GOP's Same Sex Marriage Ban Attempt may Backfire at the Polls

GOP's Same Sex Marriage Ban Attempt may Backfire at the Polls

Originally found via News is Now Public;

griperblade.blogspot.com: When these moderate republicans go back to their districts, they'll be forced to explain to the fundamentalist morons why they voted to 'destroy' marriage. While there's almost no danger these fundies will vote for the democratic opponents, there's a real possibility that they just won't go to the polls at all - a common tendency of dissatisfied conservatives. A move made to drive conservative christians to the polls may just get them to stay home in many key districts.
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several current and past legal cases that involv(ed) BDSM

www.master-bob.net/content/mbbw.html

There is a link on the left hand side of the above linked page takes you to several current and past legal cases around the US and other countries, that involv(ed) BDSM.

TN State Supreme Court hears arguments on gay marriage amendment

State Supreme Court hears arguments on gay marriage amendment

From wsmv channel 4 / AP

NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- The state Supreme Court heard arguments Wednesday on whether to remove a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage in Tennessee from the November ballot because lawmakers didn't comply with a notification requirement.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit charging that the state failed to meet the requirements outlined in the Tennessee Constitution, which says an amendment must be published six months before the next General Assembly election.

A Davidson County judge earlier ruled that the measure defining marriage as between one man and one woman could stay on the Nov. 7 ballot.

State Attorney General Paul Summers told the five-member court that the state met the six-month requirement because it published the proposed amendment on its legislative Web site the day it was first introduced on March 17, 2004.

Summers also added the public knew about the amendment that day because of news media stories about the proposal.

State lawmakers approved the amendment May 19 that year and on June 20 the state published advertisements about the amendment in at least half a dozen newspapers across the state. But that was less than six months before the Nov. 2, 2004, election for the state Legislature.

Melody Fowler-Green, a lawyer for the ACLU, argued that the state didn't meet the six-month rule because when it posted the amendment on its Web site, it was simply a proposal and not an approved measure.

She also said it was not enough that the proposed amendment was published on the Web site because not everyone has Internet access.

"It's the ACLU's position that in order to be an adequate check on legislative power and to provide meaningful notice to the people of Tennessee that the publication must be an official act of the state with the intent and purpose of notifying them of the specific proposal," Fowler-Green said after the hour-long hearing.

State Supreme Court justices are expected to rule on the case in the next several days.

The arguments over the state's gay marriage amendment come as the U.S. Senate on Wednesday rejected a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage -- a defeat for President Bush and Republicans who hoped to use the measure to energize conservative voters on Election Day.

The state already has a law banning gay marriage but lawmakers who supported the amendment said they wanted to ensure judges couldn't rule that law unconstitutional.

State legislators approved the gay marriage amendment in 2004 and 2005. The measure had to be adopted by lawmakers in two separate legislative sessions in order to be placed on the Nov. 7 ballot.

Gov. Phil Bredesen said earlier this week the amendment isn't necessary, although he planned to vote for the measure.

There are 18 states with constitutional amendments against gay marriage -- most of which were adopted after Massachusetts' highest court legalized gay marriage in 2003.

Tennessee is one of five states where a proposed ban has passed through the Legislature and is on its way to voters. Alabama voters overwhelmingly approved a ban on Tuesday.

Gay-marriage amendment fails in Senate

By Andy Sullivan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Senate voted down a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage on Wednesday, but Republicans planned a vote in the House of Representatives to keep a national spotlight on the hot-button issue.

The 49 to 48 Senate vote fell short of the 60 votes needed to clear a procedural hurdle, thwarting President Bush and the mostly Republican lawmakers who said the Constitution must be amended to prevent judges from striking down existing state bans on gay marriage.

Democrats accused Republicans of exploiting a divisive issue they knew would fail in order to shore up conservative support before November congressional elections and divert attention from topics like the war in Iraq that reflect poorly on the party in control of the White House and Congress.

"It is a cynical attempt to score political points by overriding state courts and intruding into individuals' private lives," Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts said in floor debate on Tuesday.

The U.S. House of Representatives is expected to take up the marriage amendment in July, though Republican leaders do not expect it to pass there either.

"This is a big issue for lots of our members and frankly for lots of Americans," House Republican Leader John Boehner of Ohio told reporters on Tuesday.

Constitutional amendments must win approval from two-thirds of each house of the U.S. Congress and three-quarters of state legislatures before taking effect.

Colorado Republican Sen. Wayne Allard, the bill's sponsor, did not expect the gay-marriage ban to pass but hoped to demonstrate increased support since 2004, when 48 senators voted for a similar bill. Continued... (at Reuters)

Bill would make sex toys illegal in South Carolina

From WIS TV / AP


Bill would make sex toys illegal in South Carolina

(Columbia-AP) April 21, 2006 - A state lawmaker wants to ban the sale of sex toys.

Republican Representative Ralph Davenport of Boiling Springs proposed the bill that would add sex toys to the state's obscenity laws. Davenport's bill would make it a felony to sell devices used primarily for sexual stimulation.

The proposal also would allow law enforcement to seize sex toys as contraband.

Davenport wouldn't talk to The Associated Press Friday about his bill.

Davenport's home county of Spartanburg has been aggressive in recent months in pursuing charges against owners of adult-oriented businesses. Police there say, however, they are uncertain how Davenport's proposal would help their investigations.

Posted 5:58pm by Chantelle Janelle

and from Daily Comet.com:

Bill would make sale of sex toys illegal in South Carolina

By SEANNA ADCOX
Associated Press Writer

Sugar 'N Spice manager Pat Irons says a proposal to outlaw the sale of sex toys in South Carolina is outrageous.

But banning the sale of sex toys is actually quite common in some Southern states. [emphasis added]

The South Carolina bill, proposed by Republican Rep. Ralph Davenport, would make it a felony to sell devices used primarily for sexual stimulation and allow law enforcement to seize sex toys from raided businesses.

The measure would add sex toys to the state's obscenity laws, which already prohibit the dissemination and advertisement of obscene materials.

People convicted under obscenity laws face up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

South Carolina law borrows from a 1973 U.S. Supreme Court ruling to define obscene as something "contemporary community standards" determine as "patently offensive" sexual conduct, which "lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value."

While Davenport's proposal is probably aimed at shutting down X-rated adult bookstores, Irons said, it hurts customers of "couples-oriented" stores such as her West Columbia shop, which sells everything from lingerie to bridal shower novelties to lotions.

At Sugar 'N Spice, sex toys are displayed in a separate room. Buyers include men and women who "need a little help" because surgery or medical problems are affecting their marriage, Irons said.

"We've been selling these sex toys for 27 years," she said Friday. "Even pastors shop in here. They send couples in here they counsel for marriage problems. It's probably going to hit people like that harder than people realize."

Davenport, who is from Spartanburg County, did not return several messages Friday to talk about his bill, which was introduced last month. No other legislator has signed on as a co-sponsor and its passage this year seems unlikely.

Recent police raids in Davenport's county have targeted adult-oriented businesses.

The sheriff's office there seized movies, sex toys, sexual-enhancement pills and surveillance tapes from two businesses in January.

