LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY catvincent)

X-posted to my journal.

So nude pictures are bad and sinful - unless they're selling the pro-life agenda.

(Link to not-safe-for-work pics of the statue. Actually, it's pretty cute... and it's *art* so that's OK.)

' A nude Britney Spears on a bearskin rug while giving birth to her firstborn marks a ‘first’ for Pro-Life. Pop-star Britney Spears is the “ideal” model for Pro-Life and the subject of a dedication at Capla Kesting Fine Art in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg gallery district, in what is proclaimed the first Pro-Life monument to birth, in April.

Dedication of the life-sized statue celebrates the recent birth of Spears’ baby boy, Sean, and applauds her decision of placing family before career. “A superstar at Britney’s young age having a child is rare in today’s celebrity culture. This dedication honors Britney for the rarity of her choice and bravery of her decision,” said gallery co-director, Lincoln Capla. The dedication includes materials provided by Manhattan Right To Life Committee.

“Monument to Pro-Life: The Birth of Sean Preston,” believed Pro-Life’s first monument to the ‘act of giving birth,’ is purportedly an idealized depiction of Britney in delivery. Natural aspects of Spears’ pregnancy, like lactiferous breasts and protruding naval, compliment a posterior view that depicts widened hips for birthing and reveals the crowning of baby Sean’s head.

The monument also acknowledges the pop-diva’s pin-up past by showing Spears seductively posed on all fours atop a bearskin rug with back arched, pelvis thrust upward, as she clutches the bear’s ears with ‘water-retentive’ hands.

“Britney provides inspiration for those struggling with the ‘right choice’,” said artist Daniel Edwards, recipient of a 2005 Bartlebooth award from London’s The Art Newspaper. “She was number one with Google last year, with good reason --- people are inspired by the beauty of a pregnant woman,” said Edwards. '

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY njtech)

Stupidity comes in many forms, and from many sources, but one never-ending source fo stupidity is the moral majority. We've all encountered porn unitentionally because of redirects, pop-ups, or mistyping of a legit website which was registered by a porn site. The misgivings of the moral majority over how to deal with this and how to "save the children" could fill up the library of Congress. One thing we hrear a lot about is filters. These folks want filters at libraries, at work, everywhere they can force them into. Only problem is the filters suck. They screen out legit websites that talk about proper ways to use birth control or which discuss the pros and cons of abortions vs adoption.

John Dvorak proposed a decade ago having an .xxx domain specifically for porn sites. You simply wouldn't be allowed to operate a porn site as a .com or anything else but a /xxx. Now of course, what is or isn't porn is another can of worms entirely, and how and who would enforce this was never figured out precisely. ICANN recently decided this was a good idea, until they backed off because of, you guessed it, the Moral Majority.

Here is their press release exalting the demise of this top level domain.

Dvoraks point was that you could then filter out porn easily by disallowing any sites that had an .xxx domain. Simple, and it doesn't filter out the legit stuff. Yeah you might get a porn site that's a .com that slippedm thru and didn'r convert to .xxx but if this went thru, it would be a way to corral the porn sites in a way that made them manageable. As it is now there's really no effective way to accurately screen for porn, period, end of story.

But now, 6,000 letters to ICANN and they backed off.

//shakes head.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY loquaciousnut)

http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/religious-storm-over-aussie-thunder-stops-the-show/2005/10/29/1130400400085.html

Religious storm over Aussie thunder stops the show
October 30, 2005
The Sun-Herald

Religious leaders in the mid-west American state of North Dakota have forced the cancellation of a show by Australia's Thunder from Down Under male dancers.

Jamestown Mayor Charlie Kourajian and councillors Dwaine Heinrich and John Grabinger voted on Friday to terminate the contract with the group. Two other councillors voted against the move.

The show had been scheduled for Thursday at the Jamestown Civic Centre and was booked about three months ago.

Thunder from Down Under spokeswoman Penny Levin said the decision was a shocking form of censorship, and the show was tasteful adult entertainment, tailored for various audiences.

"We're not a bunch of heathens roaming through," she said.

"No one is being forced to buy a ticket or see the show, but now people are being forced to not see the show."

