TalkBackNorthampton

Last But Not Least

2008-03-25T21:53:00.000-07:00

The Amazing.Net video store finally opened this past December. I didn’t know about it at the time – I was away. I have not heard about any terrible secondary effects emanating from it, but then, I have not been following the local news lately, either.

I did pay it an obligatory visit and bought a video. I watched parts of the video once and have not felt the inclination to view it again. I think I’ll give it away to the “Oh My …” sensuality shop like I gave away to them X rated videos I had bought to view when I was in the midst of the porn zoning controversy here in Northampton.

Truth be told, what disturbed me about the zoning law more than the 1,000 square foot rule, was the rhetoric of the zoning law’s advocates, which was often duplicitous, hypocritical and harmful, in my opinion.

To be sure, I was very concerned that the law was merely the beginning of a more pervasive trend to restrict our freedoms here in Northampton, particularly with respect to our private lives, from both the right and the left of the political spectrum. Each has their morality which they wish to impose upon everyone else.

My free speech concerns were amply expressed in my prior blog entries, which you can view below, but what I didn’t champion so much was what triggered my reaction on a non-political level. I was personally offended by the anti-porn rhetoric of the zoning law’s supporters.

While I believe each individual man and woman is different, I also believe that generally men seem to have a more visual sexual orientation than women. Because the anti-porn advocates focused their attack upon graphic sex, that is, upon a visual sexual orientation, I felt attacked personally. That I was “bad” for just being me, how I came into this world and will leave it. I can’t change my DNA.

It deepened my understanding of how someone was has been born black, or female or homosexual may have often been made to feel and maybe are still made to feel, when they are attacked for being just who they are.

And to add insult to injury, there was the condescending duplicity of Nopornorthampton who claimed to be pro-free speech. The invalidation of me just being me as I was made by my maker and the free speech duplicity was so insufferable that I couldn’t live with myself – I literally found myself barely able to breathe - unless I took action and spoke out against it. So, I did.

Try as they might, I doubt if the anti-porn advocates will ever succeed in changing Mother Nature and how we have evolved the way we have. Men will be men; women will be women – each, generally speaking, with their differences, including men’s more visual sexual orientation. The world goes on today, much as it did before and will now afterwards.

But I do hope, aside from my free speech concerns that we become more accepting of sexuality, as we are, and not as concerned about how we are supposed to be about it. No doubt the sexual abuse and exploitation of women, children and even of men would continue, but society would become less judgmental.

I harbor this dream because, among other things, while the world will never be perfect, the world would become a warmer and safer place for you just to be you.

Peace.

I am done here.

Good Bye.

Norpornorthampton: Contemptible Hypocrites

2007-07-14T18:24:00.000-07:00

In the post at the following link, http://nopornnorthampton.org/2007/07/14/cruising-for-sex-keith-griffith-attempts-to-use-copyright-laws-to-restrict-debate.aspx, Nopornorthampton celebrates its right to use the copyright protected material owned by others based upon the fair use doctrine, which among other things, allows someone to use excerpts of material owned by another to comment upon and/or criticize it.

Now, all that is constitutional, and fine and good in my opinion. But Nopornorthampton itself no longer allows others who are critical of their remarks to leave comments at their website, and attempts to intimidate their critics (posting critical comments on their own blogs) by, among other things, calling up employers to secure their critic’s dismissal.

Who are the real totalitarians here acting in “bad-faith … to preempt political debate”?

Its contemptible hypocrisy on part the NPN, but then, it has always been their hypocrisy that bothered me more than their many exaggerations and flawed points of view. Who has never been mistaken in their points of view, after all?

But, they prompt their critics, such Mopornorthampton.com, to behave most uncivilly, trash talking and the like, by reason of their inflammatory hypocrisies, and then criticize those very same critics for being uncivil! Adam and Jendi may evolve, but to me at this time they are the most contemptible of people.

Yours/AC

Hampshire Gazette: Shut People Up

2007-04-20T14:21:00.000-07:00

In its editorial today, “In Our Opinion: The tragedy in Virginia,” the Hampshire Gazette mysteriously jumps from voicing concern about security on college campuses to advocating greater regulation of speech upon political and social issues.

“ … A repeat offenderMax Karson has a long tradition of offending people. Even the tragedy at Virginia Tech is not outside his reach.

