Gay Marriage on Hold – 9th Cir. Issues Stay

It looks like the 9th Circuit may toss out the Prop. 8 appeal for lack of standing after all. Issued today:

Docket Text:
Filed order (EDWARD LEAVY, MICHAEL DALY HAWKINS and SIDNEY R. THOMAS) Appellants’ motion for a stay of the district court’s order of August 4, 2010 pending appeal is GRANTED. The court sua sponte orders that this appeal be expedited pursuant to Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 2. The provisions of Ninth Circuit Rule 31-2.2(a) (pertaining to grants of time extensions) shall not apply to this appeal.

This appeal shall be calendared during the week of December 6, 2010, at The James R. Browning Courthouse in San Francisco, California. The previously established briefing schedule is vacated. The opening brief is now due September 17, 2010. The answering brief is due October 18, 2010. The reply brief is due November 1, 2010. In addition to any issues appellants wish to raise on appeal, appellants are directed to include in their opening brief a discussion of why this appeal should not be dismissed for lack of Article III standing. See Arizonans For Official English v. Arizona, 520 U.S. 43, 66 (1997). IT IS SO ORDERED. [7441574] (JS)

I’m not sure if I would rather see the case tossed for lack of standing — and thus the complete death of Prop. 8, or if I’d rather see it go up so that the ruling can be more expansive.

Boycott Target – Flashmob Protest

Waxing Virgins

By Tatiana von Tauber    

Satyriconista, Tatiana von Tauber

Very young girls these days are turning into women right before our eyes. Just last week CNN reported how today’s girls are beginning puberty as early as 7. The cause for this change is unclear but it’s thought to be attributed in part to chemicals in foods and “other environmental factors”. With the onset of puberty, challenges arise and increased hair growth is one.    

Unwanted hair is a real problem of course, specifically in certain places. Traditionally adults simply purchase a razor or make a waxing appointment and off we go. However, there’s a deeper issue developing with the hairless look. It’s not just about wishing to shave away from our monkey see, monkey do evolution. Unless hair is on our head, body hair on women (specifically) just ain’t pretty according to the beauty industry and the billions of dollars behind it.    

Have we gone too far  though when we sell adult women on the idea of waxing services for children as young as 8 years old with garbage such as this by  New York City salon, Wanda’s European Skin Care Center?    

Virgin hair can be waxed so successfully that growth can be permanently stopped in just 2 to 6 sessions. Save your child a lifetime of waxing…and put the money in the bank for her college education instead!” (source)    

   
Virgin hair?! What a trade off and in fact, what a sell out to young girls. We at LS have already discussed the aesthetics, purpose and preference of female pubic hair on adult women but the idea of bikini waxes on 8 to 12 year old girls just doesn’t hold the same level of debatable fun. No need to ask why. Many might even agree with Marc Randazza:    

I realize that I am a dad of a young girl, and one day I am going to have to simply accept that she has become a sexually active young woman. I can brace myself for that. But, if any sick bitch like the owner of Wanda’s places her hands on Natalia when she is 8 years old, I will not use my law degree to deal with the problem. I will slap that bitch so hard that she’ll turn inside fucking out.”    

I hear ya. It’s enough I’ve been frustrated for years about the lack of responsibility child-geared media and businesses take with respect to young girls and boys and what I view as basic disrespect towards childhood in and of itself. No matter how I try to feed childhood to my kids, the external world doesn’t seem to let them be kids.    

This extends further out than offering waxings. It goes into the heart of how kids are treated versus what is fed to them. Any adult can attest that the messages are in fact confusing. Basically if you have a young child you are bombarded with grown up stuff made child accessible or “child-size”. For girls trends hit waxings and Botox: 

According to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, 12,000 teens received Botox injections in the last year. (source) 

For kids these days, what exactly do they have to look forward to as adults that they can’t do or attain or have access to during their childhood to teen years?   

One core issue here is that girls are under the influence of adult problems packaged up to meet “needs” of youth when most youth wouldn’t even know they apparently needed it if it weren’t for the beauty, fashion and entertainment industry selling them such ideas! Kids aren’t prepared for the realities of adulthood nor should be.  But why am I explaining it to you. You understand. So why do those in power seats that guide our children not get the obvious? Well, to borrow from the feared or loved Lady Gaga, it’s “money, honey“.    

