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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Read "Harmful to Minors" by Judith Levine, with intro by Joycelyn Elders.
If you can't use a digital camera, NEVER take your photos to a drugstore. Send them to a mail-order lab. Processing is automated and anonymous. Didn't anyone see "One Hour Photo?" People processing film at drugstores are underpaid and bored. Throw in a little sex-negative religious indoctrination, and you've got the perfect busybodies. This is a nightmare that will be repeated until America ends it's long history of prudery. Shameful.
It doesn't have to be "we were right and they were wrong." Some people use a sledgehammer to kill a wasp. It's overkill, to be sure, but the pest is gone for good.
Personally, this story has way too much detail and a lot of convenient explanations for me to read it the way the author wants me to.
A lot of poor choices were made...not that a poor choice means families should be subjected to this ordeal...but still. A lot of poor choices. Innocence is one thing. Stupidity is another.
I'd like to hear what child support and law enforcment have to say about all this.
Care to point out one of the many "poor choices" you read about in this piece? The way I see it the only poor choice made was to take their photos to a drugstore to be developed.
"A lot of poor choices were made...not that a poor choice means families should be subjected to this ordeal...but still. A lot of poor choices. Innocence is one thing. Stupidity is another."
What poor choices would those be? Having childern, and taking their pictures?
The problem is people like you, who literally ruin the lives of others because of basic stupidity or evil intent, it's hard to tell which.
Nothing the letter writer wrote is a poor choice, nor is anything he did stupid. Children go around naked. There is nothing wrong with this.
That you, and some sick freak at a photo lab, can't understand the difference between a father taking a picture of his daughter swimmming and actual child porn is disgusting.
Society is being ruined because people, in the name of caution, have thrown all reasonablness out the window.
Naked child breast feeding because sexual stimulation.
Child with plastic toy keychain in the shape of a science fiction gun becomes a criminal who intended to kill everyone.
Your reponse to this article sort of proves the authors point does it not? His explanations are too clear and lucid, he must be hiding something. Once tarred with the brush of child abuse he must be guilty of something. You say the author made some bad judgements. What were they?
It reminds one of the old test of whether someone was a witch or not, throw the poor women bound into a river, if she floats she's a witch and you can pull her out and burn her, if she drowns she's innocent.
It really isn't so long ago, 10-15 years ago that dozens of innocent people in the US were sent to Prison and their families lives ruined over allegations of satanic ritual abuse of children in their care. Allegations that turned out to be constructed by overzealous, incompetent law enforcement officers, unqualified therapists and publicity seeking prosecutors based on the unsubstantiated and led testimony of very young children. It turned out there was no satanic abuse just the therapist led false memories of three and four year olds and the conflated wet dreams of god fearing devout christians only too happy to clog the internet with lurid but false tales of demonic cults operating out of pre-schools and day care centres. Old Nick is everywhere and he's after your kids.
Child sexual abuse and exploitation is a serious, terrible and highly sensitive matter and needs to be handled in a thoughtful sensitive manner by people who are trained to identify when a crime is being committed. Some people in your community would see allowing toddlers to skinny dip on a camping trip with their family as child abuse, do you really want these sad people deciding what is legal and what is not?
David Edler
This case reminds me of the South Carolina young woman who called up a new-parents help line. Her question was whether it is usualy to feel aroused when nursing her infant. (FYI it is). She ended up losing her baby for a year.
The obvious root cause of this is sexual hysteria founded in American-based theocratic Fundamentalism. Few people are willing to speak to this, but until we do we are going to have this outrage over and over again.
This case screams for a civil lawsuit against the photo developer and everyone else involved. Such despicable actions will continue unabated unless such companies pay a heavy price for flippant "policing" of their photo lab.
this country is infected by, and governed in large part by, prigs, prudes, pharisees, Babbdists, and sterile-souled reich-wing freaks. This would be the tip of an iceberg, if the icebergs weren't all melting thanks to these same assholes.
This article had me in tears. I am so sorry these families had to go through this. It makes me so angry, too. It's the kind of thing that could drive me crazy just reading about it, let alone being part of the families that had to go through it.
I was about to ask the same things of "not convinced." It's ironic that this is the nym the person is using because hir message is in no way convincing. And funny s/he mentions stupidity, 'cause hirs is a stupid statement, too.
If you're going to assert things like that, "not convinced," then explain what you mean. I think you don't explain because you can't, because the families didn't do anything wrong or stupid. I don't even think bringing the photos in to be developed was stupid, personally, why would it cross anyone's mind that this could happen? As if kids don't ever run around naked, even that lady's neighbor's kid was running around naked.
People like "not convinced" and the people who reported the photos, and the way the whole system went about this, these are the kinds of things that are making me finally start to lose my faith in mankind. And it's taken a long time. Ugh!
But when i read the responses from people like PaulC, Xanthro, and David Edler, it restores a bit of my faith. Thanks, guys.
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