Forum - View topicNEWS: Lawyer Indicates Manga in Iowa Obscenity Case are Yaoi
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The Xenos
 Posts: 1519 Location: Boston |
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You mean like arresting actual sexual predators who prey on children? Naaaaw. We should waste our time hunting and arresting people who own cartoons drawings. I'm nowhere near as right as Ron Paul nor as left as Dennis Kucinich, and maybe not even as libertarian as either, but I applaud them as two of the few if only to vote against this protect act for this very reason. This loop hole is ridiculous. Instead of any effective means to protect actual kids from actual predators, the law is being used as a form of censorship on fictional works. People are being arrested for cartoons. That's not the intent for the law, is it? I thought the law was supposed to go after actual threats to children, not people with images of fictional characters. What we have here is an actual law that goes after thought crime. That bothers the hell out of me. |
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hikaru004
 Posts: 2306 |
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But isn't obscenity whatever the community defines it as such? So depending on the location of the trial he could be up a creek. Iowa obscenity laws apply to depicted individuals under the age of 18. Also, it's not a rule that characters depicted in yaoi are adults (over the age of 18). Edit: It would also be nice if we could have a list of the titles involved in all of this. |
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Navak
Posts: 88 |
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It's not Iowa obscenity laws, it's what the jury finds to be obscene and the jury will be taken from Iowa.
District courts are federal. |
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choniehead2008
Posts: 2 |
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I hope they don't post a list look what happened with Ms. Nitta's manga after her little scandal and good luck trying to complete your Ayano Yamane series those are going for over 300 dollars no that just adds a curiosity rush..
And obscenity laws tend to start off with a bang and then fade into the background like those explicit content stickers, when first implemented by Tippy Gore and her Parents’ Music Resource Center (PMRC) that was only 23 years ago and does anyone really pay attention to the sticker? |
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CCSYueh
 Posts: 2707 Location: San Diego, CA |
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My mother-in-law shaved herself from the time her children were born & was still doing it when I knew her (in her '70's) because hair down there was "nasty". Perhaps it's in the same vein as that concept--not wanting to upset the delicate senses of their readers. Enough gals in the porn industry seem to do this also, so there's people out there that do prefer that look. Unless the artists is going for a certain look to create a certain image, do we really get all that many manga characters with zits or warts? It's art so the images are often pleasing to the eye.
The only licensed title that comes to mind where the younger person's age wasn't upped to legal was Lovely Sick from Drama Queen. Most of the companies here regularly boost the age, although there are glitches such as in Level C where the boy was upped to being in college, but in one scene reffered to high school which was the original setting. That said, I have no doubt whatsoever these being images of gay sex had a lot to do with it. Come on, how much softcore porn romance stories are there aout there for teen girls to drool over? What about the NUMEROUS tales one sees of teen pregnancy, trying to be relevant? As for community standards, IF the jury actually reads the material, depending on the title the sex is usually as relevant as the sex in any supermarket potboiler romance & the sex scenes (explicit or not) make up less than 20% of the pages (Yes, I counted for an argument on another board. Someone was going on about yaoi being pure porn so I counted the pages of naked people & kissing in the half-dozen novels I'd just picked up from the Japanese bookstore near me(so yes, in Japanese) & they ran from 4 pages(but that's a really funny title) to 38 pages. Out of 200. If the jury actually reads the stuff, it will read like the average romance story with a bit of sex to spice it up. It varies from artist to artist. Someone like Minekura is more BL while someone like Minami will run over 10% most of the time. Some of these gals love drawing sex & others don't feel they do all that well & keep the amount portrayed low. Piyoko draws really nice butts. I don't care if the boys have sex or not, but the naked rears are nice.