If the entire beauty bullshit didn’t start with pre-school conditioning by Strawberry Shortcake aka 21st Century redheaded bimbo  (watch if you can stand it) or Dora the Explorer the Tramp, now a “tween” version showing a more fresh look for optimal marketability and profits or the myriad of other product lines sold to children, parenthood might actually be easier on the wallet and more beautiful in itself because us parents might have a chance to discover the pure and natural beauty of childhood from the way it’s supposed to be. I feel privileged my generation still had access to innocence; we don’t get to frolic in that state long enough.    

The fleeting existence of innocence is what makes childhood to pre-teen age the most spectacular state of mind to experience. Why then is it severely undervalued and why are women obsessed with youthful beauty? Because our culture believes the old should look young and the young should look older.  This philosophy sits on profit not truth but no age is immune to the power of marketing and capitalistic opportunity and don’t be fooled it’s ever because the beauty industry actually cares if you save your kids’ waxing money on a college fund.  Beauty is business first. If there’s any truth to send out to young girls, that’s it.

Morality Police Deface Public Art in Springfield, MA

Wrong Springfield

Censorship — its not just for rednecks

I often rant about the censorship minded former confederacy — but I must admit that my home state of Massachusetts has its share of censorship monkeys. The censorship monkey of the day — the city of Springfield, MA and Gina E. Beavers, director of the Springfield Arts Initiative for the Springfield Business Improvement District (SBID).

Springfield, Massachusetts and its Sneaker Exhibit

The City of Springfield is essentially a heroin and crack infested slum with three things going for it: The Basketball Hall of Fame, a couple of decent strip clubs, and the Huke Lau (which is actually in Chicopee). To help celebrate the first in the list, the SBID put together the “Art and Soles” exhibit. The exhibit placed 19 huge fiberglass basketball sneakers throughout the downtown area. Various artists were asked to paint them with the theme “What do you love about Springfield?” (source)

Artist Robert Markey decided that his theme would be “dancing.” So he painted ballet dancers, hip-hop dancers, and other forms of “regular” dance all over the upper part of the sneaker. On the bottom, he decided to show the “underside” of Springfield by depicting a pole dancer. She was clothed, in a bikini.

“She had gold hair, and she was sort of embracing the pole. She wasn’t nude … I meant it sort of tongue-in-cheek – the underside of Springfield, on the bottom of the shoe,” said Markey, 62, standing beside his sneaker outside Tower Square on Main Street and referring to the cluster of nude dancing clubs in an approximately three-block radius downtown. (source)

However, once the organizers of the event saw the sole of Markey’s sneaker, they freaked — and they spray painted it black.

They didn’t call him.

They didn’t give him a chance to change it.

They didn’t even give him a chance to photograph it. So there is no record of what it looked like.

His art is gone.

“We decided that it could not happen. This was supposed to be a family friendly art exhibit in the heart of (Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame) enshrinement week,” Beavers said. “We wish we had time to let Bob in on the decision, but there just wasn’t time.” (source)

Markey took the position that since Springfield’s strippers are the only professional dancers in the city, they deserved as much recognition as any other dancers.

Douchetastic, for certain. But is there a legal claim here?

In civil law countries, artists have what are known as “moral rights” in their artwork. These are rights outside of the copyright to a certain work. Moral Rights essentially protect the artist in an inalienable way — by protecting the right of attribution and prohibiting the mutilation or modification of an artist’s work. For example, if an Italian director makes a black and white film, and he sells his copyright in the film to a studio, the studio can not later colorize the film without the director’s permission.

But we do not live in a civil law jurisdiction.

Nevertheless, moral rights are recognized in the United States, in a very limited capacity, by the Visual Artists Rights Act (VARA), codified at 17 U.S.C. § 106A. Among other things, VARA gives a visual artist the right to prevent the ” distortion, mutilation, or other modification of the work which would be prejudicial to his or her honor or reputation.” See 17 U.S.C. § 106A(a)(2).

