moral panic

Public official blows town's reserve fund on strip club.

Elizabeth — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 18:59:06 -0700

Pop quiz - Subject: Local politics

Instructions: Read the question carefully and then select the best answer from the choices provided.

Question: Your town has a million dollars in its reserve fund. The plan is to spend it on paying off a bond that financed the town's water treatment plant. Suddenly, the plan changes. The mayor has learned that a strip club in the area has come up for sale and he wants to buy it and shut it down. He arranges the financing through an anonymous third party because he knows that the club owners would never agree to sell to the town. According to the local newspaper the city manager describes it like this:

“We knew they would never sell it to us, but a third party, who does not want to be identified, offered to buy it for us. Just before noon (Tuesday) we closed on the property, and the keys were turned over to us. They (former Cafe Risque owners) won’t find out until (today) who really bought it.”

The mayor announces this radical change in spending priorities at a standing-room-only meeting at City Hall. Which of the following do you think happened at the meeting:

a) The townspeople started heated arguments amongst themselves about the use of the money.

b) Taxpayer outrage over the diversion of funds ensued and the mayor was ultimately sanctioned.

c) The mayor received a standing ovation and then led the righteous crowd in a convoy a mile and a half to the club's parking lot, right off the freeway, where they built a bonfire and burned the signs that once advertised the Cafe Risque.

More on Trafficking: The axes of evil and the search for mass destruction

Michael — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 16:28:44 -0700

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 (DebbieNathan.com)

Elizabeth — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 11:10:46 -0700

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?

Another irresponsible piece on sex work

Elizabeth — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 00:55:49 -0700

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:

National Center for Reason and Justice

Elizabeth — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 08:48:20 -0700

A nonprofit organization that raises awareness about current injustices in the legal system and helps with financial and legal assistance for the falsely accused and wrongfully convicted, especially when the alleged crimes are sexual in nature.

Interpreting the new research on child pornography use and child molestation

Elizabeth — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 20:12:00 -0700

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.

What to make of this?

Elizabeth — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 13:43:27 -0700

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?