Max Mosely, head of Formula One racing, won his privacy suit against the British tabloid "News Of The World." The New York Times reports: 

The judge, Sir David Eady, awarded Mr. Mosley, 68, damages equivalent to about $120,000 and legal costs estimated to be at least $850,000 in his lawsuit against The News of the World.

Question: Because this was a lawsuit it had to be framed in terms of a legal question, hence the focus on "press freedom" v. "individual privacy", but wouldn't this kind of thing be better discussed in terms of journalistic ethics? Instead of worrying about whether this decision represents a limiting of freedom of the British press, should the British press be discussing ways to make sure its members adhere to ethical reporting standards?

I'm all for investigative journalism, but there has to be something in the public interest to justify it. Exposing a person's private, legal, consensual sexual activity is certainly not in the public interest. It may be very interesting to the public, but that's not the same thing! 

A: None, according to the U.S. Census

Why? A New York Times article on July 18 quotes Steven H. Murdock, director of the U. S. Census Bureau, who explains that because of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act marriages between people of the same sex cannot be recognized or counted even in the states where they are legal. Even by the Census.

Why does it matter? Gay rights activists argue that it matters because it renders married same-sex couples invisible. I agree. That absolutely matters. But it also matters because it is evidence of our government's blinding itself to reality. It is further evidence, as with interference in climate research and health research, that the government cannot be trusted to put science and reason ahead of ideology, religion and faith.

Some thoughts on "Fair Use," 2257, and Stop Porn Culture's pornographic slide show

Stop Porn Culture is an organized effort on the part of a number of antiporn-feminist scholars and activists to convince people that pornography is harmful to society (and especially to girls and women) and to get them to swear off porn and to challenge other people's use of it.

Stop Porn Culture (SPC) is also a traveling porn exhibition. In fact, not only is it a traveling porn exhibition, it is a distributor of free pornographic images. Lots of them. Lots of the most hard core of them.

Some sex worker advocates that I respect tremendously, like Ren of Renegade Evolution and Blog for Pro Porn Activism (BPPA) are out there, dedicated and loud, calling SPC out on its failure to comply with a US law that distributors of pornography must follow. That law, known by its shorthand section number (2257) requires producers of pornography to maintain records of performers' identities and ages, and to make those records available for inspection by law enforcement officials. SPC does not do this. These advocates are also calling SPC out on its use of the copyrighted images without permission from the copyright owners or consent of those depicted in the images.

I sympathize. It is galling to watch SPC use the work of the people they most claim to despise, and to freely distribute images they think nobody else should be able to distribute. And it is especially galling to watch them talk about the exploitation and humiliation of the women in the images all the while continuing to humiliate those same women by publicly exposing in and then condemning their work.

John R Miller, former Bush Anti-Trafficking Czar at the State Department (2002-2006) has written a colourful Op-Ed in the New York Times, with the provocative title The Justice Department, Blind to Slavery.  The article stated that the US Department of Justice was subverting the course of justice by blocking passage of the highly controversial human trafficking legislation which would expand federal jurisdiction over prostitution, based on conflationary theory that the two are synonymous.  However Miller framed it in a way that portrayed Justice as being pro-slavery. Presumably his intention was to oil the Bill in the Senate and boost Republican votes in the forthcoming elections. Presumably his former boss would also smile favourably upon this effort. 

I'm staying with friends over Independence Day weekend and they showed me this European condom ad. Very effective, I imagine: cute dad, terrible child, horrifying supermarket scenario.

But it did raise this question: with birthrates in Europe falling, do they really need to advertise condoms? It's hard to imagine that people are having a lot less sex so they must be pretty good at contraception. But then of course there is a need to do STI prevention, and contraception and STI prevention are two different matters. It's interesting to think about how public health policy and population/family policy can be in conflict. Imagine the tension between giving incentives to couples to have children while trying to encourage condom use to prevent disease.

Americans will be familiar with the hunt-the-needle-in-the-haystack approach of the State and Justice Departments in looking for victims of human trafficking. Jerry Markon exposed the hiatus between the actual evidence and the claims in an article in the Washington Post. The resources utilised for the yield obtained resembled the hunt for weapons of mass destruction.

The equivalent in the United Kingdom is the Police and UK Human Trafficking Centre operations known as Pentameter. This week's release of figures from the second operation triggered off the predictable moral panic and demand for more funding to combat this terrible menace. When Benjamin Disraeli decried the mesmerising effects of numbers "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics" he may have been considering this sort of agenda driven political spin. 

The story in last Thursday's New York Times began:

Twenty-one sexually exploited children have been saved from the streets, and 389 people arrested on charges of trafficking children for prostitution, in what the Federal Bureau of Investigation calls the largest such multistate sweep ever, officials said Wednesday.

The five-day operation, this week and last, spanned 16 cities and involved hundreds of local, state and federal agencies in the work of rescuing missing children, many of them runaways, and identifying networks behind domestic child trafficking for the sex trade. (Susan Saulny, "Hundreds Seized in Sweep Against Child Prostitution" June 26 2008)

It continued:

Ellie (Lumpesse) has recently written about the frustration of combining being a sex worker with having another career (doctoral student) and the difficulties of keeping these apart and the internal pressures to come out. There is nothing unique in Ellie's dilemma, it is actually one of the most difficult things that indoor sex workers have to deal with. This is well described by Teela Sanders in her paper 'It's just acting' dealing with the emotional labour involved in keeping two lives separate. This in itself, is partly the result of the external violence of stigma, and partly the internal pressures of the 'management of feeling to create a publicity observable facial and bodily display' as described by Arlie Hochschild.

Much gratitude to Renee of Womanist Musings , blogging also at Feministe on June 23rd to remind us all about the killing of women in the Niagra Falls region:

When you think of the Niagara region immediately the mind turns to the majestic falls. Some who have spent more than an afternoon here will think of places like the Welland Canal, The Skylon Tower, Fallsview Casino, Clifton Hill, and maybe even the dearth of reasonably priced hotels, and restaurants. The aforementioned sites are the Niagara region you are supposed to think about. It is what you will find printed in all of those handy little pamphlets, that the tour guides like to give out. Yes the safe family destination, where everything is bright and sunny.What you will not hear about are the women that have been killed here since 1996. What if I were to whisper these names in your ear?

The names she whispers are these:

What are the political issues that matter to sex workers?

Quite often the ones that matter to most people: Affordable housing, health care, labor rights, immigrant rights, day care, reproductive rights, violence against women, and protection of privacy and civil liberties.

It's no surprise then that sex workers are taking on the "Rock the vote" model and putting on their own voter registration and mobilization efforts, and we applaud and support that grass roots work. Want more information?

From $pread Magazine:

From Sin City to the Big Apple, sex workers are organizing for political and economic justice. It's time to organize our sex worker electorate ito a political force and "Grind the Vote"!