This leaves us with two questions: Did Markey sign away those rights? Maybe. I haven’t read his contract with the SBID. The other question is whether the mutilation of his work was “prejudicial to his honor or reputation.” That might seem like a difficult sell, but we’re not talking about “reputation” in the defamation sense — we’re talking about an artist’s reputation. It seems to me that if Mr. Markey intended to create a mental three-dimensional picture of Springfield, and the SBID turned it into a whitewashed and banal piece of dreck, he might have a legitimate gripe. The SBID’s sins seem to be exacerbated by the fact that they did so without even bothering to call Markey up on the phone so that he could modify the work, or at least make a record of it before they destroyed it.

Legally actionable or not, it certainly was douchetastic, and Ms. Beavers’ explanation only booted it into the douchemagnetisophere.

Checkmate

Eat a pail of feces, bigots!

It looks like the uneducated peckerwoods supporters of Proposition 8 are seriously considering throwing in the towel. They fear that they will lose 5-4 at the Supreme Court. That and they realize that if you have a court case, you can’t just expect to argue “well, gays are ummm, bad, mmmkay?” and expect to win.

So rather than risk allowing the 31 states with bigotry amendments “go down in flames” (their words, not mine), they might not appeal at all — and just let the Prop. 8 decision stand. (source)

Checkmate, and ha-ha fuck you, bigots.

Libel Tourism Law Passes!

Bla bla bla

Representative Steve Cohen (D-TN) represents the people of Memphis, TN. His district also includes Graceland. That can’t be a coincidence, because he is the Congressional King of Free Speech legislation.

Cohen sponsored HR 2765, the Libel Tourism bill, and Obama signed it into law on Tuesday. The new law now protects Americans from defamation judgments that plaintiffs might obtain abroad — in countries where free speech receives less protection than it does in the USA. The need for such a law arose back when American author Rachel Ehrenfeld wrote a book, “Funding Evil: How Terrorism is Funded and How to Stop It,” and published it in New York. A Saudi, Khalid Bin Mahfouz, did not appreciate how he was portrayed in the book — as a major financier of terrorism. He filed suit in the U.K., and based on the sale of 23 copies sold in England, the U.K. court exercised jurisdiction over Ehrenfeld. She refused to appear, so the judge entered a default judgment against her for $225,000. (source)

There is a reason that Bin Mahfouz chose to file suit in the U.K. Britain’s libel laws are very favorable to plaintiffs, and they don’t have a pesky First Amendment Bill of Rights to get in the way of wealthy plaintiffs attempts to trample on others free speech rights.

Bin Mahfouz is one of the world’s most notorious libel tourists, having used or threatening to use plaintiff-friendly British courts to sue for libel at least 36 times since 2002. (source)

The next time Bin Mahfouz decides to sue an American in the UK, he is going to need to obtain the judgment by getting the UK court to impose First Amendment protections as well as Due Process considerations.

But wait, there’s more. Our heroes over at Public Citizen lobbied for an additional measure to be added to the bill. The bill also provides new strength to Section 230.

The discussion on the floor just before passage recognizes the need to extend section 230 protection because, otherwise, plaintiffs are tempted to try to suppress speech “by suing a third-party interactive computer service, rather than the actual author of the offending statement. In such circumstances, the service provider would likely take down the allegedly offending material rather than face a lawsuit. Providing immunity removes this unhealthy incentive to take down material under improper pressure.” (source)

Here’s the beautiful thing about this: Without this addition to the law, web hosting companies and other “interactive service providers” would likely have become the targets for libel tourism suits. Libel tourists, frustrated by their attempts to impose foreign libel standards on American speakers, would simply have sued the service providers. Since Section 230 only protects you in U.S. courts, that might have meant that American service providers would have simply become collateral damage in the fight against free speech.

Now, even if a service provider is the target of a foreign libel suit, the foreign court will either need to apply Section 230, or its judgment will not be enforceable in the United States. This creates a pretty good incentive for some online service providers to locate their businesses inside the United States.

The Legal Satyricon would like to extend its First Amendment Bad Ass award to Cohen — our only two-time winner. At the same time, we are also joyfully compelled to extend the award to Paul Allen Levy and his team at Public Citizen. Boys, your country is in your debt.