One of the stores, Priscilla's, sued the sheriff's office, claiming the raid violated constitutional rights and asked for the return of the seized items. Sheriff Chuck Wright refused.

The case has not yet gone to trial, Maj. Dan Johnson said.

Johnson said he knew nothing of Davenport's proposal and was unsure how it could help their investigations, which involve undercover detectives renting movies or buying magazines and prosecutors determining whether they're obscene.

"We're focused on the hard-core magazines, videos ... the hard-core porn," he said.

Other states that ban the sell of sex toys include Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi and Texas, said Mark Lopez, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union.

Alabama's law banning the sale of sex toys has been circulating through the courts since its passage in 1998. U.S. District Judge Lynwood Smith Jr. twice ruled against the law, holding that it violated the constitutional right to privacy, but the state won both times on appeal.

In February 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case, which is back in the lower courts.

"People think it's distasteful. It makes for good campaign fodder and panders to the conservative side of people. That's why we see the laws in the South," Lopez said.

The ACLU got involved in the case, he said, to "keep the government out of the bedroom."

Though the laws don't punish people for owning sex toys, banning their sale is a backdoor attempt to discourage their use, Lopez said.

"People have a fundamental right to engage in lawful sexual practices in the privacy of their home," Lopez said. "It's not like this stuff is available in Macy's. Kids aren't allowed in. You or I wouldn't accidentally walk into one."

Singapore bans podcasting during elections

Singapore bans podcasting during elections
Tomorrow.sg says,

The government here in Singapore is banning all podcasting and videocasting during the upcoming elections. They are also requiring bloggers who want to speak up during the election to register themselves with the local broadcasting authority. Furthermore, once they are registered, they are required to take down their posts if the government deems it unsuitable.

Link

Story found via Boing Boing

From yahoo news / law.com

Adult Entertainment Lawyer Prevails at 11th Circuit in Battle Over Obscenity Law
Friday March 24, 2:59 am ET

Meredith Hobbs, Fulton County Daily Report Adult entertainment lawyer Cary S. Wiggins has the boyish looks, good manners and perfectly pressed shirt of someone who was raised right.

Last month Wiggins, 34, succeeded in overturning Georgia's obscenity law, which includes a ban on so-called sex toys.

Wiggins acknowledges not everyone would congratulate themselves on such a feat. He said that when he announced the news to his father, a retired U.S. Air Force pilot, his initial response was, "You're not proud of that, are you?"

Wiggins told his father that he was, explaining he "convinced a panel of three federal judges to see the statute violates one of the public's most cherished rights," namely, free speech -- even though obscenity is not protected by the First Amendment.

The case is This That and the Other Gift v. Cobb County, Ga., No. 04-16419 (11th Cir. Feb. 15, 2006). Circuit judges Susan H. Black, Frank M. Hull and Jerome Farris heard the case.

Wiggins told me the only seriously contested part of the obscenity law, which forbids materials of "prurient interest," is the 1975 ban on sex toys.

The ban became a problem for Wiggins' client, This That and the Other, a Cobb County tobacco and adult novelty shop.

Fortunately for the state's purveyors of sex toys, the law has been spottily enforced. When Cobb licensed This That and the Other for business in 1998, Wiggins said, the county knew the store would be selling sex toys.

But in 2000, the county cracked down and told This That and the Other to stop selling the items.

Things did not look good for the store. Since 1977, Wiggins said, there have been 24 published Georgia Supreme Court opinions upholding Georgia's sex toy ban, which has also been upheld by various state and federal courts on the grounds that devices for sexual gratification are not protected expression under the First Amendment or the Georgia Constitution.

Platoons of lawyers have made unsuccessful arguments that the law violates privacy rights, is vague and overbroad, constitutes a prior restraint, and violates due process because it's not uniformly enforced.

Wiggins said that when This That and the Other contacted him in 2000, "I told them, 'Do you want the bad news or the horrible news?'"

Wiggins unsuccessfully sued Cobb County over the sex toy ban in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia and then appealed to the 11th Circuit, which ruled in 2002 that the law's related ban on advertising obscene materials, which include sex toys, violated the First Amendment's protection of commercial speech.

Georgia's obscenity law does allow certain people, namely academics and people with permission from a doctor or psychiatrist, to purchase sexual devices, presumably for nonprurient uses -- and for that reason, the appellate court said, the law's advertising ban was too broad.

The 11th Circuit instructed the district court to see if the language banning advertising could be severed from the law. The lower court decided it couldn't -- but ruled to uphold the obscenity law on the grounds that its language could be interpreted to allow advertising to legal sex toy users.

LOWER COURT SCOLDED

Wiggins again appealed to the 11th Circuit and on Feb. 15, the appellate court overturned the district court's decision in a unanimous opinion that took the lower court to task for revisiting the First Amendment question.

The appellate court also scolded the lower court for its determination that the obscenity law could be saved by means of a bit of editing, i.e., a limiting construction. "This case illustrates that revisiting of statutes should be left to the Georgia Legislature," the 11th Circuit wrote, just in case the lower court did not get the message.

And with that, the entire obscenity law fell, taking the sex toy ban down with it.

Wiggins called his free speech argument against the advertising ban a "stealthy" maneuver. "Why would Cobb think the obscenity statute, which is outside of the First Amendment, would be vulnerable to a First Amendment argument?" he said with evident satisfaction.

The back-door argument was stealthy enough to create confusion in the legal community and the press over whether the 11th Circuit's ruling toppled the entire obscenity law or just the prohibition on advertising sexual devices.

But the state attorney general's office quickly realized that Georgia had just lost its obscenity law. On Feb. 21, the attorney general informed the governor, the lieutenant governor and leaders of the House and Senate of the law's demise and let them know that they might want to draft a new statute.

Sen. John J. Wiles, R-Marietta, obliged, but his bill, Senate Bill 261, appears to be stuck in the Senate Judiciary Committee.

AT THE LEADING EDGE

First Amendment arguments are an adult entertainment lawyer's best friend, as Wiggins' recent win demonstrates.

But Wiggins also might argue that his clients on the prurient side of the law are the ones who safeguard First Amendment rights for the rest of us.

Most groundbreaking decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court involved "something unsavory that's on the fringe," he said earnestly. "You've got to argue the ugly cases. The Atlanta-Journal Constitution does not need the First Amendment. It's adult businesses that need it."

A lot of Wiggins' work at Cook, Youngelson & Wiggins is over routine business and liquor licensing issues for restaurants and bars -- as well as strip clubs, adult bookstores, bail bondsmen and vehicle booters. While licensing issues often are the hook that brings in clients, he said, the backbone of his practice is First Amendment litigation.

"The litigation consumes me. It's what I spend the lion's share of my time doing," Wiggins said.

He'll soon be heading back to the 11th Circuit on behalf of Club Exotica, a Macon, Ga., strip club fighting to keep its liquor license. "All they want to do is dance nude and sell liquor," Wiggins said. He's writing the brief right now.

He'll likely also be suing the new city of Sandy Springs, Ga., over a similar attempt to shut down two other strip club clients, Flashers and Mardi Gras.