Mr Grabinger said allowing the show to proceed would have upset the commercial sponsors of the venue where it was to be held.

"I talked to advertisers [who] made it clear that this was going to cost us more than if we cancel the contract," he said.

The Jamestown Ministerial Association petitioned the Civic Centre and Promotions Committee in protest against what pastors called a strip show.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY hummingwolf)

Tucked deep inside a massive bill designed to track sex offenders and prevent children from being victimized by sex crimes...

The provision added to the Children's Safety Act of 2005 would require any film, TV show or digital image that contains a sex scene to come under the same government filing requirements that adult films must meet.

Currently, any filmed sexual activity requires an affidavit that lists the names and ages of the actors who engage in the act. The film is required to have a video label that claims compliance with the law and lists where the custodian of the records can be found. The record-keeping requirement is known as Section 2257, for its citation in federal law. Violators could spend five years in jail.

Under the provision inserted into the Children's Safety Act, the definition of sexual activity is expanded to include simulated sex acts like those that appear in many movies and TV shows.

As has been pointed out, child pornography is already illegal, and California already has stringent laws protecting children (including child actors) from harm. What the modifications to this bill seem likely to do is to enable the federal government to crack down on any sexual scene dating back to 1995--including those between clothed actors on prime-time TV--if filmmakers haven't kept records which conform to today's law.

In other words, while there is nothing in the article which specifically mentions the Religious Right, you can bet they'll be goading officials to take full advantage of this provision if the thing gets passed. Similar provisions have been ruled unconstitutional in the past; here's hoping people come to their senses this time around as well.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY britzkrieg)

From Law.com:

When FBI supervisors in Miami met with new interim U.S. Attorney Alex Acosta last month, they wondered what the top enforcement priority for Acosta and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales would be...

The agents were stunned to learn that a top prosecutorial priority of Acosta and the Department of Justice was none of the above. Instead, Acosta told them, it's obscenity. Not pornography involving children, but pornographic material featuring consenting adults...

With the rapid growth of Internet pornography, stamping out obscene material has become a major concern for the Bush administration's powerful Christian conservative supporters. The Mississippi-based American Family Association and other Christian conservative groups have pressured the Justice Department to take action against pornography. The family association has sent weekly letters to U.S. attorneys around the country to pressure them to pursue the makers and distributors of pornography.

"While there are crimes like drugs and public corruption in Miami, this is also a form of corruption and should be a priority," said Anthony Verdugo, director of the Christian Family Coalition in Miami. "Pornography is a poison and it's addictive. It's not a victimless crime. Women are the victims."

Full Story

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY gothic_oreo)

Government cracking down on Internet porn

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

Americablog leads off with this thought:

The theocrats are all about taking away privacy rights: a woman's right to choose, contraception, sodomy, porn. It's all about sex. Their sex obsession is just out of control...and it affects all of our privacy on so many levels.

ThinkProgress picks up the thread:

Just three days after President Bush enlisted porn star Mary Carey and pornographer Mark Kulkis to help him raise $23 million, I was surprised to receive this message from Family Research Council President Tony Perkins:

I just met with Attorney General Gonzales and right now he is launching a major effort to prosecute the porn industry. He intends to smash these criminal enterprises on the Internet and elsewhere with a special new obscenity strike force.( Read more... )

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY britzkrieg)

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, like his immediate predecessor, John Ashcroft, has pledged to make obscenity prosecutions a priority. The department is expected to announce soon the creation of a special unit within its criminal division to focus on adult obscenity cases.

"Enforcement is absolutely necessary if we are going to protect citizens from unwanted exposure to obscene materials," Gonzales recently told federal prosecutors. He directed U.S. attorneys to report back by late July on effective ways to crack down on obscenity and what tools the prosecutors might need.

Those kind of words please religious conservatives, who claim the Clinton administration virtually ignored the proliferation of pornography, particularly on the Internet, during the 1990s...

A proponent of strict enforcement of obscenity laws [says] that so far, the administration has aimed mostly at minor figures in the industry.

"At some point, they're going to have to ratchet it up if they want to do something meaningful," said Robert Peters, president of Morality in Media.

Full Story