Karson began publishing offensive material while a student at Amherst Regional High School. In his crude publication "The Crux," he sought to spread his insults as far and wide as possible. He got suspended from school twice, only to be reinstated with the help of the Western Massachusetts ACLU.

Karson is now offending people as a student at the University of Colorado in Boulder, where he has been distributing an outrageous newsletter called "The Yeti," which is also packed with vulgar language.

It turns out that his timing is as bad as his taste. He declared in a women's studies class this week that he could see why Cho Seung-Hui went on his violent rampage at Virginia Tech. He also said that, like Cho, he could become angry enough to kill a large number of people, even for the most mundane reasons. After students and faculty complained and expressed fears, Karson was arrested on a misdemeanor charge of "interference with staff, faculty, and students of an educational institution."

Karson thinks he's doing us all a favor by pushing the limits of free speech, but free speech is not without responsibilities. Karson has a right to his opinions, but his fellow students have a right to react to what they find hostile and offensive and to protect themselves in the face of threatening remarks.”

Arresting someone for a newsletter is a violation of the freedom of the press. One would think the Gazette cherishes that right. Apparently it does not.

I can only ask the Gazette to think deeper about what the consequences of editorials like this one may lead to. Not only was Imus shut up upon the basis of what many people deemed to be his “irresponsible” speech, (and I agree with that characterization), but it should remember that not so long ago, the Dixie Chicks were, too. Advocating “responsible” social and political regulation of free speech is harmless, so long as the views expressed by the offensive speaker seem irresponsible to you, but a clear suppression of your rights to express your views when your views are deemed irresponsible by others.

The evil here, if any, is ignorance, not a lack of social and political constraints upon our freedom of speech, in my opinion at least.

What Imus said ...

2007-04-15T20:28:00.000-07:00

was inexcusable in my opinion. Nonetheless, I am concerned. For you to understand why, I need to you first to understand how Imus would be judged under constitutional jurisprudence.

What he said constituted defamation, which can be either an oral (“slander”) or written (“libel”) statement of fact that is false and damaging to a person’s reputation. While the law has features to it intended to prevent defamation claims from chilling free speech about public and private persons, alike, the first amendment does not protect defamatory speech and speakers. There is no public good in false statements of indisputable fact.

Also, generally speaking, CBS as a private broadcaster was well within its constitutional rights to fire Imus, regardless of whatever contractual consequences it may suffer as a result if it breached its contract with him.

Nonetheless, as I said, I am concerned. What if the young women actually were nappy haired hoes? What then?

The justifications for hounding Imus out of a job used by the self-righteous Imus critics focused more upon the offensive, inflammatory and controversial character of the sexist and racist speech than it’s defamatory, that is, false character. It would not matter to them if what Imus said had been dead-on, irrefutably true, and there’s the rub.

Protecting each of us from harm by reason of a tyrannical majority because of the offensive, inflammatory and/or controversial ideas we may express (unless they are defamatory) is precisely what the first amendment is suppose to do. While Imus was fired by dint of social activism, to me there’s precious little practical difference between such marshalling of overwhelming public opinion and more subtle forms of governmental chilling, suppression and censorship of free speech. Each are highly coercive and damaging to the free flow of ideas. (See the PS below.)

To the Imus critics, chastising Imus was not good enough – nothing short of firing Imus even begins to satisfy them. Similarly, chastising Moporn by Nopornorthampton is not good enough for them – nothing short of getting the Moporn blog pulled by its ISP and its founders fired from their jobs is good enough for Nopornorthampton, for example.

Nopornorthampton equates this sort of activism with people like Gandi marshalling public opinion to bring the British to their senses, etc. But, there is a difference. What the Imus critics and Nopornorthampton want to do is shut people up. However abhorrent racist points of view might have been to Gandi, Gandi was not about shutting people up.

In contrast, shutting people up is what people like Nopornorthampton, Adam Cohen and Jendi Reiter, are all about.

Yours/AC

PS – I take limited comfort in the theory that an “independent” judiciary will protect me against the excesses of any political or social activism. Almost all of our judiciary are either elected officials themselves or appointed by elected officials, who must take into account public opinion about the (potential) judge’s opinions, and after reaching the bench, judges are still subject to elections or elected officials to preserve or advance their careers. So, while we learn mostly about the judges who have from time to time been brave enough to risk their own careers and social standing to render unpopular opinions based upon principles, the reality is that, historically, judges on balance have not been and are not immune to social and political pressures. They are not as independent of the mob as one might think. (Double entendre intended.)

