Posted on 06/11/2008 5:36:13 PM PDT by Comparative Advantage
LOS ANGELES -- What violates community obscenity standards in the nation's reputed pornography capital? Federal prosecutors think they have a case.
Ira Isaacs readily admits he produced and sold movies depicting bestiality and sexual activity involving feces and urine. The judge warned potential jurors that the hours of fetish videos included violence against women, and many of them said they don't want to serve because watching would make them sick to their stomachs.
"It's the most extreme material that's ever been put on trial. I don't know of anything more disgusting," said Roger Jon Diamond _ Isaacs' own defense attorney.
The case is the most visible effort of a new federal task force designed to crack down on smut in America. Isaacs, however, says his work is an extreme but constitutionally protected form of art.
"There's no question the stuff is disgusting," said Diamond, who has spent much of his career representing pornographers. "The question is should we throw people in jail for it?"
Isaacs, 57, a Los Angeles advertising agency owner who says he used to market fine art in commercial projects, calls himself a "shock artist" and says he went into distributing and producing films about fetishes because "I wanted to do something extreme."
"I'm fighting for art," he said in an interview before his federal trial got under way. "Art is on trial."
He plans to testify as his own expert witness and said he will cite the historic battles over obscenity involving authors James Joyce and D.H. Lawrence.
One of his exhibits, he said, will be a picture of famed artist Marcel Duchamp's "Fountain," a porcelain urinal signed by the artist in 1917.
Diamond said Isaacs also will tell jurors the works have therapeutic value for people with the same fetishes depicted on screen.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Note the tagline ...
More of the same if Obama is elected president (even though McCain sucks, too, just a little less)
You have to decide what party do you want in power to ruin America at the end of that party’s presidency ... in either case both will do it, just depends on how bad. Much rather have the Dem-o-rats in power then ...at least there might be a Republican dynasty to follow ....
According to Foxnews, the presiding judge in the case has posted sexually explicit images online.
Most people I know couldn’t handle bible black and that’s anime (or hentai to be more specific) I can’t imagine the average person being able to handle watching the “evidence” in this case. I’d probably have to walk out myself, I’ll bet the only people who could sit on the jury would be those who enjoyed this sort of thing, and that would make for an interesting ruling to say the least.
No, I could watch it. I work in the middle of human depravity. There are many of us who work in the places that bind up the wounds of the bad things that happen in the world. There would not be much I have not heard about.
Then he can look upon his time as someone's new prison bride as just a chance "to do something extreme".
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
The Founding Fathers could never imagine the uncivilized depravity that is currently stinking up the nation or they would have spelled out that the First Amendment protects POLITICAL SPEECH, as all their correspondence shows. They certainly had no intention of protecting the vile expressions of the Satanic mind that we see in our contemporary film and art.
Of course this filth is not “art”, nor is a great amount of the stuff masquerading as “art”.
But that said, I don’t see why the state needs to be involved. OK, it is disgusting to look at, and it is certainly nothing that I’d bother with. But if it doesn’t depict illegal activities, I’m not seeing how the depiction should be any more or less illegal than the activity that’s depicted.
No, it shouldn’t be broadcast on the open airwaves but if some screwball wants to buy a DVD of it, well... No skin off my nose. I guess I don’t really care.
On the jury angle: I was a juror on a Murder 1 case last year. As part of the selection process they spent a good amount of time talking about the “disturbing” nature of some of the evidence, like the crime scene photos and forensics.
Many of the prospective jurors declined even though they were initially interested in serving for such an interesting case. Maybe for them it was a good call. There are some things you just can’t un-see. And yeah, some of the photos were much nastier than I had expected.
And just for the record, the verdict was “guilty as hell, yer honor...”.
I note that your tagline is a misquotation.
It adheres to the spirit of the original. “Moral and religious” means nothing less than Christianity.
It don’t mean “Islam” for sure.
Have a great day FRiend.
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