ALERT: Obama's "Pro-Porn" DOJ Nominee

(Hattip to the Good Vibrations blog, The Perverted Negress, and Reason magazine's Hit and Run blog.)

The last time we blogged about Obama's DOJ appointments and free speech implications, it was concerning the new president's disappointing choice of Eric Holder for Attorney General. However, there seems to be somewhat better news afoot in Obama's choice of Deputy Attorney General, David W. Ogden.

If this name doesn't ring a bell, its probably because, like many in this part of the blogosphere, you don't follow right-wing media sources, who are all in a tizzy right now over his nomination. He has largely not garnered much mention in the mainstream media, either. Among the more notable source gunning for him are "morality" wingnuts like Fidelis.org, Judith Reismann, Focus on the Family, and the American Family Association. The source of their ire is Ogden's "pro-porn", "pro-abortion, and "pro-homosexual" stances. And it appears, there's some basis for the "pro-porn" (or, at least, pro-free speech) label, as Ogden has, while in private practice, represented porn companies like Playboy and Penthouse, and earlier, while a clerk for liberal SC Justice Harry Blackmun, authored several memos denouncing "moral majority types" and their attacks on free speech. He is also on record as having opposed expanded 2257 legislation, for which some of the usual suspects are branding him "pro-child pornography". Patrick Trueman, a religious right activist and the Bush Administration's cherry-picked anti-obscenity prosecutor, calls Ogden "everything the pro-family movement has fought against".

If a lot of this sounds too good to be true from our side of the political fence, it very well may be. During his confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary, he backpeddled quite a bit on his prior positions, stating that the legal opinions he wrote while defending porn companies were those of a hired gun and not indicative of what his stances might be while working for the government. And his earlier denouncement of "moral majority types" he apologized for as youthful "immaturity", though whether he was backpeddling on his opinions or simply his rhetoric is not clear from the news sources I've seen.

Still, given the current political client, I think Ogden is the best we're going to get and hopefully somebody with the political will to maintain strong free speech protections in a political atmosphere where such rights are under attack from both the far right and some sections of liberalism and the left.

Like many sources in the free speech blogosphere, I feel like I've really dropped the ball with this story. The usual suspects on the moralist Right have been stepping up their political machine against this guy for months, and this is the first time I've ever heard of him. (Note to self – follow Religious Right sources more closely, even if radfem chest-beating seems more immediate and in-your-face.) He had a confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week, and I'm unclear as to whether he still needs to be confirmed before the full Senate or what are the other steps to confirmation. But I think the Good Vibes blog had the right idea in that its really a good time to contact your Senators with letters of support for this nominee, and point out that you support free speech and sexual autonomy and you vote. The other side is definitely active on this – don't let them create the impression that they speak for the entire public.

Louisa Turk/Crystal Gunns: How Your Porn Past Can Come Back To Affect You

Anyone who says that we are a progressive country regarding sex and that porn is now accepted should have a word with Ms. Louisa Turk. What she is enduring now proves that the mentality of the witch hunt still holds true today.

The original article from X-Biz.com:

N.J. Teachers' Aide Outed as Ex-Porn Star

VINELAND, N.J. — Louisa Tuck, a woman who works at D'Ippolita Elementary School as a school aide and at the Vineland YMCA, has been discovered by local parents to be a retired adult performer who worked under the name Crystal Gunns.

Tuck, now 32, has posed in adult magazines, with an interview and pictures in Score as recently as October 2005. She also appeared solo and girl/girl scenes in three DVDs, according to the Internet Adult Film Database. In April, Score named her model of the year after a vote by its website members.

School officials have declined detailed comment, but they have confirmed that Tuck is Crystal Gunns.

Board of Education President Frank Giordano said that he thinks Tuck should not be at the school, but there is little he can do about it. School board attorneys do not believe they have any legal grounds to remove her from her job because of her past background.

"She has not done anything wrong," Vineland School spokesperson John Sbrana said. "She has not committed any crime. She's entitled to her privacy like anyone else. There is no action against her."

According to Sbrana, school officials found out about Tuck's adult past through parent complaints. "This isn't the kind of information that you come across accidentally," Sbrana said. "You'd have to go quite out of your way to find out."

Tuck said she was not alone in having a past that people were at odds with.

“If this is about morality, our president-elect has admitted to doing crack, and he’s our president," Tuck said. "Does that make him a bad person? Bill Clinton smoked pot. Does that make him a bad person?”

Actually, Ms. Turk, in the eyes of those folk harassing you, you are considered to be a worse person than even Bubba Clinton or Barack Obama...simply because of your past profession. After all, they can't allow our impressionable youth to be getting BAD IDEAS about sex. And oh, we just can't have such sluts teaching our kids...next thing you know, they'll be having open sex on the school halls. And...those BOOBS just sticking out there...don't you know that you will be attracting impure and dirty thoughts in those children just by your existence there??