He filed suit just last week against the city of Atlanta for trying to shut down the Phoenix, a faded gay bar on a rapidly gentrifying strip of Ponce de Leon near City Hall East.

The city wants to revoke the Phoenix's liquor license over an alleged sex act on its premises last fall. "They've been in business for 18 years with no violations and now, after one alleged incident, the city is pulling their license. There are stabbings and date rapes reported at Underground -- but the city isn't trying to close down the clubs there," Wiggins said indignantly.

Wiggins said his fiancé, whom he described as a nice Catholic girl from South Bend, Ind., supports his work on behalf of the state's bars, bail bondsmen, strippers and sex toy vendors. "She knows I've got a strong interest in constitutional issues and enjoy litigating them."

The only drawback, he said, is that it can take a while for him to get paid, since a large chunk of his fees come from the state and local governments that he often sues. Those cases can take years to wend through the lower and appellate courts.

In This That and the Other's case, for example, it still will be months before his attorney fees, if any, are awarded -- for a suit he filed in 2000.

"She probably wishes I enjoyed something more profitable," he added ruefully.

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Your Right to Buy Sex Toys

From the memphis flyer online:

Your Right to Buy Sex Toys

You have none. At least you don’t if you live in Mississippi. On March 19th, the Mississippi state supreme court upheld a law banning the sale, advertising, or exhibiting of any three-dimensional device used primarily for the stimulation of human genitalia.

The decision stemmed from a lawsuit filed by the Memphis-owned Christal’s chain of adult stores on behalf of its Southaven store. The company claimed that store was forced to close in 2000 because of the state’s ban on the sale of certain “intimate devices.”

The court's decision upheld a 2003 ruling that contended that the state had an interest in “protecting public physical and mental health and supporting public morality.” Whatever. What it means for you Mississippians is simple: When dildos are outlawed, only outlaws will have dildos. Read more about it here.

Or you could go here, and learn to make your own sex toys. But that would be wrong, not to mention icky.

BOING BOING'S GUIDE TO DEFEATING CENSORWARE

(see story here)

"The Internet interprets censorship as damage
and routes around it." -- John Gilmore

If your employer or corrupt, undemocratic, dictator-based government uses a filtering service such as Secure Computing's SmartFilter to block access to BoingBoing.net -- or anything else online -- you can try the following workarounds:

• Distributed BoingBoing mirrors everything on BoingBoing.net at random IP addresses to foil filters.

• Read "Technical Ways to Get Around Censorship," a helpful primer from Reporters Without Borders: Link.

• Google can act as a lightweight, proxy-like tool for accessing forbidden sites -- but don't rely on this method for anonymity. Link.
• The popular RSS reader Bloglines can offer lightweight help in some cases, too. Boing Boing reader Tom Jeziorny says, "I work for a BIG financial services company that apparently uses (not-so-) SmartFilter because BoingBoing has recently become a forbidden site. I use Bloglines as my RSS reader so that I can access the blogs I read from work and home. It turns out that Bloglines is acting as sort of a proxy, since it connects to your RSS feed and not my computer, I'm still able to read BoingBoing at work. Since you publish the full text of your entries in your feeds I'm not missing much, though any photos linked directly from your site are edited out."

• A group called Peacefire created proxy software called Circumventor to bypass censorware. Install this software on your home computer and allow others to use your proxy to access the web, or use your proxy from work or school to access any web site. (Thanks, Sean!)

• Bennett Haselton of Peacefire, who developed Circumventor, says:

  "For 90% of users in the USA affected by SmartFilter, there is no reason to use anything but Circumventor. The reasons are:

  1) It's simple to set up. Just run three simple point-and-click installers. We even have a wizard that comes up automatically to help you set up port forwarding on your router if you've never done it before.
  2) You are not required to install anything on the "censored" computer, you just bring a URL in with you to work.
  3) It works even if the censored network blocks direct connections to IP addresses outside the network (which would break some of the other solutions recommended in this guide).

  "If you're in Iran, Saudi Arabia, or some other country censored by SmartFilter, then your best choices are (a) TOR, or (b) use a Circumventor if you can get someone in a "free country" to set one up for you. (The reason Circumventor works for 90% of workplace-filtered users in the U.S. is that they can almost always set it up on their home computer and take the URL in with them. But not everybody in a censored *country* has someone outside who can help them.)

  "Circumventor is the *only* method (as far as I know) that will work reliably on computers where people are blocked from installing their own software (or even changing proxy settings) -- because after you install it on your home computer, all it gives you is a URL, and you can take that URL in with you to work and use it whenever you want. Many people in workplaces and libraries are blocked from installing software on their computers. Or even if they could, it would be a definite 'smoking gun' if anyone noticed that the software had been installed; whereas our software leaves fewer traces. (There is a 'smoking gun' in the form of a URL in the URL history, but that's much less likely to be noticed than a TOR icon on your desktop!)"

• Rich says, "This cgi-bin script is the guts inside Peacefire's Circumventor - a Perl CGI script that proxys for you. While Circumventor is a full script to get it working under Win2k/XP, the cgiproxy script alone lets you get it going on Linux and (presumeably) Mac OSX. And the best part - the setup is dirt simple - if you're already running a web server, pretty much just drop it in your cgi-bin directory.
• Access the TOR network. The more people who run Tor servers, the faster and more anonymous the network becomes.

• Using an SSH tunnel, VPN, or anonymous overlay to an unfiltered network is widely considered to be the best way to protect yourself while accessing "prohibited" content. (Thanks, chris)

• Chris says, "There is a new option in OpenSSH that allows for ethernet level tunneling using the kernel's TUN interface. This is probably the most powerful solution if you have access to a friendly system to use as the end point of the tunnel. Manual for ssh, see -w option: Link. For ssh_config, see Tunnel option: Link. And one more way to use SSH as a tunnel is to with SOCKS: Link. osx example script: Link.
• Breaking out of a Proxy Jail. Link (Thanks, Mutz!)

• Try Daveproxy, and other services listed on the proxy list at samair.ru/proxy together with AntiFirewall (a small app that tests proxies). (Thanks, Joao Barata!)

• Try Java Anonymous Proxy. JAP uses the TOR network, and installation is pretty easy for non-nerds. (Thanks, Jonas)

• The Bitty browser, while not initially designed as an anonymizing tool, has helped some of our readers work around corporate internet filters. (Thanks, Scott Matthews!)

• Some of our readers have found the Coral Content Distribution Network (CCDN) helpful for evading internet blocks. Just add ".nyud.net:8090" at the end of boingboing.net -- for example, instead of typing http://www.boingboing.net to your browser's address line, instead type http://www.boingboing.net.nyud.net:8090. If port 8090 is blocked for some reason, the Coral Cache also functions on port 8080. Or, try adding .cob-web.org:8888 to the URL if the Coral Cache is blocked, for an alternate cache network. (Thanks, BeHE, Tian and Michael!)

• Check out the regularly updated list of public proxy servers at publicproxyservers.com.

• For BoingBoing readers in the UAE or Qatar, or other countries where BoingBoing is blocked, one anonymous reader tells us: "There is an internet via satellite called OPENSKY sold through www.broadsat.com which goes around these problems. Using VPN with normal dialup, the signal gets sent back from Europe, so, uncensored. Works really well and is cheap!"