The distinction between social activism on the part of the public and governmental regulation of speech is more illusory than real. They are not so separate, but instead exist side by side upon a continuum of social and political regulation. So, the willingness to stand up to social pressure to suppress, chill and/or censor expression can be at times just as important as standing up for the supremacy of the first amendment, in my opinion at least.

Playboy In Indonesia

2007-04-01T01:38:00.000-07:00

Playboy Indonesia displays no naked women, nonetheless, as related by a Wall Street Journal guest editorial, “… Erwin Arnada, the beleaguered editor of Playboy Indonesia, faces a two-year jail term for breaching the country's indecency laws … Earlier this month, about 100 belligerent Islamists, bearded and skull-capped, packed the courtroom shouting "hang him, hang him!" … … The Playboy affair captures the world's most populous Muslim country's steady slide toward intolerance … … Last April … Headscarved women picketed and harassed the magazine's models. The government buckled under the pressure and took Mr. Ernada to court... Indonesia used to be considered immune to fundamentalism …”

The editorial is critical of Islam, and, to put it pejoratively, promotes the most vacuous aspects of American society as the remedy. But, in my opinion, the truth is about neither. In reality, it’s all about power. Power to control society by controlling what the mainstream public may see, hear, say and think, all wrapped up, in Indonesia’s case, in religious doctrine to justify itself.

In western society the totalitarian among us seek power in a similar manner. They link litanies of social ills (e.g, “secondary effects,” “hate crimes,” “sexual abuse,” etc.) with expression they label “inappropriate” or “harmful” or “hurtful” or “unhealthy” or “sinful” etc. and then argue that the pervasiveness and/or severity of these social ills justify curtailing our freedom of speech. (See below, e.g., "In Defense of Trash Talk.")

They sway mainstream public opinion with pseudo science, simplistic interpretations of religion, confusion of fantasy with fact, and fear, among other things. (See, e.g., Nopornnorthampton.org.) Weak links, indeed. Often they advocate these little infringements upon our rights to “protect” vulnerable segments of society, particularly minorities, women and children. (See below, e.g., "In Defense of Trash Talk.")

Power in the political system and through the law are not the only means by which they seek to achieve their aims, of course. They seek to achieve their ends by creating a social tyranny of peer pressure, too. A social tyranny of the majority, if you will.

The totalitarian and social tyrants among us do not think of themselves as such, of course. Few among them understand that they ask us to accept an “abridgement of the freedom of speech, or of the press,” in one respect or another. Fewer still understand their totalitarian or tyrannical tilt; they just want a free society and free speech where everyone in the mainstream thinks and acts not too differently than they do. Never mind that this sometimes means infringing upon the most intimate details of our private lives, however free and consensual these details may be.

Probably every political or social movement has its factions with a totalitarian and tyrannical tilt – liberals who call conservatives “fascists,” may understand what I mean here. But, conservatives are no more totalitarian than liberals. I call one of my brothers a “fascist liberal,” for example. Not necessarily because of his views – I happen to agree with a number of them. It’s his righteous intolerance of others who may not think, act or express themselves among themselves as he believes they should that causes me to label him such.

Men often use the term "feminazi" to describe feminists who appear to them primarily to focus upon controlling how men think, act and express themselves, in contrast to those feminist who appear primarily to focus upon realizing their own, full potential, regardless of how men happen to behave. Women often label men who appear …

I’ve observed nothing in common between all the aspiring totalitarians (again, found within just about any social/political movement) except their conceit, desire to dictate AND intolerance for – you guessed it – pornography!

No only is pornography the weakest link in what the public will support in terms of protecting expression – it appears to be nothing more than entertainment for sex obsessed men, after all – but pornography is also probably the most universally undermining expression politically that there is.

Laden with “anti-social” messages, porn is very threatening speech, politically. In short, it’s Wild! Totalitarians want and need a lot of control. By controlling how the mainstream thinks, they control us. If our internal shame censors don’t “correct” us, then the public authorities or our social peers surely will. By evoking the Wild – the free – within us, porn is therefore is very upsetting to them, like happy yellow dandelions popping up in the carefully totalitarian manicured lawns of our minds.