If we can get a national anti-SLAPP law on the books — another project that Rep. Cohen is working on — we may find that the First Amendment is entering a period of renaissance.

iPhone users have more sex

By J. DeVoy

Saith OKCupid.

Photo: OKCupid

Note to readers: Do not conflate causation with correlation.

Vince McMahon’s (World Wrestling Entertainment) wife for senate – Aww Yeahhh, Brotherrr

By J. DeVoy

Linda McMahon, a Connecticut Republican, took the erudite Peter Schiff into the political steel cage tonight and, while two combatants enter, only one may emerge.  Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your political affiliation) the winner was the former CEO – and wife of the current CEO – of World Wrestling Entertainment, formerly the World Wrestling Federation.

If victorious, I have no doubt that McMahon will take a steel chair to Washington’s spendthrift policies.  There is, in fairness, little doubt as to Linda and Vince McMahon’s business acumen, turning a little-known professional wrestling outfit into a publicly traded global brand within 30 years.  Something about how she earned her money by having grown men throw one another through tables for the entertainment of millions seems to validate the critiques many offer of both the Republican party and the United States in general.

For those possessing even glancing familiarity with professional wrestling, the jokes write themselves.  For everyone else, it seems to be a day of rumination.  The principles that guide our electoral behavior, if any, seem badly broken when style can readily triumph over substance.  Despite the high humor potential in this situation, it’s too distressing to further consider.

Anne Rice rinses off her Christianity

Anne Rice is possibly America’s most famous Catholic who doesn’t sit on the Supreme Court. Well, make that “was.” Anne Rice, like many people with functioning brains, has decided to walk away from christianity. (source)

The First Amendment is a Beautiful Thing

Somewhere… sometime… somebody got it in their mind that christianity and sex were incompatible. Then, someone else got it in their head that christians couldn’t just shut their traps and believe in their Magic Space Zombie Jew and their other assorted fairy tales — they had to actively work to interfere in other people’s lives.

Case in point, Magic Space Zombie Jew believers seem to relish protesting outside of strip clubs and sex shops. Usually it is just a comical spectacle — a bunch of kooks standing outside a dildo store waving signs that quote some crappy book written by a bunch of nitwits 2000 years ago who wiped their asses with their hands and obviously tripped on some kind of hallucinogens.

New Beginnings Ministries church in Warsaw, Ohio is one of those churches that helped turn me away from my youthful stupid willingness to believe in the MSZJ fairy tales. Its pastor, Bill Dunfree, and some of its congregants have a habit of showing up at The Foxhole — a strip club in Newcastle, Ohio. They whine into bullhorns and take photos of the clientele and their car license plates — so they can post them online.  By habit, we really mean fixation, as this conduct has continued unabated for four whole years.

While I think that the pastor’s activities are absurd and tell us a lot about his inner demons, I also believe that they are most likely First Amendment protected activity.

Which is what makes the rest of this so delicious…

The Foxhole’s owner gathered up a bunch of his dancers and protested outside the church. (source)  Clad in bikinis, the performers mock close-minded churchgoers with their god-given – and possibly surgically enhanced – gifts.  Not merely poetic justice, but reminiscent of PCU’s infamous “we’re not gonna protest” protest scene.

Personally, I think that the local government ought to shut the church down — I mean, between the church and the strip club, which one is more likely to harbor child molesters?  The church can’t even withstand a mild dose of its own rancid medicine, either.  Protest, and thou shalt be protested.

Beyond porn: Is black metal the final frontier of obscenity insanity?

By J. DeVoy

As a genre, black metal tends to forego verses, choruses and traditional concepts of consonance and tonality to create an atmosphere of fear and terror.  Predominantly originating in Scandinavia, it is an art form with a violent history, and its very existence is opposed around the globe today.

In 2004, Polish authorities confiscated concert video recordings of Norwegian band Gorgoroth, which were to be used in a forthcoming live DVD.  The police based this seizure on the concert’s content, as the band played while flanked by sheep heads on stakes, four nude, crucified models, and numerous satanic symbols, all of which were covered in blood.  The concert’s organizer was fined approximately $3,000 as a result.  The band later recreated this incident in its Carving a Giant music video, available below.