• Andy Armstrong says, "I've also set up a proxy for boingboing at boingboing.hexten.net."

• Ben says, "You can also set your home computer up for remote access. Windows XP has the components built in. If you run XP at home it will take you about 30 min to set up. You can find instructions here. Once you set up remote access you can use Zone Edit freeware to set up a static IP, even if you are on a cable modem. If you really want to go all out register a website for $5 and have that point to the Zone Edit IP address. I can hit my home computer from anywhere with web access, and have its full functionality, including censor-free web browsing."

• Marcus Aurelius says, "This is how I dodged Etisalat's (The UAE ISP and telco) proxy-server blacklist. It is only really useful for text-rich sites since it involves using Lynx a text browser."

• Abdul Aziz says, "It's a pain to know that countries and companies alike are blocking and censoring sites like Boing Boing. I face this at my office everyday. I've mentioned two ways on my site by which you can bypass these proxies and filters safely and securely without breaking any rules or arousing the network admin's suspicions." Link

• Former Censorware Project chief programmer Seth Finkelstein posts anti-censorware resources here .

• A tutorial on how to bypass Internet Censorship using proxies, shells, JAP, and the like: Link (Thanks, Seth Finkelstein)

• Michael sez:

  The Anonymizer company has a contract with the Voice of America to provide anonymous internet access for users in a number of foreign countries, including Iran and China. Here's how an Anonymizer sysadmin describes the Iranian portion of the service: "It's based off of PrivateSurfing [...]. Added features for the Iran proxy is full time SSL, URL encryption, Farsi language support, and we switch the proxy website about once a month (every time the Iranian government blocks us). We perform checks on the service from within Iran to see if our site is actually blocked (yes, it works), and we maintain a database of all known e-mail addresses that we can detect as being located in Iran. Every time we switch the proxy site we send an e-mail informing them of the new free proxy location so the citizens of Iran can find it. The sites are also broadcast via radio and TV into Iran by the VOA. To be honest, we're usually about a day behind the blocks, due mostly to time zone differences."

Or...

• If you're accessing BoingBoing from work, you may be able to ask your system administrator to whitelist BoingBoing.net. That's shorthand for selectively removing the domain from a list of forbidden sites provided by the filtering software vendor. If your employer uses SmartFilter, for example, a sysadmin can selectively allow the BoingBoing.net domain, while keeping the rest of the entries for the "blocked" category in which BoingBoing is listed. Bribing your network administrator with cartons of Skittles and Red Bull may expedite this option. (Thanks, mcsey!)

If you know of any good ways to defeat censorware, please send us your suggestion.

Patriot Act Game Pokes Fun at Government

HAMILTON, N.J. — In this send-up of "Monopoly," players don't pass "Go" and they don't go directly to jail — they go to Guantanamo Bay.

Instead of losing cash for landing on certain squares, they lose civil liberties. And the "Mr. Monopoly" character at the center of the board is replaced by a scowling former Attorney General John Ashcroft.

"Patriot Act: The Home Version" pokes fun at "the historic abuse of governmental powers" by the recently renewed anti-terrorism law.

But while it may be fun, creator Michael Kabbash, a graphic artist and Arab civil rights advocate, is serious about how he feels the law has curtailed Americans' freedom.

The object of the game is not to amass the most money or real estate, but to be the last player to retain civil liberties.

New Jersey graphic artist and Arab civil rights advocate, Michael Kabbash, speaks about his newly designed board game the Patriot Act, Tuesday, March, 14, 2006, at his office in Hamilton, N.J. A parody of the Monopoly game, The Patriot Act pokes fun at the historic abuse of governmental powers by the recently-renewed anti-terrorism law. (AP Photo/Jose F. Moreno)

"I've had people complain to me that when they play, nobody wins. They say `We're all in Guantanamo and nobody has any civil liberties left,'" he said. "I'm like `Yeah, that's the point.'"

The real Patriot Act, passed after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks and renewed earlier this month, gave law enforcement new investigative and prosecutorial powers. Critics say it unacceptably impinges on civil liberties, but the government defends the law as a vital tool that has helped prevent another terror attack.

Kabbash decided to keep Ashcroft as the visual focus of the game, even though he stepped down in January 2005, because "he really is the icon that people associate with the Patriot Act."

In a nod to President Bush's prewar comments, the "Go" space in is renamed "Bring It On!" Players roll the dice to determine how many civil liberties they start out with, accumulating them from a variety of categories: U.S. citizens get 5; non-citizens 1. Whites and Asians get 5; Arabs 1. Ultra right-wingers get 6; Democrats 3 or 4.

Instead of landing on, say Oriental Avenue, players land on a color-coded spaces corresponding to the national terror alert. A player who lands on a red space loses one civil liberty, as does anyone else within five spaces. A player who lands on an orange space gets to designate another player to lose one civil liberty.

"Chance" cards are now "Homeland Security Cards," with orders such as, "FBI wants you for questioning; Lose one turn;" and "You provide the local authorities with speculative information on your next door neighbor; Collect one civil liberty from each player."

Kabbash, of Green Brook, created a few full board sets but is also distributing the game free over the Internet, with the game board and playing cards all printable. More than 2,000 copies have been downloaded since it debuted in 2004.

"I wanted it to be not only a parody but a teaching tool," said Kabbash, 38, who teaches graphics at the College of New Jersey. "This is my way of putting my political ideas forward, hoping people will wake up. There's a lot of apathy, and we have to realize that we're in a democracy, that we're all allowed to say something."

Ashcroft had no comment on the game when asked about it Saturday during a crime conference in Miami Gardens, Fla., but he laughed when told "jail" had been replaced with Guantanamo Bay. U.S. Justice Department public affairs did not immediately return a call Saturday seeking comment.

Kabbash says his next project will probably have something to do with the National Security Agency's domestic eavesdropping program. He is reasonably certain "there's a file on me somewhere."

Asked if the FBI keeps a file on Kabbash, a bureau spokesman refused to comment.

___

Associated Press Writer Jessica Gresko in Miami Gardens, Fla., contributed to this report.

___

On the Net:

Game: http://www.graphix4change.com/

Patriot Act: http://www.lifeandliberty.gov/

Post found via newsvine

Tennessee Senator Dismisses Sex Toy Showdown

"Senator Dismisses Sex Toy Showdown"

A controversy over sexual devices is over before it even got started. State Senator Charlotte Burks had proposed a bill that would make it a crime to sell or even own sexual devices and toys.

Late Wednesday afternoon, the Senators' office said she has decided to pull the bill from consideration. The House version is expected to be killed Thursday.

Nashville adult business owners said they think lawmakers should have better things to do.

Lawmakers do not plan on reworking the bill and introducing it again this session but it could come up again in the future.

Original story found via yahoo news rss feed. Originally aired and posted by WKRN - Channel 2 news Nashville.


As Previously Reported in the Nashville Scene - There had been a new State Law to Ban Sex Toys, In the State of Tennessee:

Down With Dildos!

