Posted on 07/13/2004 10:11:42 AM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
Do you ever wonder why the internet is so polluted with pornography? The Supreme Court just reminded us why: it blocks every attempt by Congress to regulate the pornographers.
From its ivory tower, the Court props open the floodgates for smut and graphic sex. Over the past five years, it has repeatedly found new constitutional rights for vulgarity, most recently invalidating the Child Online Protection Act (COPA).
This latest judicial outrage happened on the final day of the Supreme Court term, after which the justices headed out for a long summer break. Lacking teenaged children of their own, the justices closed their eyes to electronic obscenity polluting our children's minds.
For decades, pornographers have enjoyed better treatment by our courts than any other industry. The justices have constitutionally protected obscenity in libraries, filth over cable television, and now unlimited internet pornography.
The flood of pornography started with the Warren Court when it handed down 34 decisions between 1966 and 1970 in favor of the smut peddlers. In mostly one-sentence decisions that were issued anonymously (the justices were too cowardly to sign them), the Court overturned every attempt by communities to maintain standards of decency.
The judges' obsession with smut is astounding. Even though five Supreme Court justices were appointed by Presidents Reagan and the first Bush, graphic sex wins judicial protection in essentially every case.
Woe to those who transgress an obscure environmental law, or say a prayer before a football game, or run a political ad within two months of an election. They find no judicial sympathy, as courts now routinely restrict private property rights and censor political speech.
But the pornographers can do no wrong in the eyes of our top justices. The most explicit sex can be piped into our home computers and the Supreme Court prevents our democratically elected officials from doing anything about it.
COPA was enacted by Congress in response to the Court's invalidation of the predecessor law, the Communications Decency Act of 1996. But decency lost again when six justices knocked out COPA in Ashcroft v. ACLU.
COPA was badly needed, as filth plagues the internet, incites sex crimes, and entraps children. COPA banned the posting for "commercial purposes" on the World Wide Web of material that is "patently offensive" in a sexual manner unless the poster takes reasonable steps to restrict access by minors.
You don't need to look very far to find a tragic crime traceable to the internet. In New Jersey in 1997, 15-year-old Sam Manzie, who had fallen prey to homosexual conduct prompted by the internet, sexually assaulted and murdered 11-year-old Eddie Werner, who was selling candy door-to-door.
COPA did not censor a single word or picture. Instead, it merely required the purveyors of sex-for-profit to screen their websites from minors, which can be done by credit card or other verification.
But minors are an intended audience for the highly profitable sex industry. Impressionable teenagers are most easily persuaded to have abortions, and homosexual clubs in high school are designed for the young.
Justice Kennedy declared it unconstitutional for Congress to stop porn flowing to teens, shifting the burden to families to screen out the graphic sex rather than imposing the cost on the companies profiting from the filth. His reasoning is as absurd as telling a family just to pull down its window shades if it doesn't want to see people exposing themselves outside.
In a prior pro-porn decision, Kennedy cited Hollywood morals as a guide for America, but this time he relied on the prevalence of foreign pornography. "40% of harmful-to-minors content comes from overseas," he declared in holding that the other 60% of obscenity is wrapped in the First Amendment.
The Supreme Court insisted that individual internet users should buy filters to try to block the vulgarity. Should those who do not like air pollution be told to buy air masks?
The Supreme Court protects pornography in books, movies, cable television, and the internet, real or simulated, against all citizens' clean-up efforts. The Court is no longer the blindfolded lady weighing a controversy, but is dominated by media-driven supremacists forcing us down into a moral sewer.
This latest pro-porn decision was too much even for Clinton-appointed Justice Breyer. He said, "Congress passed the current statute in response to the Court's decision" invalidating the prior law; "what else was Congress supposed to do?"
The solution to these ills foisted on us by judicial supremacists is for Congress to exercise its constitutional powers to remove jurisdiction from the federal courts over pornography. The Court has abused its power, and it's Congress's duty to end the judicial abuse.
The State is my Shepherd; I shall conform.
He preventeth me from peeking behind the brown wrapper:
He warneth me about movies with nekkid peeples.
He controlleth my soul:
He beateth me into the paths of righteousness for my own sake.
Yea, though I walk through the magazine aisle at the 7-11,
I will fear no hooters: For thou hath masked them;
Thy power and thy judgement, they comfort me.
Thou preparest a standard before me for the suppression of mine enemies;
Thou coverest my eyes with blindfolds; My cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mandatory kindness shall follow me all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the House of the State forever.
Ahhh... Your true colors shine through. So, I guess you believe that the state owns our bodies, then?
Stop pleasuring yourself with thoughts of moving the Taliban in.
LOL, but you would have had to catch me in my misspent youth. Today I am an upstanding, uptight, religious right whacko according to some of my brethren here at FR.
Method (a) is so easily circumvented with such minimal effort that it is worthless.
Method (b) is easily circumvented after circumventing method (a).
Method (c) doesn't exist.
OK. Forget laws written by idiots. How do you stop this on a PRACTICAL basis?
Source?
Nice of you to come out of the closet as a socialist.
If you think the FF would have condoned the Porn industry, it's you who's been brainwashed by anarchists posing as libertarians.
Pagans.
2. The word describing a person who holds this belief is:
Pagan.
Actually, no. I believe that it has been ruled and determined that the enforcement and prosecution of "obscenity" laws, which porn would fall under it left to the localities and their "community decency" standards. And that goes for both the production of, and the possession of said material.
I am sure congress can try and find a way to do it under the interstate commerce clause, as they do with everything else. They think that the interstate commerce clause is all encompassing to the point that they tried to justify the violence against women act, particularly the portions pertaining to rape on the clause.
How interstate commerce and rape are connected is beyond me, and thankfully the SC couldn't find the connection either.
"What part of "Shall not be infringed" and "Congress shall make no law"
The problem is this Court has no problem allwoing people to publish porn or burn the flag, but they support a law restricting campaigning which, in effect violates the very essence of what the Founding Fathers were thinking when they drafted the First Amendment.
Just as they were not thinking about hunting or target-shootng when they drafted the Second Amendment, they weren't thinking about erotic literature and pictures when they drafted the first.
The most effective type of reform that I advocate is for pornography sites to have a .xxx designation instead of .com designation--that way, the user will be able to easily identify whether or not the site they are visiting contained pornographic material.
Great. I'm sure it will be as big a success as the War on Drugs has been.
Tailgunner Joe should consider a name change and quickly. It would make a great name for a porno.
And that will probably work out as well as the War on Poverty and the War on Drugs. Massive government agencies will be created that will lead to waste and corruption. Citizens' freedoms will skrink even further. Organized crime will take over the production of porn, leading to much more violence and increased production of kiddie porn. etc. etc.
Jeez, man, haven't you been paying attention in the last 50 years or so as to what happens when government decides to legislate away vice?
Only anarchists use terms like "statist" as a perjorative. Conservatives believe in Law and Order. I am a statist, a nationalist, a Unionist and a patriot.
All lovers of liberty and freedom would oppose it until the death.
I won't miss you.
Ben Franklin would be a big fan of the porn industry as he enjoyed sex, women, porn, and drink with reckless abandon. So, theres one FF in response to your question.
No one.
Nope; anyone is perfectly free to use the technology.
(Oh, BTW, an apostrophe has a meaning, and it isn't "BEWARE OF ONCOMING 'S'.")
I take it back Joe, you're a wannabe fascist.
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