... is the greatest EVIL INCARNATE against children (born and aborted) and humanity, for all THEIR EVILS, DAMN THEM TO HELL!

MF/FF/Gay/Incest/Donkey, though morally questionable/objectionable for many adults, ain't the problem. All of today's religious & political intercourse for exploiting and oppressing public security and welfare is the real obscenity and pornography promoted by religion and governments globally.

Almost all religious leaders, politicians, and their families are more ugly and repugnant than Hitler, Stalin, Napoleon, Caesar ... to me, because they preach then breach the public's, Citizens', Humanity's trust. Then by inaction/proxy cause the same amount of suffering, cruelty, death, and mass-murder as any Hitler, Stalin, Napoleon ... mass-murders and traitors.

I do not write this way to flame/troll/offend, but to intensely express what I see (objectively or subjectively, you choose) as the facts, which strongly indicate the origins of great crimes against humanity. Everything I write like this is "Open Content".

FINAL WORD: GO TO HELL ALL YOU EVIL LYING OFFSPRING OF DEMONIC BITCHES!

Re:To quote the great Tom Lehrer

[TheRaven64]

My favourite line from Tom Lehrer on this subject was his objection to things containing profanity (among other things) being described as 'Adult,' when in fact they are quite childish.

Re:You were shoved headfirst through sombody's vag

[Afecks]

Just like anti-religious bigots try to outlaw public worship and evangelism. :-) That's never happened. Nobody in the USA has tried to pass a law to stop someone from praying, ever. If you have a source to prove me wrong then let's see it.

Re:You were shoved headfirst through sombody's vag

[background image]

Someone who believes the universe is a divine monarchy can never honestly embrace secular democracy.

You should cite your sources. This is something Alan Watts said many times in many ways. You also might want to provide one of the full quotations, since they're directly relevant to this discussion. For example, in 1968 he said that

Citizens of the United States believe, or are supposed to believe, that a republic is the best form of government. Yet vast confusion arises from trying to be republican in politics and monarchist in religion. How can a republic be the best form of government if the universe, heaven, and hell are a monarchy? Thus, despite the theory of government by consent, based upon mutual trust, the peoples of the United States retain, from the authoritarian backgrounds of their religions or national origins, an utterly naive faith in law as some sort of supernatural and paternalistic power. "There ought to be a law against it!" Our law-enforcement officers are therefore confused, hindered, and bewildered--not to mention corrupted--by being asked to enforce sumptuary laws, often of ecclesiastical origin, that vast numbers of people have no intention of obeying and that, in any case, are immensely difficult or simply impossible to enforce--for example, the barring of anything so undetectable as LSD-25 from international and interstate commerce. [Emphasis added]

Source