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

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

[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

[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.

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

[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