Two state legislators say no to sex toys

by John Spragens

Thank God the state legislature is back in session. When they’re gone, political columnists are forced to take up serious topics like the deputy governor lobbying subordinates on local political issues, U.S. national vulnerability to cyber-attack and the police chief threatening to storm out of a neighborhood meeting. But now that America’s dumbest criminals have reconvened their lawmaking body, it’s easy street for journalistic bottom-feeders to meet deadlines.

To wit: Senate Bill 3794 (House Bill 3798), legislation that would make it illegal to sell, advertise, publish or exhibit to another person “any three-dimensional device designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs….” For that matter, if you offer to show someone your dildo collection—or possess a vibrator with the intent to show it to someone—you’d be violating this proposed state law. And don’t even think about wholesaling those three-dimensional sex toys.

Of course, as with all good public policy, state Sen. Charlotte Burks and Rep. Eric Swafford have included a few exemptions for responsible dildo-users. College students and faculty are allowed to enter the sex-toy trade—as long as they are “teaching or pursuing a course of study related to such device,” like Auto-Erotic Stimulation 101. Your doctor or psychologist will similarly be authorized to prescribe the regular use of a sex toy “in the course of medical or psychological treatment or care.” And finally, employees of historical societies, museums, public libraries and—wait for it—school libraries are allowed to traffic in devices named Thruster, The Emperor and The Horny Hare, provided they’re doing their official duties. That means the Carnton Plantation would remain free to put up that “Dildos of the Antebellum” exhibit Robert Hicks has been pitching.

What do Burks and Swafford have against genital stimulation? Your guess is as good as ours. At press time, staff members hadn’t returned messages left Tuesday morning, probably because it’s hard to defend such stupid ideas. Attorneys for the state of Georgia couldn’t defend them either: two weeks ago, a federal appeals court overturned portions of a similar Georgia law on the grounds that advertising bans violate free speech rights.

Nonetheless, this Tennessee legislative tag-team went ahead and introduced their bill last Thursday, and on Monday, it passed a perfunctory first reading. In other Monday developments, Tennesseans died from a lack of health care, remained poorly educated and were among the most obese state populations in the nation.

browse every vote in the U.S. Congress since 1991

This site lets you browse every vote in the U.S. Congress since 1991.
Read more about the site.

France gives gay couples joint parental rights

France gives gay couples joint parental rights

From yahoo / Reuters

PARIS (Reuters) - France's top court ruled on Friday that both partners in a homosexual couple can exercise parental authority over a child, rather than just the biological parent.

The ruling by the Cour de Cassation, which decides how to interpret French law but does not hear trials, could open the way for further debate in France on gay marriage and the adoption of children by same-sex couples, which remains illegal.

"The civil code is not opposed to a mother, as sole holder of the parental authority, delegating all or part of the duties to the woman with whom she lives in a stable and continuous union," the court said in its verdict.

The decision also applied to male homosexual couples, where one of the partners was the biological father of a child.

The court said the right for same-sex couples to jointly exercise parental authority depended on the circumstances requiring such an arrangement and that it must be in the child's best interests.

Until now, French courts have ruled that the law only allowed parental responsibility to be delegated to a person other than the biological parents in unusual cases. This was not regarded as sufficient to include homosexual couples.

Friday's ruling came as the first French same-sex couple to form a civil union -- a right which the then Socialist-led government granted in 1999 -- got married in Belgium.

"It's a shame to have to go abroad to get married," said Dominique Adamski, 52, who married Francis Sekens, 60, in Mouscron, a small Belgian town just over the border from France.

The present, conservative government opposes gay marriage and does not allow same-sex couples to adopt children, but has given homosexual couples who form a civil union more financial rights.

US legislators press Rice on UN vote against gays

from Reuters

By Irwin Arieff

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The Bush administration's support for Iran's proposal to bar two gay rights groups from a voice at the United Nations sparked a demand from U.S. legislators on Tuesday that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice repudiate the action.

The January 23 vote denying "consultative status" at the world body to the Belgium-based International Gay and Lesbian Association and the Danish National Association for Gays and Lesbians was a "drastic reversal" of Washington's previous stand on the issue, the U.S. House of Representatives members wrote.

Nearly 3,000 nongovernmental organizations have such status, which enables them to distribute documents and speak at meetings of some U.N. bodies and conferences.

In voting for Iran's proposal, "the United States joined some of the world's most oppressive regimes, among them China, Cuba, Sudan and Zimbabwe" and demonstrated "a reprehensible inconsistency" in the protection of rights based on sexual orientation, the lawmakers said.

Among the 44 Democrats and one independent signing the letter were Democrats Eliot Engel of New York, Steny Hoyer of Maryland, Tom Lantos of California, Rahm Emanuel of Illinois and Dennis Kucinich of Ohio.

They called on Rice to publicly repudiate the action and support pending applications by three other gay rights groups.

The vote occurred in the U.N. Economic and Social Council's Committee on Nongovernmental Organizations.

U.S. officials said the United States had opposed the Belgian group in January due to its previous ties to the North American Man/Boy Love Association, which condones pedophilia.

But the United States had voted in 2002 to approve U.N. ties to the group. At that time, a U.S. diplomat told the committee Washington was convinced it no longer condoned pedophilia and praised it for its life-saving activities in the struggle against AIDS.

Despite U.S. support, the group failed to win enough votes to win consultative status in 2002, and the January 2006 vote had been its first chance since then to try again.

On January 23, the United States first abstained on a motion to deny a hearing to the two groups. That motion carried.

Washington then voted in favor of Iran's proposal to deny their applications, which carried 10-5 with three abstentions.

Following the vote, German envoy Martin Thuemmel said the committee decision "will haunt us for a long time" because it sent a message that it was acceptable to discriminate on the basis of an individual's sexual orientation.

'Net firms collect more data; lawyers, prosecutors are using it

'Net firms collect more data; lawyers, prosecutors are using it - Story at Boing Boing
Snip from a piece by Saul Hansell in today's New York Times:

[Internet] data led directly to a suspect in a school bombing threat; it has also been used by the authorities to track child pornographers and computer intruders, and has become a tool in civil cases on matters from trade secrets to music piracy. In St. Louis, records of a suspect's online searches for maps proved his undoing in a serial-killing case that had gone unsolved for a decade.

In short, just as technology is prompting Internet companies to collect more information and keep it longer than before, prosecutors and civil lawyers are more readily using that information. When it comes to e-mail and Internet service records, "the average citizen would be shocked to find out how adept your average law enforcement officer is at finding information," said Paul Ohm, who recently left the Justice Department's computer crime and intellectual property section.

The issue has come to the fore because of a Justice Department request to four major Internet companies for data about their users' search queries. While America Online, Yahoo and Microsoft complied with the request, Google is resisting it. That case does not involve information that can be linked to individuals, but it has cast new light on what privacy, if any, Internet users can expect for the data trail they leave online.

The answer, in many cases, is clouded by ambiguities in the law that governs electronic communication like telephone calls and e-mail.

Link for more info

Do something about it...
at the EFF,
at
>EPIC Online Guide to Practical Privacy Tools,
The ACLU
http://www.privacy.org/
Email Privacy.info

Could Your VoIP Phone Be Tapped?

