dmcanzi@watdcsu.UUCP (David Canzi) (12/06/85)
The following line was censored from Blueboy magazine (a magazine for gay men) before it could be allowed to be imported into Canada: "And he won some scholarship to a fancy-dancy prep school up North in Massachusetts, where everybody talks like John F. Kennedy, with no R's in their words and A's that sound like sheep talking." Before you read on, you might try to imagine *what* was so offensive about that line... Give up? It's "child porn". Child porn is defined as: "Materials depicting and/or describing acts between children and/or juveniles, or between children and/or juveniles and adults... Children and juveniles are persons actually or apparently under the age of eighteen." What makes it child porn is that a gay character is being described as being of prep-school age. The fact is there are actively gay men under the age of eighteen. I've even met some. This is the truth, but in Canada, this particular truth is child pornography. In Canada, the line has been crossed: the government is now "protecting" the people from knowing the truth. This article is based on some experience, but mainly on an article in the local student newspaper. That article in turn was based on the "Censorship Bulletin" published by the Glad Day Bookshop in Toronto. It's presented as a warning to the world of the danger of any kind of censorship law, especially a *vague* one. Any law the government creates can, and eventually will, be used against the people. (Followups will go to net.politics only.) -- David Canzi "But lo! men have become the tools of their tools." -- Henry David Thoreau
rrizzo@bbncca.ARPA (Ron Rizzo) (12/11/85)
I'm glad it happened, as absurd as it is, for it's a DIRECT implementation of notions of "pornography" and "child porn" that the "antiporn" movement is not only propagating but trying to write into actual law codes. Evelyn Leeper wrote a detailed critique of the Minneapolis ordinance for the Usenet some time ago, detailing the preposterous clauses & ideas it contained. It's time everyone recognized the paranoid & even psychotic elements in feminism; no social movement, however worthy, is totally free of them. Cheers, Ron Rizzo "Devolution proceeds by a principle of survival of the looniest." --- Mistress Andrea, PRIMER OF SOCIAL DWORKINISM
dmcanzi@watdcsu.UUCP (David Canzi) (12/14/85)
In article <1633@bbncca.ARPA> rrizzo@bbncca.ARPA (Ron Rizzo) writes: >I'm glad it happened, as absurd as it is, for it's a DIRECT implementation >of notions of "pornography" and "child porn" that the "antiporn" movement >is not only propagating but trying to write into actual law codes. However, not everybody sees this particular instance of censorship as absurd. Jamie Andrews pointed out that, depending on what else was in that story in Blueboy, this cut might not be as arbitrary as it seems at first glance. Ie. if the story "glorifies" sex with the underaged, that might justify the cut. The other instance of censorship mentioned was more serious. Blueboy ran an article about AIDS, listing 10 activities to be avoided. Three of them had to be removed from the article before customs would let it into the country. In this case, the acts involved were not being "glorified", and the consequences are serious: a lot of people *need* to know the information that was removed. Censorship may be enacted with the best of intentions, folks, but look how it ends up being used. -- David Canzi Law of the Yukon: Only the lead dog gets a change of scenery.