Reflect upon the sequence of events in the novel “1984,” if you have read it. For Big Brother, unregulated sex really screws everything up, and must be severely dealt with … George Orwell understood my point. I wonder how often serious efforts have been made to ban, in whole or part, “1984” in schools and libraries here and elsewhere in the world.

A free society may not need pervasive pornography to be free – I really do not know – but I suspect that if pornography is readily tolerated in a society, that society will be probably more free, than totalitarian, more truly “liberal” in the classic sense of the word, than tyrannical.

No one can claim to be truly liberal, in the classical sense of the word, if they would abridge our freedom of speech, as Nopornorthampton would have us do, with so-called “reasonable” regulations of pornography that would amount to its banishment, as a practical matter.

As the Wall Street Journal guest editorial summed it all up:

“The idea of a woman [or man] dressing or undressing as she [or he] pleases, or that you may personally disapprove of the Playboy bunny [or Cosmopolitan beefcake] but respect your neighbor's right to fantasize about her [or him], undermines the very core of Islamic [any other form of] totalitarianism.”

Nothing, absolutely nothing, upsets the totalitarian and tyrannical factions more than their cultural version of Girls Gone Wild!

Yours/AC

PS -- You know, girls and guys acting like Bonobo Chimps; see "Heaven Forbid ..." below.

Heaven Forbid Their Thoughts Wander to the Wild Side!

2007-04-01T01:22:00.000-07:00

As Nopornorthampton often points out, expression often successfully misleads us for the worse, particularly when we are young or vulnerable. Certainly there are certainties we can all agree upon to protect them from? Probably so, but the scope of these certainties are narrower than most in the mainstream believe, I suspect, even with respect to sex and what may be viewed as sexually stimulating materials.

The trash heap of history is littered with the discredited certainties of times past. So, who knows? Pervasive promiscuity may be good for us.

Let your mind take a walk on the wild side with me to the Congo, and go out, far, far out on a limb, literally.

What do we find? Well, we might find the renowned Bonobo Chimpanzees, a very close relative of ours on the evolutionary tree. As portrayed in a PBS documentary I saw (more than once) and related in Wikipedia: "The species is distinguished by an upright gait, a matriarchal and egalitarian culture … [Common] Chimpanzees and Bonobos both evolved from the same ancestor that gave rise to humans, and yet the Bonobo is one of the most peaceful, unaggressive species of mammals living on the earth today.”

“They show us that the evolutionary dance of violence is not inexorable ... Females are much smaller than males but can be considered to have a higher social status. Aggressive encounters between males and females are rare, and males are tolerant of infants and juveniles. The male's status reflects the status of his mother, and the son-mother bond often stays strong and continues throughout life. While social hierarchies do exist, rank does not play as prominent a role as it does in other primate societies.”

Sounds like they’re a bunch of politically correct men and women, to me at least. Indeed, the Noho utopia many dream of. But Bonobo’s are not renowned for being tree hugging liberals and dyed in the wool feminists. No, they are renowned because in Bonobo society casual incest, heterosexual, gay and lesbian sex is the rule, not exception. They have sex like in greeting each other men traditionally shook hands and women hugged. They have sex even more pervasively than that, really. There is no shame … (See, "Shame Me, Baby, Shame Me" below.)

Go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonobo#Name to learn more, if you wish.

Could it be mere coincidence that it seems to me that the most patriarchal, violent and oppressive human societies tend to be also the most puritanical societies? May be the Bonbos are on to something. Bonobos certainly live among themselves better than most of us relatively puritanical humans live among ourselves. Indeed, “Bonobos, … are generally held to have superior intelligence to Common Chimpanzees.”

Humans, too??? Would we have something to learn from Bonobos that we should teach of kids, if we wish for them to live in a more peaceful and egalitarian world ...? Just wondering. :)

You never know ... “[t]he trash heap of history is littered with the discredited certainties of times past …”

Yours/AC

Shame Me, Baby, Shame Me!

