Moving on from gender to....

Free speech and pornography, the other issue I see coming into focus in the US in the coming period is obscenity. A while ago the Canadian statutory scheme was discussed here in some detail. It is pretty draconian -- drawn images ("shota" and related art forms) and the types of stories one encounters in places like nifty seem to be clearly illegal there. (I am not familiar with the details of European laws, but my impression is that in at least some cases they are no more forgiving than Canada's.) I foresee considerable difficulty in defending art expressive of the aspirations and feelings of BLs under the current standard for obscenity in the U.S., a three part test dating from the 1973 case Miller v. California (all parts must be satisfied, but unfortunately this is not challenging): (1) Whether "the average person, applying contemporary community standards", would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest, (2) Whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct or excretory functions specifically defined by applicable state law, (3) Whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value. This test is clearly structured to permit US states to ban jack off material if it depicts children. We should expect a push in this direction to manifest soon. The Miller standard is pretty much incoherent, so any court inclined to overrule it would have ample reason to do so. It enshrines subjectivity (community standards, patently offensive, serious value) and is therefore incapable of unbiased application. Subjectivity will always mean banning whatever challenges power, since power controls the discourse. But the weakness of the Miller test means it also could be attacked from a BL perspective. If I have only two or three of a much larger series of drawings or stories, how is the "work, taken as a whole" to be evaluated? And does the requirement of "serious... value" mean bad art is unprotected because it is bad? Don't we assume most artists must make bad art before they make the good stuff? Your artistic efforts are protected as free speech only insofar as someone -- who? -- certifies their value? Clearly free speech cannot mean just free speech for the most artistically talented. Free speech as understood in the US remains something of a novelty. I suggest it is worth defending. Like the rights of kids to sexual self-determination I treat this as a core issue for BLs. There is no rational basis for restricting our access to JO material that does not involve actual children beyond the extent to which anyone else's access to such material is restricted. (An actual showing that shota and nifty stories increase the amount of harmful man-boy sex would create such a rational basis, but a total lack of scientific consensus on harmfulness and the fact that most evidence suggests no positive correlation between consumption of stimulating art and actual sexual activity with minors suggests no such showing is possible). A further issue with regard to the artistic expression of BL arises in the context of virtual worlds like Second Life. It is utterly unclear how the Miller standard could be applied to worlds in which boy avatars of adult men (or women) interact and express their sexual and romantic feelings for one another. I have difficulty conceiving of a standard other than demonstrated harm to actual children (a standard much actual child pornography would survive!) that could be defended as rational. Yet I believe no court would go so far, and we should aspire to something that would at least preserve, in the US, the status quo, and place pressure on other countries to go beyond us. I am in doubt as to what that might be. hugzu ;-p