Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!nuchat!flatline!erict
From: erict@flatline.UUCP (eric townsend)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: sex on the net, was:Re: Timely Notification (creat blah blah blah
Summary: sexually explicit material and minors...
Message-ID: <641@flatline.UUCP>
Date: 14 May 88 20:57:03 GMT
References: <3628@gryphon.CTS.COM>
Organization: den of sinister exaggerators -- houston.montrose
Lines: 48

In article <3628@gryphon.CTS.COM>, richard@gryphon.CTS.COM (Richard Sexton) writes:
> In article <50798@sun.uucp> chuq@sun.UUCP (Chuq Von Rospach) writes:
> >Interesting thought. Since there's no way to guarantee that something like
> >soc.sex would be restricted from minors, do you suppose that USENET (and/or
> >the sites where the minors were reading this stuff....) would be liable
> >under the delinquency of a minor laws. THAT would be an interesting thought.
> >
> >(it'd also be enough of a worry for me to make sure it never showed up on
> >my machine.....)

As I remember it from class, you (collective) wouldn't have to worry
about whether minors got it unless it was "obscene" (there's a fun one :-),
or "pornographic".  For instance:  Reference books on sex, and reading
materials *about* sex are readily available to anyone of just about any
age in most libraries and bookstores.  "Pornography", that is, pictures,
discriptions, drawings or other representations of "sex or nudity" are not.
As I read the laws then, if you were appealing to the "prurient" intrests
of an individual, then you were "pornographic".
                                                Another big hitch with all
of this, is that we are being pushed into a "everything associated with
the body and sex is bad" mode of thought by many large corporations.
The company that owns the "Randall's" chain of grocery stores had
"Cosmopolitan" pulled from its shelves.  Wal-Mart won't carry "Tiger-Beat"
because it "pushes sex and satan worship at our children".  Tiger-Beat?
Cosmopolitan?  What's next?
                           Also, please remember that there is a 1st
Amendment right to free speach, *especially* when your speach applies
to social, political, educational, scientific, fields or just about any other
topic, for that matter.  If your primary message is not sex (god forbid
some of us would want to talk about sex for the sake of sex), but rather
about sex, then you are basically safe.  Basically.

Again, the above definitions for "obscene" and "pornographic" may seem
rather loose.  Well, they are.  In North Carolina, the state government
pulled the educational and scientific clauses from it's obscenity laws.
Fine arts classes could no longer show slides of nudes, and a couple
of law schools have had to stop teaching classes on obscenity.  Pretty
scary, huh?

(Personally, I think the people that stopped soc.sex were a bunch of weenies,
unwilling to take a chance and willing to let themselves be pushed around
by a bunch or low-grade morons using religion to subjugate others.)

And just remember:  Sex is *not* a crime.
-- 
                                Know Future
Another journalist with too many spare MIPS.
J. Eric Townsend ->uunet!nuchat!flatline!erict smail:511Parker#2,Hstn,Tx,77007