2007-03-28T21:15:00.000-07:00

I was reminded about the shaming thing again tonight when I noticed
NPN's reference to it in their responses to Mr. Gorrie's comments published at their website. (http://nopornnorthampton.org/2007/03/28/how-the-supreme-court-reconciles-adultuse-zoning-with-the-first-amendment.aspx#Comment.) Shaming others or ourselves, aside from being sexually exciting to some, may serve a good purpose at times, but shame is not always a trustworthy guide to what is right or wrong, and healthy or unhealthy. In fact, listening to our shame as a trustworthy guide to what is healthy, as NPN instructs, is often tragically wrong. Frequently, it perpetuates cultural norms that are very unhealthy and harmful. There are women in Africa shamed and who actually feel ashamed if they are not circumcised, to point out just one instance where it is unhealthy.

May be the reader can think of other examples?

Yours/AC

In Defense of Trash Talk

2007-03-23T20:22:00.000-07:00

Trash talk on the internet has been a hot issue lately, not only here in Northampton because of Moporn, but nationally, too.

The March 7th edition of the Washington Post ran an article about AutoAdmit, a popular on-line law school discussion board. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/06/AR2007030602705.html.) It slammed AutoAdmit for failing to remove trash talk that anonymous posters left. It focused upon the stories of a few women who are (or were) Yale Law School students that held the trash talk responsible for their failure to obtain any job offers, for becoming uncomfortably self-conscious of their appearance in public and even for jeopardizing their personal safety. Truly, the trash talk went to the depths of depravity, to say the least.

Then this Monday I noticed a March 19th guest editorial in the Wall Street Journal by Elizabeth Wurtzel, the author of Prozac Nation, etc., and now a Yale Law School student. (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB117425870594940896-search.html?KEYWORDS=trash+talk&COLLECTION=wsjie/6month.) She, too, was upset about how these classmates had been wronged by anonymous posters at AutoAdmit. The trash talk had been indeed responsible for preventing at least one of these promising students from securing employment, or so she said.

Ms. Wurtzel complained the women’s woes were all the fault of the first amendment, “because once again, for about the 80th time in my memory and 80,000 time in the life of this country, here is an issue in which the right to free speech – as opposed to the need for everyone to just shut up – is going to overwhelm us all … the firstness of the first amendment trumps everything that competes with it.” Sound familiar?

Because we are “delicate people,” she lamented at length that the first amendment jeopardizes any effective legal means to coerce us to be civil and sensitive, and bemoaned the fact that all she could do was “plead for civility.” I couldn’t disagree more with Ms. Wurtzel’s insinuation that we should relax the protections the first amendment affords us.

This popular attitude is a very dangerous attitude for the law and society to adopt. For when we become more solicitous of the feelings of “delicate people” than the right to share, review and judge for ourselves improvident trash talk, we risk sacrificing any scraps of truth that may get thrown out with it.

What is trash talk today may very well be tomorrow’s chic political correctness. Imagine how openly gay literature and advocacy would have characterized by champions of public morality and appropriateness in our less secular past. The irony extends to trash talk of a factual nature, too. After all, there are times when the truth turns out to be stranger (and more sordid) than the fiction. JFK’s extra martial infidelities – they went far beyond a sole mistress on the side – were verboten in the early 1960s, but now…

Both articles focused only on stories of women wronged by messages left at AutoAdmit, but there’s no reason to believe men had not been wronged, too, even wasps, like me. Trash talk is very egalitarian. Recently, I was wrongly vilified on-line, too, by the most heinous insinuation one can level at a man these days. A (male) sexual predator seems to lie beneath every rock, thanks to the hysteria whipped up by the likes of Nopornorthampton. To be sure, when I read the defamatory posts, I felt as if I’d taken a cannon-ball in the gut, and it stuck there.

In my case the next day I posted a responsible response to the malicious posts, and supporters chimed in with their own responsive posts. The trash talkers beat a hasty retreat and hoisted the white flag. So, the “more speech cure for bad speech” proved to be very effective and immediate relief, and far less of a burden for me and society to bear that any law or legal action would have been.

In the case of these “delicate” law students, are they ready to be lawyers in the combative arena of law if they can’t effectively deal with this sort of trash talk by themselves? Why are they (and Ms. Wurtzel) not publishing the name(s) of the naïve law firm(s), etc. that would base their hiring decision(s) on anonymous trash talk and not take into account any responsive comments the women and their supporters posted?