And when they arrest you for your collection with depictions of underaged nudity in Dragonball Z(Goku, Bulma), not to mention a hell of a lot of other shonen titles, you'll still be laughing? |
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vehayah
Posts: 2 |
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ok so everyone is talking about this like all they are focusing on is the yaoi. I hate to say this but look at it this way. Iowa is a pretty religious state and well religious morals and political morals are all different but still most of the government hasn't gotten it through their heads that there is supposed to be a separation between their God Figure and the political structure. without that separation we are just going to go back into the dark ages no matter how much tech and supposed freedoms we have. anyone remember reading about the Spanish inquisition in school? yes I know that ere is little ot no punctuation but who cares this is all just stupid the guy had yaoi big efing deal did he try to do anything to anyone like what was done in the manga??? just throw out that and deal with the mental state of the person if anything is done. don't blame anyone but the individual. forget source material or outside antagonists. just the individual(god I hope N.G. Reads this)who is involved. who wants to start an island community where we don't have to deal with religious rightwing fundamentalists?????
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CCSYueh
Posts: 2707 Location: San Diego, CA |
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Really? You've never met people in real life who look younger ot older than their age? Why do you think they card people to buy ciggies & booze? There was an actual study that indicated no matter how good bartenders, etc. thought they were guessing people's age in deciding whether to card or not, it fell into the realm of totally ransom guesses. I see a lot of comments about REAL LIVE Asians not looking their age. So artists can't draw this? Does Goku look 12 when DBZ opens? I took him for 5 or maybe 8. Does Luffy look 18 or 19? I thought he was more like 16. In fact, a lot of characters look younger in manga-form, I assume due to the artistic style of the artists(such as Dark Schneider looking older in the anime than the manga art) As for all the railing against Bush, yeah, it's gottten worse under him due to his pandering (Faith-based preograms for drug addicts where all they have to do is say they're not using & the program doesn't test them because that would undermine the recovery by suggesting they don't believe the person. Just pray to Jesus to stop using), but was it under Reagan or during Clinton's time that the Republicans gave the Religious Right a platform (abortion, wasn't it)? I recall voices of sanity back then warning it could undermine the Republican party allowing such extremists to have so much power in the party & we sort of see where it tookus this election. For my money the selection of Palin was more to satisfy the Religious Right which didn't like McCain, particularly when one considers before he selected her, many on the Religious Right were rather vocal against him, even to the point of encouraging their people to just not vote. As for the child porn side, Americans are overall puritanical/draconian about sex & about protecting our youth. One of the nastier undersides to the Prop 8 campaign that didn't really make it into the commercials & the news was the belief that allowing gays to marry was the first step to allowing people to marry animals or "your underage son". I actually heard this verbage from a co-worker who supported 8 & again on one of the Right-Wing Whacko talk shows. They had the brains not to really talk about it to the press, but that was the whispered campaign. There was a well-loved teacher at my teen's high school who, when someone discovered his MySpace page where he admitted being gay (PEOPLE! If you wouldn't admit it to your casual aquaintances, why to you put it on the net where every nosy Rosie can see?), was pulled off the annual trip to France or Washington, whatever. There is the perception among Christians that gay men are sex fiends who want to seduce your innocent son over to their decadent lifestyle. Forget all the stories one sees in the news where it's the hetero teachers having sex with your children, the gays are more frightening to more parents out there. Don't you think this shipment the Post Office decided to randomly open probably contained hetero sex in at least one of the books? But the gay stuff it very offensive to the "Moral Majority" Christians. Why else would they allow porn mags to ship all over the country? Playboy doesn't print it's copies in each state just to avoid that law. No one bugs them because it's "healthy sexual desires" |
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vehayah
Posts: 2 |
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ok but how did the guy get "caught" I mean isn;t it illegal for anyone handling mail to open let alone read somone else's mail? I mean aren't there laws that are supposed to protect us from things like this happening and would I get arrested for trafficking if I were to buy something take it with me on a road trip or whatever I wanted in another state. personally it is just a better idea to leave this country to rot from the inside out, because people can't get over their religious and sexual morality. since when did it say in the constitution. "We the Right-Wind Religious Fundamentalist..." I was always told "We the People..." so what the guy had Yaoi in his collection. So what he ordered it online, or mail order, or whatever. how many times have you ordered something and had it mailed to you simply because your local store didn't have it. people just need to get over their own stupid morals and see that other peole may see them differently. the guy didn't hurt anyone. the guy didn't try to perform what was DRAWN in the manga. all he did was purchase it. what is the country coming to??? next