All sarcasm aside, though...it takes one hell of a vendetta and a lot of snooping to out a woman like that...sounds to me like some of these fools have a solidly antiporn agenda going. Too bad this woman, is going to suffer because of such stupid prejudice.

The New APRF [Maoist] Meme: Buy Porn, Kill a Muslim

I'm sure that you have heard about how the usual right-wing antiporn groups are now targeting the US Military for apparantly defying Congressional laws against porn being sold at military bases.

It got me to thinking, though....how would the antipornradicalfeminists on the "other" side attempt to spin the issue to their advantage??

Well, I need not wonder any longer.....get a load of this pamphlet which equates consuming porn to killing Muslimwomen...courtesy of APRF whackoid Phyllis Chesler the Maoist International Movement:

http://www.imperialismkills.org/fliers/islamofasc2.pdf

I suppose that the many Muslim (and other non-religious folks in Iraq and other Middle East countries) who were victims of "Amerikan" imperalism don't really count for these MIM whackjobs....nor the fact that most of those who finance and support the killing of "Muslims" are as violently and militantly antiporn as they apparantly are.

Oh....and "wimmin" jill off to porn too...will they be held accountable for their role in genocide?? Oh, I forgot...most of those women OPPOSE the war. Too bad....it's the jerking off that is the real issue, I guess.

Just one more standing monument to APRF extremist collusion and ultra-Maoist lunacy, me thinks.

[Tip of the hat to Doug Henwood over at the Left Business Observer mailing list (lbo-talk) from where I got the link to Chesler's MIM's lunacy.]

UPDATE (11/8/o7) I owe a sincere apology to Phyllis Chesler for originally attributing the pamphlet to her; following the links provided at the bottom of the pamphlet let me to the Maoist International Movement site, which featured an attack on Chesler for being not "radical" enough and too "Western" for their particular sectarian tastes. I have made the proper revisions in this post to correct the record.

More APR/BushCON/Religious Right Collusion: Donna [Rice] Hughes, and TVPRA

[UPDATE (8-22-07): Jill offers an even more in-depth breakdown of the Donna Hughes/TVPRA/Radfem/ReligiousRight alliance as a response to an antipornradfem male critic over here at Bound and Gagged; it's worth a visit.]

Ahhhh...lookee here...some more evidence of the collusion between radical antipornradicalfeminists and the anti-feminist Bush Administration when it comes to sexual fascism (cloaked under the name of fighting "sex-trafficking").

This courtesy of Jill Brenneman's MySpace blog:

From http://www.nationalreview.com/interrogatory/hughes200601260824.asp

"Lopez: How important has the president been in this fight? (Against
trafficking via TVPRA)

Hughes: President Bush has been the crucial factor. He has created a political climate in which all of us, from local activists to high-ranking political appointees, could do this work. Mainstream feminists like to say he's anti-woman, but by supporting the abolitionist work against the global sex trade, he has done more for women and girls than any one other president I can think of. And he seems to have done it because it's the right thing to do, not because of pressure or favoritism. The new law and policy will literally initiate change for millions of women and girls around the world. Years from now, when the anti-Bush hysteria has died away, I believe he will be recognized as a true advocate for women's freedom and human rights.

The mainstream media has ignored this story. Most of the coverage has come
from the conservative press as a result of faith-based groups' involvement in coalition efforts to support the new law and policy. I believe it is a result of the liberal media dislike of the Bush administration and the lack of mainstream feminist groups' acknowledgement of Bush's efforts to fight sex trafficking. Most mainstream journalists don't search out the facts, and instead accept the stereotypes and anti-Bush propaganda. When I speak favorably of what the Bush administration has done to support the anti-trafficking movement, people are often shocked because it isn't consistent with their view of President Bush or the Bush administration. Hopefully, history will set the record straight.

[Emphasis added by me.]

So...I guess that according to the former Donna Rice, it is now perfectly OK to defend an administration bent on overturning fundamental women's rights such as the right to reproductive freedom and autonomy, who wants to eavesdrop and wiretap everyone without a warrant, and who believes that permanent war is good for business but universal health care and public infrastructure is evil "socialism"??? And that feminists should just pipe down and just support him because he's really for children and women when he goes after "sex-trafficking"???


I wonder how Nikki Craft and the rest of the "antiporn left" posse will react to that.

"Protecting women"

Twenty years later, The Handmaid's Tale is just as relevant as ever, if not more so.