Could Your VoIP Phone Be Tapped?
from: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/27/AR2006012701086.html

Civil-liberties groups say the FCC's plans may pose a threat to your privacy and security.

Dennis O'Reilly, PC World
PC World
Saturday, January 28, 2006; 12:10 AM

BURLINGAME, CALIFORNIA -- Several privacy and civil-liberties organizations are mounting a legal challenge to prevent VoIP and other Internet-based communications from being subject to taps from law-enforcement agencies.

The group, which includes the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), the COMPTEL association of communications service providers, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation , says it will fight the FCC's plan to expand the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) of 1994. It filed a brief this week with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

The FCC's final rule, issued on August 5, 2005, would extend CALEA to all Internet-based communications, according to EFF Chairman Brad Templeton, who spoke at this week's Emerging Telephony Conference here, sponsored by O'Reilly Media. Once the FCC issues a final rule, vendors have 18 months to comply with it.

Templeton claims that the CALEA expansion proposed by the FCC would "require that people get permission to innovate" and would also create "regulatory barriers to entry." "The FBI gets veto on new companies," according to Templeton. Another, more threatening aspect of the regulation is its mandate that a "back door" be built into all Internet-communications hardware and software to provide access for law enforcement agencies. This same back door could be exploited by hackers to listen in and record these Internet communications, according to Templeton.

In March 2004 the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the Drug Enforcement Agency petitioned the FCC to expand CALEA to cover Internet-based communications. The original statute applied only to calls made using the public switched telephone network.

The FCC's proposal would require that all VoIP hardware vendors comply with the wiretap mandate within 18 months of the order's effective date, but Templeton claims that many router vendors have already added the wiretap capability to their shipping products, despite the fact that the FCC hasn't yet issued any instructions for doing so. Templeton adds that the cost of implementing this proposal will be passed onto the businesses and consumers who use the products.

Among the politicians opposing the FCC's Internet wiretap plan is Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the chief sponsor of the original CALEA legislation. Leahy says the Internet was explicitly excluded from the law's surveillance rules, with the understanding that the exclusion could be revisited. However, he claims that extending CALEA to the Internet of today is counter to the intention of Congress.

In a notice posted to the FBI's CALEA Web site yesterday, the FCC promises to release another order that will address such issues as "compliance extensions and exemptions, cost recovery, identification of future services and entities subject to CALEA, and enforcement."

Dominatrix scandal rocks a police department

(Greenburgh-WABC, February 3, 2006) - A scandal involving a dominatrix rocks a police department in the Westchester County town of Greenburgh -- and now several officers are under investigation.

One cop has been suspended, four others reassigned and the street crime unit has been taken off the street, after a dominatrix claims she was the victim of sexual harassment.

Eyewitness News Reporter Tim Fleischer is in Greenburgh with the story.

The fallout, up to this point, one officer with the street crimes unit has already been suspended without pay. This also comes after stunning allegations of misconduct against a dominatrix.

Greenburgh Police headquaters are stung by allegations of inappropriate conduct against officers by a 31-year-old woman who makes her living in bondage and S&ampM.

"You cannot justify the inappropriateness in any manner shape or form," said Greenburgh Police Chief John Kapica.

"There was behavior on the part of the police that one would characterize as unprofessional both at the scene and later at the station house," said defense attorney Tony Castro.

The woman -- 31-year-old Gina Annenoel Pane sitting in a car in the parking lot of a movie theater was arrested and charged with marijuana use. But after officers spotted what the chief describes as sex toys in the car, an officer allegedly began making comments of a sexual nature.

And then back at police headquarters, after she revealed to officers in a report that she was a dominatrix by profession, she alleges inappropriate behavior continued -- some of it caught on video tape.

"At least what we've seen did not reveal any improprieties on the part of the officers in that they didn't do anything that I would deem to be inappropriate," Kapica said.

Information she provided to police links her to a web site where she discuses services and favorite activities that includes domination.

But police reveal one more stunning detail:

"Another officer had met her afterwards and had done things that were inappropriate, if not criminal," Kapica added.

And in addition to the investigation at the police department, the district attorney's public integrity unit is also investigating these allegations.

Patriot Act fights dissent, not terror

excerpt from a well written article about Patriot Act fights dissent, not terror:

If the present version of the ``Patriot Act'' is passed by the Senate, any demonstrators attending security events such as the Super Bowl will in the future be arrested and charged with a federal felony by a newly created federal police force, ``Secret Service, Uniformed Division,''

Teacher fired for blog posts and data mining amazon wish lists...

From the Chronicle - Wired Campus blog a teacher is fired for her blog posts.....

Banished For Blogging

A professor at Devry University in Westminster, Colorado, has been fired, she says, for some "water-cooler kvetching" about the institution on her blog.

Meg Spohn, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Denver, served as department chair of communications and composition at the Westminster campus until mid-December. On her Web site, Ms. Spohn had critiqued the university's online training seminars and hiring practices -- complaints, she argues, that were fairly antiseptic.

But campus officials evidently saw something a bit more sinister in her online musings. And Ms. Spohn may have a difficult time if she chooses to fight the firing: Colorado is an "at-will" state where companies are allowed to dismiss employees for any reasons not prohibited by federal law. (The Denver Post)

and then a kind-a-scary, easy to use, data mining script for finding subversive Americans - originally found via Boing Boing...

Data Mining 101: Finding Subversives with Amazon Wishlists
Frequent Make contributor Tom Owad just published a mind-blowing how-on on his website explaining how to mine Amazon's wish list database to uncover "subversives."

Using a pair of 5-year-old computers, two home DSL connections, 42 hours of computer time, and 5 man hours, I now had documents describing the reading preferences of 260,000 U.S. citizens.

I downloaded all the files to an external 120 GB Firewire drive in UFS format. The raw data occupied little more than 5 GB. I initially wanted to move all the files into a single directory to facilitate searching, but as the directory contents exceeded 100,000 items, the speed became glacially slow, so I kept the data divided into chunks of 25,000 wishlists.

Next comes the fun part – what books are most dangerous? So many to choose from. Here's a sample of the list I made. Feel free to make up your own list if you decide to try some data mining. Send it to the FBI. I'm sure they'll appreciate your help in fighting terrorism.

Link to read more about this crazy thing...

D.C. Law May Cause Close of Gay Adult Businesses

Some people won't pay attention to the laws your city / state / country enacts. These same people are often suprised when years later there is a law hurts them or the ones they love in a way that was never considered. I've seen this with zoning issues and entertainment issues. People's rights are in effect taken from them, including the places they can live, work, and shop. Here is one example of old-not-considered laws omcing in and essentially forcing a business out of existence...

from Xbiz...

By Kat Kahn

Monday, January 2, 2006

WASHINGTON — Various gay adult businesses are slated to be pushed out of a six-block radius in Washington, D.C., by a new baseball stadium – but they may not be allowed to move to another part of town, due to a little-noticed provision in a 2001 city law regulating the zoning for adult entertainment businesses.

The law, introduced by Councilwoman Sharon Ambrose, was intended to lift a restriction that barred such establishments from moving to a different location. However, one of its provisions appears to prevent such businesses from moving outside the zone of its current location.

