Curbing Your Enthusiasm
02:00 AM Nov. 12, 2004 PT
From Wired
I have deliberately kept overt politics out of Sex Drive. I see no point in polarizing or choosing sides in this column, which explores the intersection of sex and technology without regard to age, race, gender, height or political party.
And yet I would be remiss if I refused to acknowledge the sex-tech implications of the election.
"Anyone who is not seriously concerned is delusional," says Jeffrey Douglas, board chairman of the
Free Speech Coalition , an organization that provides education, lobbying services and legal assistance to the adult industry. He describes the Bush administration as "deeply, ideologically hostile to sexually oriented speech, (a group of) people with a strong fundamentalist bent who believe it is a mortal sin for people to engage in sex for a purpose other than procreation."
Well, so what, you might be thinking. Porn is just porn. Life goes on. Only the adult industry and porn addicts are going to suffer. But if you're not in the porn industry or a regular consumer of adult content, why worry?
Here's why I'm worried.
Climate of secrecy. In the past four years, the Justice Department has stepped up its efforts to deter both producers and consumers of pornography. As Douglas points out, it has more than tripled the number of attorneys assigned to prosecuting obscenity cases. And it's targeting both hard-core and mainstream content, according to
this article .
The scariest part is that so much of this is happening in secret. The Justice Department refuses to make its obscenity guidelines available to the industry or the public, and "during the entirety of the hearings on
(18 USC 2257) and the development of the regulations that implement the statute (which requires producers to maintain meticulous records of performers' ages), there was never any discussion with any industry representatives," Douglas says. Yet any violation of the statute is a federal felony.
Without seeing the obscenity guidelines, you can't be sure your content meets them, even if you want it to.
And if consumers are also a target, where does that leave us if we feel like distributing homemade digital videos on peer-to-peer networks for others to enjoy? Can we be indicted for not complying with 18 USC 2257?
What if I have webcam cybersex or use my
Sinulator with a stranger? Will the Justice Department distinguish me from a professional performer who gives a free demo on the Sinulate Entertainment network?
What if I just get Playboy for the articles?
I fear that the Justice Department's case against Extreme Networks, which stands to set
dangerous precedents about where and how porn operators can be indicted, is just the beginning.
Ignorance, not abstinence. Doug Ireland at LA Weekly pretty much
sums up my second worry when he writes, "In place of effective, disease-preventing, safe-sex education, little will soon remain except failed programs that denounce condom use while teaching abstinence as the only way to prevent the spread of AIDS."
