ACLU - Protecting a child's right to buy porn
Posted on 04/29/2008 2:04:10 PM PDT by Zakeet
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) - The American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon has joined booksellers to challenge a state law restricting the sale or provision of sexually explicit material to children, saying it could affect constitutionally protected material.
The ACLU says the law approved by the 2007 Legislature is vague and could result in parents being charged for providing educational books to their children - or even an older child who gives material to a younger sibling.
As an example, the ACLU cited the 1975 novel "Forever" by Judy Blume, a frequent target of censors because it deals with teenage sexuality.
"A 17-year-old girl who lends her 13-year-old sister a copy of the book and tells her to 'read the good parts' could be arrested and prosecuted," said Dave Fidanque, ACLU executive director for Oregon.
But a spokeswoman for Oregon Attorney General Hardy Myers, who supported the law, says constitutional issues were discussed when it was being drafted and sent through committee.
(Excerpt) Read more at katu.com ...
ACLU - Protecting a child's right to buy porn
So is it illegal in Oregon to leave a copy of Playboy laying around the house where you know your pubescent son will find it?
Yup, smells like the ACLU, all right.
Sounds like a typical government overreach — just like a law that purports to “keep assault weapons out of the hands of criminals” but actually disarms honest citizens.
Please notify me via FReepmail if you would like to be added to or taken off the Oregon Ping List.
Hardly a surprise considering the ACLU works for NAMBLA, the “man-boy love association.”
I tend to agree. Especially because the Song of Solomon is pretty racy. I could see someone deciding to prosecute passing out a Bible over that.
If the Islamo terrorists do not kill us all with bombs then the ACLU (All Communist and Leftist Union) will destroy our society with their attacks on parents, children and America through the corrupt courts.
Pray for our children, pray for our nation.......
By the legislature’s definition, the bible would be pornography. This is just bad law.
I’m with the ACLU on this.
You may think that no one would be prosecuted in such a way, but government workers are too often incapable or unable to make decent judgements most of the time and I can see just this sort of prosecution.
As in the case of the man accidentally giving his son the “hard” lemonade last week and temporarily losing custody of him. Everyone was just “following orders”.
Also, would it be the first time a nanny-state law to “protect the children” was poorly written and could have far-reaching unintended consequences?
Not by a country mile.
Bad law is bad law. Even if the ACLU is on the other side of the fence.
Thanks for the ping!
This is one heckuva schizophrenic state.
The devil is in the definition of “pornography”.
I have met people who don’t let their children out in public unescorted, for fear of them hearing “bad words”, and whose definition of “bad words” includes such words as “darn” and “nipple”. They also have no problem in “shushing” other adults who use such words in overheard private conversation. And their idea of censorship is very comprehensive.
On the other hand, there are adults who show their children graphic adult imagery, with the intent of teaching them about sex, at what most would think is too young an age.
Yet other adults *have* to show and describe such things for medical reasons, often prior to their children having surgery.
Many retail catalogs are filled with questionable images of children and adults wearing provocative clothing.
Bill Clinton was responsible for a vast amount of indecent literature, just describing his activities when he was supposed to have been the President.
Agreed. An awful lot of legislation makes it through state legislatures without being carefully considered. Every year in this state I manage to kill a number of bills simply by pointing out the unintended effects.
To be frank, I rarely spend more than a half-hour working out the problems of the bills I go after (though I may ponder the issues for a few days). I spend more time writing the (individualized) letters.
For example, Thomas Jefferson had noted that regardless that the Founding States had prohibited the federal government from making laws which regulate free speech, for example, the states had actually reserved the power to regulate our basic freedoms uniquely for themselves.
"3. Resolved that it is true as a general principle and is also expressly declared by one of the amendments to the constitution that ‘the powers not delegated to the US. by the constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively or to the people’: and that no power over the freedom of religion, freedom of speech, or freedom of the press being delegated to the US. by the constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, all lawful powers respecting the same did of right remain, & were reserved, to the states or the people: that thus was manifested their determination to retain to themselves the right of judging how far the licentiousness of speech and of the press may be abridged without lessening their useful freedom, and how far those abuses which cannot be separated from their use should be tolerated rather than the use be destroyed; and thus also they guarded against all abridgement by the US. of the freedom of religious opinions and exercises, & retained to themselves the right of protecting the same, as this state, by a law passed on the general demand of it’s citizens, had already protected them, from all human restraint or interference: ..." --Thomas Jefferson, Kentucky Resolutions, 1798. http://tinyurl.com/oozooAgain, the Founders had intended for the states to have the power to reasonably decide where the usefulness of free speech ends as evidenced by this Oregon law, a very appropriate law in my opinion, even if they did not delegate such powers to the federal government.
But be warned that politically correct interpretations of the Constitution are layered. Enemies of the Constitution will use the politically correct interpretation of the 14th A., for example, to justify the ACLU's politically correct interpretation of the 1st Amendment. More specifically, they will argue that the 14th A. applied the 1st A.'s prohibitions on certain federal government powers to the states, suggesting that the states no longer have the powers that the Founders entrusted them with to regulate our basic freedoms.
The problem with such an argument, however, is the following. John Bingham, the main author of Sec. 1 of the 14th A., had clarified that the 14th A. was not intended to take away any state powers. See for yourself.
"The adoption of the proposed amendment will take from the States no rights (emphasis added) that belong to the States." --John Bingham, Appendix to the Congressional Globe http://tinyurl.com/2rfc5dSo despite politically correct perversions of the 14th A., the rules for regulating our basic freedoms remain different for the states than they are for the federal government. Whereas the 1st A., for example, prohibits certain powers to the federal government altogether, the states are required to balance 10th A. protected state powers with 14th A. protected personal federal rights. So just as Jefferson had indicated, the states have some flexibility in regulating our basic freedoms. Unfortunately, this seems to go right over the heads of the ACLU."No right (emphasis added) reserved by the Constitution to the States should be impaired..." --John Bingham, Appendix to the Congressional Globe http://tinyurl.com/2qglzy
"Do gentlemen say that by so legislating we would strike down the rights of the State? God forbid. I believe our dual system of government essential to our national existance." --John Bingham, Appendix to the Congressional Globe http://tinyurl.com/y3ne4n
Also, note that some of the opinions of state-power related USSC cases have likewise reflected on Jefferson's note that the states have the power to decide where the usefulness of personal freedoms like free speech ends.
"'No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.' It is only the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States that the clause relied on was intended to protect. A state may pass laws to regulate the privileges and immunities of its own citizens, provided that in so doing it does not abridge their privileges and immunities as citizens of the United States." --Presser v. State of Illinois, 1886Finally, the ACLU's stance on the Oregon law in question is also very disturbing for another reason. It can be argued that the ACLU is interfering with parental authority with respect to giving kids easier access to porn. This situation is especially troubling because Mark 7:1-23, particularly verses 10-13, tells us that Jesus had reprimanded the Pharisees for likewise driving a wedge between parents and their children, essentially nullifying the 5th Commandment, to honor your parents."Conflicts in the exercise of rights arise and the conflicting forces seek adjustments in the courts, as do these parties, claiming on the one side the freedom of religion, speech and the press, guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment,11 and on the other the right to employ the sovereign power explicitly reserved to the State by the Tenth Amendment to ensure orderly living without which constitutional guarantees of civil liberties would be a mockery." --Jones v. City of Opelika, 1942
The bottom line is that the constitutionally confused ACLU is actually doing as much harm as it is doing good in the name of defending people's constitutional rights.
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