Because justice is not what this is all about, clearly. Employers of Yale Law School graduates are not that naïve. All this whining (by the activists, not the people actually victimized by the defamatory comments) is about the power to control not only how we behave, but also how we think, by controlling what we can hear. The likes of Ms. Wurtzel form a confederacy of activists insidiously campaigning for the passage of laws to curtail how we may express ourselves and what we may learn, and thus ultimately how we think in more ways than one. All to protect “delicate people’s” feelings – just like Nopornnorthampton would entirely outlaw degrading and objectifying porn, and mold our thoughts, if it could.

Is this fear mongering on my part? I don’t think so. If China can control the internet, then it can be done anywhere. Don’t be deceived. While Ms. Wurtzel said, “I could never advocate censorship,” she later put her foot down and said “[The internet is] unpoliced, which demands that we be better people, gentler and more humane.” “Demands” implies coercion here, which means institutional codes of conduct and governmental regulation where the targeted conduct is expresssion. So, she’s merely paying lip service to the first amendment, just as Nopornnorthampton does, in my opinion. Though it’s possible she’s not really thought it through enough to understand this, like so many...

To refrain from and be wary of trash talk on the internet may be an advisable choice for an individual to make; but, it should be and remain your own choice, not Ms. Wurtzel’s or Nopornnorthampton’s.

Go Moporn, go!

Yours/Always Controversial

PS – About the women’s inability to secure employment: are the best law firms and other organizations who Yale Law School graduates seek to be employed by, and their sophisticated clients, donors, etc., put off by controversial behavior engaged in by the students’ themselves? At least one of the women, “Jill,” admits “ … I run a feminist blog where I curse and say all sorts of inflammatory things …” - her own trash talk. (See http://feministing.com/archives/006649.html#more.) She complains she just can’t win because she is both beautiful and smart; men (she presumes) trash talk her and otherwise scandalize her personality on the web (probably, I suspect, in retaliation for her inflammatory rants); and, her preferred employers, feminist organizations, can’t see that trash talk for what it is – or so she believes. Well, Jill, what's good for the goose is good for the gander, I’m afraid.

NPN: Lessons from the Stigma of Segregation Apply to the Stigma of Porn

2007-03-22T22:19:00.000-07:00

Author’s note: below is a response to a particularly malicious post made by Nopornorthampton the other day. See http://nopornnorthampton.org/2007/03/21/lessons-from-the-stigma-of-segregation-apply-to-the-stigma-of-porn.aspx#Comment. NPN will no longer post the comments of most of NPN’s regular critics. See http://talkbacknorthampton.blogspot.com/2007/03/npn-would-like-to-banish-more-than-porn.html.

Free speech defenders are like dismissive segregationists and racists? There Nopornorthampton goes again, “If you don’t agree with us, you must be as bad as the rapists, the child sex abusers, etc., etc., etc.” Just like, if you don’t agree with them, they won’t let you play at their website anymore, and you must secretly work for Capital Video, etc., etc.

If anything, Nopornnorthampton (and people like them) are acting in a manner parallel to the racial segregationists by stigmatizing an entire class of individuals (pornographers and their customers) based upon antidotal evidence of harm caused and suffered by a number of the class members. But given NPN’s shiftiness, I’m beginning to wonder about how bad it all really is. See http://www.mopornnorthampton.com/node/81#comments.

Indeed, the best studies, including the NYC study which Noporn touts so much, couldn’t actually link any secondary effects to porn, except for the finding that the perception creates the reality, i.e., just as the Archie Bunkers of the world say when a black family moves near by, “there goes the neighborhood!” and then everyone moves away, so the stigmatized perception that a porn store will blight a neighborhood will cause businesses to move away, and then everyone blames it upon the porn store.

By intensifying this stigma, Nopornorthampton only perpetuates it, unnecessarily, and harms the responsible pornographers and consumers of porn, in my opinion. When someone firebombs Pleasant Street Video, Pride and Joy or Oh My… may be they will understand? Or will it be to their (secret) glee?

Yours/AC

Bong Hits 4 Jesus

2007-03-20T16:37:00.000-07:00

Monday, the infamous “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” case was argued before the Supreme Court. Kenneth Starr argued for the Alaska high school principal who ripped down a 14 foot banner that a student in her high school unfurled outside the school. The students had been released temporarily from class to watch the 2002 Olympic Torch Relay under teacher supervision, and as the torch bearer passed, out came the banner. The school band played a part in the festivity as well.