thing we know everyone will be forced to read only government approved literature and watch church approved programming. I never thought I would see the day when I wanted to just go live in a cave away from idiots like those controlling the moral fiber of this stupid country(no offence to those of you who know how to think for yourselves)but we as a country have just let the government tell us what to do and what not to do. this all needs to change. a great man once said "people should not be afraid of the government. the government should be afraid of the people" and what happened to him.. he was tried and killed for believing that there was somthing wrong with the system. and look at us now.. several years later and we are no better than we were before. of course the guy was british and tried to blow up parliment(guy Fawkes) but still the same concept applies. he wanted to show that a country is it's people not it's political system. if they find this man guilty then all of us on here will be at risk because we believe differently than the ruling class and we will find ourselves in the court rooms and found guilty of just breathing differently(I know this sounds extreme but that is the point) nothing is going to get better so long as people enforce their simple minded morals on others. this is all just stupid if I order anything anymore I might as well be found guilty because someone somewhere is going to find a problem with it. so why not just ban everything. NO eating for you. NO reading anything. NO drinking liquids. No opening your eyes. NO NONONONONONO. what is the world coming to. |
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CCSYueh
Posts: 2707 Location: San Diego, CA |
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YOU as a private citizen lack the ability to open other people's mail, but the Post Office has the right to open & inspect any piece of mail it handles.
Look at all this government surveillance stuff we're hearing out of the Bush administration where they were listening to private conversations. In theory all these government eavesdroppers should have only been listening for issues of government security, but being human beings, they were listening in to hot phone sex between couples separated by the war, etc. We have, as a nation, always had more than a few people who wanted to control the thoughts & actions of others. The Putitans came here for religious freedom, but if YOU wanted to worship another way, YOU needed to leave town. They sought less freedom of religion for all & more the right to practice their own religion, an attitude too many religions continue to hold. For all the talk of choices, many religious types seek to restrict the rights of others to choose things the religious types don't believe in. I always thought we were all going to hell our own way, but a lot of them (not just Christians, folks. Look at the Middle East) want to force everyone to follow their beliefs.
Armchair quarterbacking. I frankly can't see lolicon to the level of Nymphet. It seems pointless-obviously portraying underaged girls as sexual objects (what was that other one-Eternal Alice? I forget, but there was a scene of blatant underaged yuri sex in a later volume). However, even though as a parent I lean toward the "Guy reads this stuff & goes out & rapes child" I do have to admit I have no proof beyond the rantings of my religious upbringing. It would seem to me someone wanting to see depictions of sexualized 8 yr-olds wqants to have sex with an 8 yr old, except I also know I have no desire/fantasy whatsoever to have sex with ANY of the guys portrayed in yaoi & I have about 200 licensed yaoi titles & also subscribe to several of the Japanese magazines so I have to logically give readers of lolicon the benefit of the doubt that they also are reading for reasons other than the sex/suggested sex portrayed. Most adults over 40 (maybe over 30) are the product of that same thought process-Truth, Justice & The American Way! Mom's Apple Pie! Main Street Morality! Blah, blah, blah. It's indoctrinated into so many of us at such a deep level, I would suspect most of us would continue to hold these beliefs--as unrealistic as they probably are-until something forces us to confront them. We believe the myth of tainted Halloween candy when the real instances are few & far between. That this or that happened at a spot in our town when it never did--it's just legend. And many Americans do fear the "gay agenda" Just turn on Fox News & see them push it. |
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Mohawk52
 Posts: 8202 Location: England, UK |
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CCSYueh
Posts: 2707 Location: San Diego, CA |
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Actually yaoi is the stuff of fantasies. You do know one of the Clamp gals said they like the school teacher romance story & what were Sakura's parents? Teacher & Student? This is why the guys are ridiculously pretty-fantasy. There's the school romance which includes the teacher/student romance. There's the doctor/patient romance. And there's the BIG forbidden romance of all-family, although I really don't see adopted siblings where the adoption happened in the teen years & the in-law relationships as all that related. Woody Allen was creepy. Stepping back to the shojo Marmalade Boy, they became family as teens & fell in love soon thereafter so I never really saw the fuss, although there was a brief toying with their actually maybe being blood relations. Comedian Denis Leary recently commented his wife was a student in his class, though he stated she finished the class first. |
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GATSU
Posts: 15378 |
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CCS:
But if they're straight Catholic priests who end up molesting, because they're not allowed to marry, then it's fine and dandy. Or if those boys happen to be Arab and/or Muslim detainees in the War on Terror, and they're sodomized, then we're doing Jesus' work. 
