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The Wockner Wire by Rex Wockner

Crackdown on cruisy Web sites
by Rex Wockner There are no nude pics of me on the Web. Partially because Im some sort of a public figure and I figured editors and some of you might take a dim view of such adventures. And now there never may be, thanks to ridiculous new federal regulations Congress added to the Child Protection and Obscenity Enforcement Act of 1988 (18 U.S.C. §2257). They took effect June 23. The U.S. Department of Justice is expected to use the laws to smack down Web sites that contain lascivious photos for which webmasters do not have the legal name and date of birth of each performer, obtained by the producers examination of a picture identification card. For any performer portrayed in such a depiction made after July 3, 1995, the records shall also include a legible copy of the identification document examined and, if that document does not contain a recent and recognizable picture of the performer, a legible copy of a picture identification card. This applies to mainstream Gay cruising sites such as Gay.com, BigMuscleBears.com, Manhunt.net and the like and even to pictures of yourself that you put on the sites. The laws apply to any visual depiction of an actual human being engaged in actual sexually explicit conduct. The United States Code defines sexually explicit conduct as sexual intercourse, including genital-genital, oral-genital, anal-genital, or oral-anal, whether between persons of the same or opposite sex; bestiality; masturbation; sadistic or masochistic abuse; or lascivious exhibition of the genitals or pubic area of any person. What does this mean in the real world? That if you have a lascivious pic of yourself on a Web site, then the site has to have in its possession a copy of your drivers license. Say adiós to anonymity. And say hello to a massive new burden on Web site owners. More realistically, say hello to massive new restrictions by Web sites on what pictures of yourself you can post. Indeed, numerous sites modified their photo guidelines on June 23. Gay.com, for example, temporarily removed all user-posted adult photos, and declared, Your civil liberties are under attack by the U.S. government! The site issued new guidelines which read, in part: An image of a hand holding or touching genitals, or appearing to grip or stimulate genitals, is considered masturbation and is prohibited. ...An image of a hand inside pants is prohibited as it implies masturbation. ...Pictures with more that one person that include nudity are prohibited. ...While images of a nude person on all fours is allowable, an image showing the buttocks being held apart by hands is considered explicit and is prohibited. ...A clothed person posing with a pet is allowed, but a nude person with an animal is prohibited. ...An image of a person in a bondage or fetish outfit is allowed (but please, no polyester!). Images that depict bondage or S&M abuse are prohibited. (Shockingly, images from Abu Ghraib prison would be censored under the new regulations.) Gay.com and other members of the Free Speech Coalition are fighting 18 U.S.C. §2257 in court. Gay.com urged its users to complain to the U.S. House of Representatives, the U.S. Senate and the U.S. Department of Justice (www.usdoj.gov/contact-us.html). Meanwhile, on June 24, a day after the laws took effect, the Free Speech Coalition extracted a promise from the Justice Department not to prosecute Web sites that are members of the coalition until Sept. 7. (This led Gay.com to temporarily unblock the photos it had temporarily blocked the day before.) Web sites that are not members of the coalition remain at immediate risk. Are you feeling sick yet? Dear Universe: Please give us a Democratic Congress and president next time. The prudes are in control and they want to fling us socially and culturally back to about 1959. And, as this law demonstrates, they may have the power to do it. The ongoing escalation in the use of federal resources to prevent adults from using the Internet for sexual expression, information and association is but one more sign of the power of the religious far right under the Bush administration, Jon Davidson, legal director of Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, told me. One of the most troubling things about the confirmation of judicial ideologues like William Pryor is that its unclear to what extent we will be able to continue to count on the federal courts to place checks on this sort of tyranny. ...I keep wondering how bad its going to have to get before the American public gets it, and votes as their own liberty, financial, health and environmental interests dictate they should to throw the bums out.