The principal ended up expelling the student for many days. The principal testified that she acted specifically because of the message she believed the banner conveyed – do drugs – not because of a rule, if any, about banners in general. The student claims he unfurled the banner merely for kicks – to aggravate the principal, among others – not to convey a pro-drug message. You may not believe that was really his sole purpose, but that is the position he takes.

If the principal had acted because unfurling a banner, regardless of its message -- “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” or “Jesus is Lord,” – was prohibited, then probably no credible constitutional claim could have been made. It would have been enforcement of a content neutral rule, however, by the principal's own admission, it was not. The leading Supreme Court case applicable here, Tinker, allows schools to take action when a student’s speech is “disruptive,” and this case is another chance for the court to clarify what it means by that erstwhile content neutral rule.

If the principal is found guilty of violating the student’s first amendment rights, then the court may award money damages, though they might not amount to much. What’s the cost of a banner that was created for merely kicks, after all? And the student’s subsequent notoriety has more than compensated him for his expulsion, in my opinion.

I read the transcript of the argument before the court. Starr specifically argued that the school and principal should have the right to censor and punish students whose expression is disruptive to, or undermines, its anti-drug educational mission. Indeed, Starr went so far as to argue the school could censor and discipline speech which conveys any message that’s “disruptive” to its “educational mission,” as defined by the school in its sole discretion.

What if a school doesn’t like a student’s pro-gay or anti-gay message because it runs counter to parents’ politically correct or religious sensibilities as embodied in its “educational mission”? There are all sorts of controversial issues upon which student speech could be squelched – are we really going to educate our young adults if we do not allow them to begin to express themselves in the context of school supervised activity, however erroneous they happen to be? Painful as it may be, that’s how we learn.

Indeed, when I was in high school I wrote a letter to the editor of the school newspaper which argued that the ban against recreational use of marijuana was unfair – what alcohol was to my parent’s generation, pot was to mine. But it was a letter to the editor, not a banner with a message that had nothing to do with what the school supervised “field trip” was all about, and, while it created a bit of a stir among the educators, no school educational or recreational activity was disrupted.

I’m a free speech advocate, obviously. Nonetheless, I think the school could have constitutionally ripped down the banner and disciplined the student. The purpose for which the school temporarily released the students under its supervision was to see and celebrate the passing of the Olympic torch through the town, and the banner “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” had nothing to do with that. Behavior, speech or otherwise, that materially disrupted that school activity could have been and should have been disciplined. The students knew what the purpose of their release was; it wasn’t recess.

From my review of the transcript, I suspect that is what Justice Kennedy believes, and, as the swing vote on the court, his opinion might very well end up being the one to which the court eventually gravitates.

So, I don’t think our first amendment rights need be threatened here, unless the Supreme Court opts to adopt the content based rule advocated by the school principal and Kenneth Starr, and then there is a lot to be worried about.

Yours/Always Controversial

On Smoking and Other Things

2007-03-16T18:27:00.000-07:00

Author’s note: The following article is commentary about the proposed ban on smoking in private clubs which the local board of health is considering. Smoking is already banned in Northampton from bars, restaurants, etc. While the article does not concern freedom of speech, directly, the reader will see that these subject matters involve many of the same underlying concerns that the reader may find worthy to think about, as I do.

There are undesirable secondary effects to a lot of things besides smoking and pornography (the latest two vices the City has been eager to banish as a practical matter). For instance, alcoholic beverage consumption leads to alcoholism, traffic fatalities, domestic violence, etc. Smoking is harmful, at least to those who regularly smoke, no doubt about it. But, government and political leaders should focus instead on ameliorating undesirable secondary effects in less intrusive manners, in my opinion.

For example, if people don't like people smoking outside, then the City could bring it back inside, with air filtration systems and no smoking areas to "protect" those who are sensitive to it, instead of trying to control the intimate details of people's private social lives. Requiring extra sales taxes to be paid for tobacco products is an example of where government regulation does directly address undesirable secondary effects, rather than the intimate private behavior of the citizen. (There’s solid evidence that smokers place a disproportionate financial burden on the health care system.)

