moral panic

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. 

Debbie Nathan's Sex Angst Roundup ranges from the Washinton Post's look at the sex trafficking panic to an update on the Kurt Eichenwald/Justin Berry story and from Nan Goldin's artwork being yet again the focus of a censorious police investigation to the Human Rights Watch report that clearly lays out the ways that the US sex offender registries as currently administered violate human rights without protecting children. It's a "must read" -- go, check it out now. Really.

My nomination for best passage from the roundup?

I'm trying to decide what makes me maddest about Bob Herbert's recent op-ed pieces about sex work in Las Vegas.

It might be his use of a tug-on-your-heartstrings story and alarmist title in today's piece, "Escape from Las Vegas." In that piece he uses Amber, a 19 year old with a disabled mother and an abusive and drug addicted step father, who finds herself stripping in Las Vegas as representative of all sex workers:

The New York Times reports today on research that demonstrates a very high correlation between use of child pornography and the actual molesting of children. The Times did a good job of reporting why it is so important to be cautious about interpreting a study like this one. And it also does a good job of reporting on the need for continued research on child molestation.

Because of the tremendous moral panic risks that are attached to publishing anything about htis kind of research I am going to focus entirely on the cautions. There will be lots of voices out there focusing on the tentative conclusions of the study itself, so here lets just focus on the limitations:

1. Remember when thinking about these results that they were produced using only already-incarcerated men convicted of child pornography charges. These men may well not be representative of all people who have ever downloaded or viewed child pornography.

Four fifth graders had sex in an unattended classroom, posting a fifth student as a lookout. Click here for the story on CNN.

Four of the five students have been charged with felony obscenity in juvenile court and the lookout was charged as an accessory.

What do you think? Is this sex play among pre-adolescents or is it felony obscenity? (The sex was had in front of about 10 other students.) What's the story here?