The phenomenon is not limited to Poland or Gorgoroth.  British cultural commissars charged Swedish metal band Dismember with obscenity in the early 1990s for the contents of its song “Skin Her Alive.”  In America, GWAR was arrested and charged with obscenity law violations in North Carolina during its 1990 tour; the band was able to reach a plea bargain that included not playing within the state for one year.  Rapper Ice-T’s side metal band, Body Count, was threatened with legal action over the inclusion of the song “Cop Killer” in its self-titled album.  This excludes the civil actions brought against Slayer, Ozzy Osbourne and Judas Priest by the families of those killed – by others or their own hand – allegedly due to the artists’ music.

Beyond the music’s grim subject matter, the musicians who create metal – and specifically black metal – make themselves easy targets.  Gorgoroth’s former singer, Gaahl, was sentenced to 14 months in prison and $32,424 in restitution for allegedly kidnapping a man, torturing him for several hours and collecting his victim’s blood in a cup, which Gaahl threatened to make his victim drink.  Going back farther in time, Norwegian band Burzum’s bassist, Varg Vikernes, a/k/a Count Grishnackh, was convicted of burning down four historic churches in Norway — even using the charred rubble of one such burning as the cover artwork for a Burzum album.  Vikernes also murdered his bandmate, Øystein Aarseth, by stabbing him almost two dozen times.  Though the reason for the murder is still unclear, tension between Vikernes and Aarseth as to whether Burzum should promote Satanism or Norse religious beliefs is believed to be an underpinning cause.

As bizarre and repulsive as these events are, they do not bear on the quality of the perpetrators’ speech.  The Miller test is, thankfully, created to focus on speech and not the characteristics of those who made it.

It is unpopular to stand in solidarity with Satanists, church-burners, torturers and murderers.  In the interest of free speech, though, it is important to see their unique vulnerability because of their prior acts, even if they were criminal and we find them despicable.  In light of increased pressure on Eric Holder and the DOJ to stop up obscenity prosecutions and “protect” America’s families and children, more vigilance is needed in protecting free speech — even if it isn’t porn.

Whyyyyyyyyyyy

By J. DeVoy

…And Epic Why Guy is born.  Sometimes you’ve just gotta shop!  As much as the American education system receives its due bashings, apparently the Canadian system needs some remedial civics on the finer points of public and private fora. (Or is Canadian law so different from the ol’ US of A?)

N.D. Cal. strikes down Proposition 8

By J. DeVoy

Vaughn Walker, Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, has ruled in a monster 136-page opinion that Proposition 8 violates the 14th Amendment rights of same-sex couples.  The full order can be found here.

The decision is significant, especially on the heels of the District of Massachusetts striking down a section of the Defense of Marriage Act.  In contrast, Wisconsin ruled in June that its gay marriage ban, memorialized in the state’s constitution as a separate amendment, was constitutional.  Despite the inconsistency of courts across the country, today’s decision indicates that the fundamental right to marry applies to all people.

Although Proposition 8 has been held unconstitutional and its enforcement enjoined, same-sex marriage currently is legal only in Massachusetts, Iowa, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Washington D.C.  California, the nation’s most populous state, may soon join that list.

As usual, Above The Law chimes in with its great analysis of the decision.  The court found Proposition 8 to be unconstitutional under both the Due Process and Equal Protection clauses of the 14th Amendment.  However, the entry of judgment has been stayed until the motion to stay pending appeal is decided, per the case’s docket.

Because an appeal seems to already be in the works, and the 9th Circuit’s unique relationship with the Supreme Court and rest of the country, there’s speculation that the case will ultimately make it to One First Street.  The timeline for these maneuvers remains to be seen, and the composition of the Supreme Court could change radically by the time this case makes it there.  Today, though, there has been victory not only for the LGBTQ community and its allies, but for the whole notion of equality.

THIS IS RANDAZZA!

Meet Antonio Dante Randazza

by All Hands

PSA:   lock up your daughters – another male Randazza on the loose.

Please help us congratulate Marc on the birth of his son, Antonio.    7 lb. 10 oz. 19 inches.