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Cait
 Posts: 503 |
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It's not puzzling at all. The federal government wants to keep its hands on control of obscenity laws, and the only way that it can usurp state control of obscenity laws is by pulling "interstate commerce" out of their pocket. It is the only tool they have that will allow a mission oriented federal government (in this case the anti-obscenity conservative movement) control over the lives of individual citizens. It is nearly unheard of for something like this to happen to an individual. Usually these laws are designed to trap commercial distributors of this material, not some guy and his comic book collection. The whole thing pisses me off. With new control over the justice department coming in January I can only hope that ridiculousness like this will not happen anymore. At least not for the next four to eight years, anyway. |
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Dorcas_Aurelia
 Posts: 5344 Location: Philly |
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What the hell is your problem, GATSU? There's no need to dig through people's posts for the one sentence you can draw out of context and stir up a shit storm over. CCS wasn't using the sentence you quoted to say that such action was okay, she was saying that it's the irrational way people think. Damn, man. |
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BellosTheMighty
 Posts: 767 |
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Well, I'm not an expert on either law or history, but it goes something like this: During the colonial period, the 13 colonies which would eventually become the first 13 states of the nation were governed individually- each had it's own governor, legislative bodies, judicial system, and so forth. The British Crown, of course, was the supreme authority, but didn't really get involved much, except to levy taxes, recruit colonists for the French and Indian War, and occasionally put down unrest. Or shoot an "unruly mob" armed with snowballs, but all that is another story. The point is, each colony developed its own identity and its own individual government and bureaucracy. After the Revolutionary War ended and the colonies became independent of British Rule, there were many who wanted to preserve these power structures. The first attempt at an overall government was the Articles of Confederation, which basically gave most of the power to the state governments. There was a small federal body which had some authority, but it had no resources to speak of and could only act by unanimous agreement. This system failed because the states bickered with each other and couldn't act in a unified manner. The point was driven home by Shay's Rebellion, during which a force of what amounted to peasants with pitchforks attempted to overthrow the government of the state of Massachusetts, while the federal government bogged down in logistics and bureaucracy. (The government won, but only because a local militia leader disobeyed the law to get his troops armed.) So, the government was re-organized under the newly-written Constitution of the United States of America. Under this system, the states retained many powers, but they applied only to what happened exclusively within their borders. Anything that took place in more than one state, or involving the world outside American borders, was officially the domain of the federal government. This included interstate commerce. In the example you gave, the material is legal in state A, but that doesn't matter once it enters state B, because state A has no jurisdiction or authority in state B. State B has a similar problem- it has authority only over what happens within state B, nothing over state A. So the transaction itself winds up in a legal limbo, where no one has authority. And since someone HAS to enforce commerce regulations, the job falls to the Federal government, which is above the individual states in the chain of command. If that seems silly, imagine if we were talking about fugitives instead of products. If you were wanted in State A for a bank robbery, and there were no federal authority, all you'd have to do to escape the law is evade the authorities long enough to make it to another state, after which there was nothing they could do. State B can't arrest you because you've done nothing wrong on their turf, and State A can't arrest you because they have no authority to come on to State B's grounds. And indeed this was exploited quite a bit during the days of the Wild West, when the federal government didn't have the money, the logistics, or in some cases the desire to help enforce state laws. And because the Federal Government is the only one that can reasonably enforce these regulations, they pretty much get to make the regulations. Which means that federal politics, especially in the days of mail-order and internet commerce, matters a lot more in terms of what is and is not legal to ship than the politics of any particular state, even those to which the material is shipped. We now return you to "Punditry on the Web, Or Net-Monkeys Slinging Generic and Inane Political Poo In Text Form." |
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