"As I have been saying for nearly a year, the law needs to be changed to allow gay businesses to move to another part of the city," gay activist Frank Kameny said.

Due to the efforts of Kameny and other activists, D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams postponed the vote on the stadium lease after it became clear that a majority of the D.C. Council would vote against it.

Williams already has invoked the city's eminent domain law to evict the clubs from their O Street location as early as Feb. 1, though that date may be postponed if the council refuses to approve the stadium lease by Jan. 2.

"As far as I'm concerned, they can delay it as long as they want," Cliff Witt, a manager at the gay bar Secrets, said. "I hope they delay it to death."

Secrets is one of six gay businesses that have operated in the O Street area for more than 20 years, in what Kameny and other activists have referred to as a unique "gay" entertainment district. Gay businesses located in the area include two nightclubs, a bathhouse, an adult movie theater and an adult video arcade.

Porn-secution

from the oc weekly...

The Bush administration has a new weapon in its war on porn: stalkers

by CELESTE KIDD

For the kids Photo courtesy Stacy Burke

Among standard occupational hazards associated with the porn industry—chlamydia, leaking implants and an anal scene with the brawny Lexington Steele—adult-film actors have this new one: sexual predators aided by George W. Bush.

Since June 23, a Justice Department ruling has made it possible for anyone purchasing photographs from an adult content provider to get models’ personal information, including real names, home addresses and telephone numbers.

Adult performers say the updated recordkeeping requirements for sexually explicit materials declare open season on adult stars, already the targets of religious zealous and perverts—and religious zealots who are perverts. Officials say the amended provision to the Child Protection and Obscenity Act of 1988 was necessary to prevent the distribution of child pornography through new technologies, mainly the Internet.

But adult-film actors say protecting kids is a ruse.

“They’re targeting adult performers because we work in sex,” says Stacy Burke. “Can you imagine if they did this to mainstream Hollywood actresses—put their personal information out there for anyone to get? They wouldn’t do that.”

Burke says she has reason to worry. A few years ago, she started receiving e-mails, forum posts and chat-room comments like one that read, “I’m going to kill Stacy Burke.” Her cyberstalker also sent a series of detailed fetish-themed illustrations of Burke restrained in a straitjacket.

“He would say things like he knew where I lived, he knew where my grandmother lived and that he was going to bash my head in with a hammer,” Burke says.

She blocked his e-mails and online posts, but the messages continued until recently, when they gradually tapered off.

“Once in a while, I get a pending message coming through some message board that I can’t prove is him. But in my mind, I’m positive it’s him,” she says. “[I] pray that he won’t make good on his promises.”

The Department of Justice has said the changes will protect children from exploitation. “This rule provides greater details for the recordkeeping and inspection process in order to ensure that minors are not used as performers in sexually explicit depictions,” the department said in a published statement. In addition to protecting children, the department has said the law aims to prevent the inadvertent distribution of child pornography by webmasters who may purchase and post sexually explicit photos of children without knowing the ages of the models depicted.

Although disconcerting for Burke, the new rule is great news for would-be stalkers. If a sexual predator wants to obtain personal details for adult models, he can get them—and adult-themed photos—all for one convenient price from a law-abiding adult content provider. The images would arrive with a digital file containing model release forms and a copy of each performer’s government-issued ID—files the government requires of webmasters who repost purchased content.

Some adult companies are silently defying the new regulations by refusing to release model information; call it the Boston Tea Bag Party. But defiance puts those companies at risk of federal crackdowns. Companies that opt to remain on the up-and-up are forced to sacrifice their models’ safety to avoid criminal prosecution.

The prospects are terrifying for Burke and other performers. “A woman I know said she has three e-mail stalkers,” says Lorelei, a fetish model who counsels other performers on privacy issues. “With this new legislation, she’s worried that those e-mail stalkers will turn into real-life stalkers. It’s just handing predators a pass to come after victims in person.”

The Department of Justice addressed and dismissed this concern in the May 24, 2005, Federal Register. “While the Department is certainly concerned about possible crimes against performers and the businesses that employ them, the necessity of maintaining these records to ensure that children are not exploited outweighs these concerns,” the department wrote.

But the new rule is unlikely to prevent the exploitation of children. Only a few minors have ever been discovered working on commercial adult sets, and all of them managed to obtain state-issued driver’s licenses to falsely prove their age to producers. The case of Traci Lords is best known. Born Nora Louise Kuzma, Lords fled an abusive father in Ohio for a 40-something boyfriend in Redondo Beach in the early ’80s. At the age of 15, she used a friend’s birth certificate and fraudulent driver’s license to land herself a gig in the porn industry. By her 18th birthday, she had appeared in more than 100 adult films, all of them pulled from shelves in 1986 when federal authorities discovered she was underage during production.

The amended regulations can’t prevent another Traci Lords. In situations where minors obtain identification and birth certificates from state agencies through fraudulent means, the new federal rule still falls short.

“We respect the government using all tools at its disposal to deal with the child-pornography problem,” says Tom Hymes, spokesman for the Free Speech Coalition (FSC), the adult-industry-lobbying group headquartered in Canoga Park. “But as far as keeping minors off adult sets and out of productions, we believe that history proves these regulations would have little or no impact on that.”

The new regulations fail to account for child pornography exchanged privately among pedophiles, the most commonly documented method of distribution. Media reports about child-pornography rings refer almost exclusively to private, non-commercial trading—not pay sites. Online sales of all explicit materials require the user and seller to sacrifice anonymity when making and receiving payments, a fact that inhibits both the demand and production of commercially available child porn. From a purely business perspective, the legal liability of receiving documented payment for illegal materials is a built-in disincentive for supplying it.

The law may be misdirected in its effort to combat child pornography, but many in the adult industry believe that’s not really the law’s intent anyway.

“Any time the government or a senator or someone from the House wants to introduce a bill that attacks the adult industry, they always frame it as protecting children,” Hymes says. “It’s a slam-dunk, and all the bills are presented that way, as an attempt to either protect children or combat child pornography.”

The FSC filed a complaint in June in the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, asserting that the regulations encroach upon the free-speech rights of adult producers by subjecting them to excessively burdensome recordkeeping. The court awarded the FSC temporary injunctive relief pending an unscheduled hearing on the constitutionality of the amended rule.

Burke is optimistic about the possible outcome. “It’s scary. They’re trying to scare people out of this business,” she says. “But there are just too many people out there doing the same thing I’m doing. The industry is not just going to go away.”

gov't hides behind kids to get thier morality and church voters satisfied

i am deeply disturbed and alarmed by our government's recent crackdown on websites containing BDSM content and how this has affected more and more websites. The most recent news is that US Law Code 18/Section 2257 has now hit our bdsm/leather community online. This morning, in response to 2257, tribe.net sent a letter to all its members stating that any tribe.net member can now flag as "offensive"
any photo, event listing, discussion thread, or just mere words in a person's profile, and that the content pointed out would later be deleted.