From an excellent online study guide:

The sub-theme of this tangled debate which seems to have particularly interested and alarmed Atwood is the tendency of some feminist anti-porn groups to ally themselves with religious anti-porn zealots who oppose the feminists on almost every other issue. The language of "protection of women" could slip from a demand for more freedom into a retreat from freedom, to a kind of neo-Victorianism. After all, it was the need to protect "good" women from sex that justified all manner of repression in the 19th century, including confining them to the home, barring them from participating in the arts, and voting. Contemporary Islamic women sometimes argue that assuming the veil and traditional all-enveloping clothing is aimed at dealing with sexual harassment and sexual objectification. The language is feminist, but the result can be deeply patriarchal, as in this novel.

There is nothing new, much less revolutionary, about infantilizing women in the name of "protecting" them. It's a tactic used by fundamentalist religions around the world, and one feminists should be able to spot a mile away.

More Right Wing Fun!!!

From “When porn defenders challenge obscenity law enforcement, here's how to answer them”

Whenever you take a public stand against traffic in illegal hardcore pornography, pornographers
and their defenders will make cliched arguments to undermine your effort. The answers published here will help you to respond. They are adapted from Morality in Media's publication Cliches - Debunking Misinformation about Pornography and Obscenity Law, which is available from MIM ($3.00 per copy)…

"Pornography is a victimless crime."

The victims of the pornography industry are strewn from coast to coast. They include sexually abused children, corrupted teens, degraded and violated women, addicted men, broken marriages, ruined neighborhoods, AIDS victims, and ultimately, the very soul and humanity of a nation.

"Who are you to tell me what I can see or read? You are imposing your morality on me!"

A. I am not telling you what to see or to read. The people, through their elected representatives in Washington, D.C. and in over 40 state capitals, have decided that obscene materials cannot be distributed in interstate commerce or in their states. The people, with the approval of the courts, have decided to protect themselves, their families, and their communities from the harms associated with hard-core obscene pornography.

B. Pornography invades the home in the form of mail porn, dial-a-porn, video porn, cable porn, satellite-to-dish porn, and now computer porn. The reality is that the sex business is trying to impose its libertine immorality on an entire nation by appealing to the worst in individuals and exploiting human weakness.

C. In any society, someone's morality (or immorality) must prevail. The real question becomes, "Whose will prevail in America?" The pornographer's, leading to anarchy and decadence? Or the moral principles of those who honor the Judeo-Christian code -- a code which has been embraced, not imposed, as the cornerstone of Western civilization.

"If you'd let pornography flow freely, people would get bored and the problem would take care of itself."

A. This boredom or satiation theory is invalid. Many users of pornography do not get bored; they become addicted, seeking more and more bizarre materials. For many, pornography-fueled fantasies must eventually give way to action, which includes sexual abuse, rape, and sometimes even murder.

B. Because of a lack of obscenity law enforcement throughout the 1970's and most of the 1980's, pornography was allowed to flow freely. Yet, instead of pornography going away, it has lured more and more people into destructive addictions.

C. Remember also that new markets for the industry are being created every day as children and teens succumb to the allure of pornography.

"People who fight pornography are anti-sex, prudish, and sexually repressed."

Anti-sex? Surely you joke. The pornography business takes the beauty of real love and converts it into soulless, commercialized slime. The porn-fighters protect healthy sexuality with the key ingredients of love, tenderness, commitment, and the privacy of intimate moments. If "prudish" and "sexually repressed" are the labels attached to those who oppose the depictions of sadomasochism, gang rape, sexual orgies, bestiality, rubbing excrement on others, ad infinitum, then we will wear those labels proudly.

Point-and-Laugh Moment: The Girl the Guys Lust After

While this blog has been paying a lot of attention to head-meets-desk inducing statements of radfems and NoPornNorthampton, the religious not-so-right remains in a class by itself. I came across this post on the American Family Association website while putting together a list of anti-porn links.

Life sometimes imitates art, and in this case, life imitates Helen Lovejoy.

The Girl the Guys Lust After (But No One Wants To Marry)
by Kathy Gallagher

There’s usually at least one in every church. You know, the young woman whose clothes are a bit too revealing. You probably surmised correctly that her Sunday dress is conservative compared to what she wears the rest of the week.

This girl loves the attention she receives from guys. She has (perhaps subconsciously) learned that the tighter her dress and the lower the neckline, the more men notice her. Whether she doesn’t stop to consider how she is making men stumble, or she simply doesn’t care, the most important thing to her is that heads turn when she walks by.

Admittedly, my subtitle above is not entirely accurate. The truth is that there will be a man who wants to marry her. In fact, he may be a member of your church. Tragically, what she doesn’t realize is that she won’t be attracting a godly young man, but the guy who is secretly addicted to pornography. He is enamored with body parts, not consecration to God.

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