Mulling all of the perceived negativity in this year’s election cycle, we began thinking back to kinder, gentler times…
Here the CineKink Veterans for Truth take us back to 2004:
And remember when we thought Sarah Palin might just be a passing sensation?
Alrighty, then. Everybody off to the voting booth!
>Speaking of Sarah Palin… here she is, appearing in last year’s festival trailer for CineKink NYC:
Okay, now… go vote!
>CineKink alumni director Scott Bloom (CineKink ‘06 & ‘08) reports that a copy of his amazing documentary, Call Me Troy, was handed off to Michelle Obama during yesterday’s meet-up with LGBT community leaders.
A profile of gay rights activist and founder of Metropolitan Community Churches, Rev. Troy Perry, the work is an important chronicle of the fight for sexual freedom and a moving tribute to a man who proclaimed that sexuality and religion – Christianity, even! – need not be separate.
Here’s hoping the President makes time in his schedule for a screening and, inspired by Troy’s example, room in his heart to be a truly “fierce advocate” for LGBT rights.
>The Supreme Court has upheld a crackdown by the Federal Communications Commission on the use of indecent language–even the fleeting utterance of a single expletive–on broadcast television. At least for now…
An earlier federal appeals panel had overturned recent FCC policy, which had arisen largely in response to brief and spontaneous exclamations during live awards programs from the likes of Cher, Bono and Nicole Richie, chiefly involving the ever-popular and–as referred to by the court– “f-” and “s-” words.
This latest decision supports the FCC’s contention that profanity referring to sex or excrement is always indecent, no matter the context. But, as noted in an AP account of the court’s ruling:
Justice John Paul Stevens said in dissent that the FCC missed the mark in failing to distinguish how the offending words are used. “As any golfer who has watched his partner shank a short approach knows,” said Stevens, an avid golfer, “it would be absurd to accept the suggestion that the resultant four-letter word uttered on the golf course describes sex or excrement.
While today’s ruling dealt solely with whether the FCC had followed proper administrative procedures in establishing the new policy, still to be addressed is whether or not the restrictions are constitutional in the first place, with promising glimmers that the entire question of limits on broadcast speech may be reconsidered whole hog. Though Justice Clarence Thomas sided with the majority on this ruling, the AP story continues, he noted that the court’s previous decision and an even earlier case “were unconvincing when they were issued, and the passage of time has only increased doubt regarding their continued validity.”
The last major ruling by the Supreme Court on broadcast indecency was in 1978, when it upheld the FCC’s case involving George Carlin’s classic “seven dirty words,” as so infamously recounted below:
>Somehow in the frenzy leading up to Tuesday’s presidential election, we missed this item on Huffington Post from our friend, Theresa Darklady Reed, in which she points us to a prediction from the extreme religious right that an Obama presidency will lead to a nation with unfettered access to pornography.
Quoting from a Focus on the Family screed obstensibly written in the future, the as-yet hypothetical Letter from 2012 in Obama’s America, the many potential dangers awaiting us down the road include a new, liberal Supreme Court that has :
… applied more broadly the “Miller test” from the 1973 decision in Miller v. California, by which a work could not be found obscene unless “the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, and scientific value.” In the 2011 decision, the court essentially found that any pornographic work had some measure of “serious artistic value,” at least according to some observers, and thus any censorship of pornographic material was an unconstitutional restriction on the First Amendment.
But wait–there’s more! As “…all city and county laws restricting pornography were struck down by this decision …pornographic magazines are openly displayed in gas stations, grocery stores and on newsstands (as they have been in some European countries for several years).”
And, natch, the court also eliminated all FCC restrictions and, thusly, “…television programs at all hours of the day contain explicit portrayals of sexual acts.”
We might observe that a mere “D” by a leader’s name doesn’t necessarily translate into a laissez faire approach to the exchange of ideas–President Clinton was the one who signed the Communications Decency Act into law back in 1996, afterall. But if we listen to those with a proclaimed relationship to the powers on high, free speech advocates need just kick back a bit and wait for the flood-gates to open.
>We took yesterday off as a time to absorb and reflect upon the momentous event of Tuesday’s presidential election. (And, well, yeah, nurse a bit […read more…]
>In the interest of the fair and the balanced, we also did a quick search for any upcoming Joe Biden porn–remember, we like men in […read more…]
>Last night as we settled in to watch the Republic National Convention–nothing wrong with a little bi-partisan masochism!–we thought back to a favorite, short video […read more…]
>The sixth season of Penn & Teller: Bullshit! kicks off tonight with the “The War on Porn,” described thusly: “Radical feminists claim porn leads to […read more…]
>Conservative media watch-groups and religious political extremists are already hard at work trying to get Swingtown pulled from the air. While we don’t necessarily like […read more…]