Does this seem ridiculous? Perhaps. But tribe.net is only responding to the U.S.
Government crackdown on ANY website that contains sexually explicit content. To read the actual law, US Code 18 Section 2257 go to:
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/ts_search.pl?title=18&sec=2257

This law was originally created to crack down on child pornography, which i am certain all of us agree with. But the recent change in the law has set the US government upon us -- consenting adults. There can be NO MORE denial. The far right in America had to pick a new target, and WE, my leather and kinky friends, are it.

In His recent address at the Together in Leather Conference in Charlotte NC, Master Steve Sampson said, "The far right has lost the war against gays and lesbians. The new "beat 'em up and feel righteous" target is the SM community – WE ARE the new gays. With current legislation, the possibility of a witch hunt designed to hurt and destroy SM websites and activities is very real."

Master Steve is correct -- and it's already happened. The government is arresting and prosecuting owners of websites whose content includes BDSM related

pictures .. and in some cases, BDSM related words only. The erotic fiction website RED ROSE STORIES is facing obscenity charges after federal agents raided the owner's home on October 3rd, taking computer equipment and diskettes that contained all of their files and site information. In response, several website owners have decided to close down.

• Our own beloved MIDORI has removed her website, BeautyBound.com, citing fear of obscenity prosecution.

• The owner of three SM websites, known as GRANDPA DESADE, removed his websites from the Internet.

• SUICIDEGIRLS.COM announced they are self-censoring their materials over concerns about a possible obscenity crackdown

• The popular INSEX.COM has left America, is being run in another country, and has taken down all prior content

• An extension was made last month week, delaying enforcement of 2257 that some GAY MALE CRUISING WEBSITES say are threatening the use of nude photos, a staple of their popularity.

• And now, with TRIBE.NET changing what content they will allow, 2257 has reached our community's informational and educational resource sites.

Throughout all this 2257 craziness, the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom (NCSF) has remained hard at work on our behalf, working on obscenity cases that are before
the United States District Courts, Appeal Courts and US Supreme Court
www.ncsfreedom.org/news/2005/



In His speech, Master Steve Sampson continued, "But we do have a voice and a choice.
Our way of life is being threatened and we have to act now to protect it."

This fight takes money and the time to take action is NOW. Please, i urge each and
every one of us who is into bdsm, kink, fetishes and/or the leather lifestyle to take
the time to join the NCSF, either as individuals or groups. Individual membership is
$25.00 and for groups and organizations it's $100. More details can be found on the
NCSF's website at www.ncsfreedom.org

i do not work for the NCSF. i am just a kinky leather slavegirl who is appalled and
disgusted with our government's right-wing, closed-minded, prudish attitude
towards CONSENSUAL alternative sexual lifestyles. i have listed my affilations and
credentials below for those who don't know me from Adam.

Right now the government is only coming after our websites. What's next? The
closure of our bdsm and leather yahoo groups? Our dungeon spaces? Our leather
bars? Please, don't buy into the saying "that would never happen in America.." If we
don't stand up now, we will be putting out the red carpet for history to repeat itself.
And let's not fool ourselves. Our toes are already on that carpet...First it was adult
porn producers. Then bdsm porn sites. Then online erotica sites. Then Pro-Domme
sites. Then gay dating sites. Now our online communities. What's next?

Please, will you join me in joining the NCSF now?

Multiple Love: Polyamory - the Montel Williams show

Show Title: The Montel Williams Show
Episode Title: "Multiple Love: Polyamory"
Original airdate: November 29, 2005
Network: Syndicated - Paramount Domestic Television Produced by: The Montel Williams Show, in association with Paramount Domestic Television Executive Producers: Montel Williams and Diane Rappoport

Description:

>From the show's website: "Today we'll hear the stories of people who
consider
themselves 'polyamorists.' They feel that loving more than one person at a time isn't only natural but the best way to maintain productive relationships over time." (Full description available at
http://www.montelshow.com/show/?showID=4763)

NCSF Reviewer's note:

Although the show's format necessarily truncated a fully comprehensive discussion of the subject, the episode did present a good and articulate range of people involved in various polyamorous relationships and a positive understanding of why someone might choose polyamory over monogamy. The show's host, Montel Williams, occasionally took a devil's advocate approach to his guests, but overall he was very welcoming, and the studio audience seemed to move from a place of questioning hostility to one of just slightly hesitant acceptance. Throughout, Montel placed emphasis on polyamory being an alternative relationship structure, suggesting that is up to each of us to define our own relationships and important that we live from our hearts. The episode concluded with a taped interview with the 15-year-old daughter of one of the program's guests, who discussed the benefits and wealth of support she derived from growing up the child of polyamorous parents with more than two parental figures in the home. All in all, the show is to be commended for the respectful and inclusive manner in which the topic was presented.
(Reviewed by Lisa
Vandever.)


TO GIVE FEEDBACK ON THIS EPISODE TO THE SHOW'S PRODUCERS, WRITE:

The Montel Williams Show
433 West 53rd Street
New York, NY 10019

(While hard copy letters are generally more effective, you can also send a direct email to the show via their website, http://www.montelshow.com/sendyourpov/ )

WITH OPTIONAL CC TO THE PROGRAM'S DISTRIBUTOR AT:

Paramount Studios
5555 Melrose Avenue
Hollywood, CA 90038

AND AN OPTIONAL CC TO THE LOCAL STATION THAT AIRS "MONTEL" IN YOUR
COMMUNITY:

http://www.montelshow.com/wheretowatch/

***

HOW TO WRITE VIEWER FEEDBACK

Viewer letters are an effective way to convey a positive image of alternate sexual practices such as SM, swinging or polyamory. Your feedback can help to correct negative social myths and misconceptions about these types of practices, and may influence the future decisions of programmers and producers about the entertainment they provide. These letters help achieve the advocacy goals of the NCSF.

For more information and suggestions of points to include in your letter, see:
http://www.ncsfreedom.org/library/writelettertoeditor.htm

Please alert us to positive, negative or neutral stories about SM, swinging and polyamory at media@ncsfreedom.org

BDSM Priests, Tax breaks for witches, and Librarians Protest.. In the News

Articles in the news today:

From the U.K. a lesson about how your ebay purchases can easily come back to alert everyone else in the world what you have an interest in; PRIEST BUYS AN 8FT CROSS FOR SEX GAMES (The Daily Record.co.uk).

Also from Europe:

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Dutch tax authorities have allowed a woman to deduct the 2,210 euros it cost her to take a one-year course in witchcraft, an inland revenue official said Wednesday.

And finally in the U.S.

Librarians Protest the Patriot Act ...speakers warned of the perils of the Patriot Act and accused the Justice Department of deceiving Congress in how federal officials have used the law, they were surrounded by eight librarians who covered their mouths with masking tape that bore the letters "NSL," for national-security letter.

Great News!

I think the new TNAPEx blog is great news, I know that we all have many things to post about, and I am looking forward to seeing the info that others have gathered as well. The comments should get some good discussions rolling as well!

Cheers!

First tnapex blog

This is the first TNAPEX blog post. We look forward to the world sharing information and the power that goes along with it.
Feel free to comment and make suggestions. Although TNAPEX was founded with Tennessee in mind, there is no reason that people around the country and across the globe can not benefit from the information gathered here, and we invite you to share information and experiences no matter where you are.

Steve
TNAPEX
www.tnapex.org