you've got to be kidding me, baaaad laws division

[psocoptera]

MA State Rep Kathi-Anne Reinstein has introduced a bill that would amend the state child porn laws to include the elderly and people with disabilities. Because "obviously" people over 60 and people with disabilities are just like children! and couldn't possibly be consenting sexual beings! Note that, like child porn, this wouldn't apply just to professional porn, but also to images or movies made for personal use - so if your girlfriend uses wheels or your husband is 65 or whatever, forget about taking naked pictures of them.

I was curious - Rep Reinstein herself appears to be young and did not choose to pose in a way that showed a disability - of course she could have a disability not shown here, but I suspect she, er, does not see this as legislation that might apply to her or people like her. Just to some other (Other) people who it is icky to think about sexually, la la!

(If it was not clear: not that they need my approval for anything, but I am in favor of elderly and PWD having whatever sex lives satisfy them, on film or not, in exactly the same way I wish that for all adult people.)

More links here and here and here.

Comments

[miraling.livejournal.com]

Wow. Just...wow.

[carnap.livejournal.com]

The motivation for this law is supposedly to "protect vulnerable populations from sexual predators." Did it not occur to anyone in Rep. Reinstein's office that there are more, um, specific ways of addressing this issue?

[ruthling.livejournal.com]

I read the text of that bill -- ugh, so not ok. A child is not the same as someone who happens to be elderly or has a disability! the latter can consent to sexual activity... guh.

[myalexandria.livejournal.com]

without having read any of the supplementary material whatsoever :) the only reaonsable explanation I can come up with is that what they meant to do (whether the bill is written this way or not) is protect people who are incapable of giving informed consent--people with severe enough mental disabilities and/or senility due to age (is there a new/more sensitive word for senility? as I type it it seems weird, like "retarded," but I can't come up with an alternative).

Of course then you get into the question of whether cognitive difference of various kinds actually precludes informed consent. But I can't believe they really meant to imply that mentally healthy people over 65 or people in wheelchairs, or whatever, are really that vulnerable to dastardly pornographers.

[q10.livejournal.com]

maybe it's gotten worse, but the last time i looked at the proposed bill text it looked like, at least for the disability category, you had to have been deemed incompetent for it to apply (or sort of, or maybe, or the bill included this part sometimes and sometimes not seemingly at random). i think this would make the law significantly less ridiculous.

there is a pretty big drafting problem where the stuff about being adjudicated incompetent is sprinkled unevenly throughout the text (and also maybe participates in a serious and pretty disturbing scope ambiguity), making it hard to tell exactly what the law is even doing.

[q10.livejournal.com]

looking at the text, this may well be what was intended, but given the way the law was written it's hard to be confident this is what it would actually do.

[jaipur.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I heard about that--I thought the bill was dead, does it still have a chance? It sounded so un-Massachussetts; I could see a bill to tax the heck out of porn of some sort, but forbidding it? ;)