I am concerned by how many liberals and conservatives, alike, feel justified to dictate intimate aspects of our private lives (albeit often in different respects), and turn a blind eye to how they would encroach upon our rights to be wrong, as well as right, in how we choose to live among ourselves. The more we allow the will of the majority to dictate intimate aspects of our lives, be it a conservative or liberal majority, we may have more democracy, but less and less freedom.

We need to accept the notion that tolerance of those who would voluntarily live differently than we would wish them to live with respect to their private lives, is essential for a community and a society that is to be rightly called free, as well as democratic. Otherwise, one day we may find ourselves trapped, suffocating in a place which is more totalitarian than free, except in name.

Yours/Always Controversial

News Flash: NPN Would Like to Banish More than Porn!

2007-03-11T22:33:00.000-07:00

Recently Nopornnorthampton officially notified me that they will no longer publish my comments at their website. Had my comments been pornographic or indecent? defamatory? No.

It all started in a short email from Adam advising they wanted me to “withdraw [my] participation from Mopornnorthampton starting now. If you are unable to make this pledge, I regret we will no longer publish your comments on NoPornNorthampton.”

Adam and Jendi have been naturally very upset with the “savage” personal attacks made about them by Mopornnorthampton. They also didn’t like the fact that I played the Toss Adam’s Head game at the Moporn site. You can play it, too, at http://www.mopornnorthampton.com/node/67. I actually got a respectable 6969!

I admit, on the one hand, at times I’ve regretted that I played the head tossing game, but, on the other hand, noticed that this sort of thing comes with the territory of speaking out in public on controversial issues. Welcome to public life, Adam and Jendi. But if the kitchen is getting too hot for you, then get out of the kitchen!

Adam and Jendi just aren’t into head tossing games, and any other fun and games, it seems, based upon his reply and my experience with them. Heaven forbid they ever “lighten up.”

In a follow up email he continued “…I have begun feeling rather foolish providing a forum for you and making efforts to be fair and on-topic while you participate with Mopornnorthampton and let their tactics take place without criticism. I am also tiring of your consistent misrepresentation of our views, as in this comment which I will not publish:

‘I think I asked this before when you brought up Gloria [Steinem]: where does she actually argue for the legal banishment of pornography, as you do, in addition to vigorous criticism of it?…’”

As I replied to Adam, “[t]here doesn’t seem to be a porn regulation that NPN doesn’t want or believes violates the first amendment. So, for that reason, and the reasons I’ve cited before and with which I trust you are familiar, my view of your view is that you advocate the banishment of porn, as a legal and practical matter. … … I’m really not aware of where NPN would stop with respect to the mere ‘regulation’ of porn.”

Of course, after reflecting upon the request I didn’t pledge to withdraw my participation from Moporn. But I am not the first person who has been ostracized from NPN. I follow the mysterious and insightful Doug Shubert, who announced at Moporn earlier this year that Noporn had officially stopped accepting his comments. But no reason was given. Doug Shubert’s comments were better than mine, more often than not, in my opinion.

I don’t think NPN was primarily motivated by the fact that I left comments at Moporn as I do at Noporn – my published comments were pretty mild relative to comments left by others -- and the head tossing game was old news. No, they just can no longer deal with criticism for which they really have no good reason not to agree with, and they long to live with their own intellectual hypocrisy undisturbed.

Heaven forbid they admit they would have us repeal the first amendment – even though few countries actually elevate the right to free speech to constitutional status. If NPN finally did admit that this is the consequence of their position, they would be actually in agreement with most of the international community, like China.

In addition, I suspect the request was an attempt to pull back from the process they had begun at my request of spelling out in specific and concrete detail what Cap Video would have to do to resolve NPN’s objection to its opening a store at 135 King Street. They faced, perhaps for the first time, the end of the very purpose for which they exist.

In my opinion, as many others in the anti-NPN community will continue to share my view that NPN argues for the banishment of pornography, they have accomplished little more than further straining the credibly their website may have, and it certainly makes their claim to be “educational” duplicitous. It is too bad NPN does this sort of thing to me, Doug and God only knows who else. For as critical I have been of the materials they post and the positions they take, we do need credible voices informing us and reminding us that not all is harmless fantasy in porn land.

Yours/AC

P.S. Adam also mentioned that NPN views are “nuanced and balanced.”

Studies, Experts & Testimonials

2007-02-04T14:32:00.000-08:00

Studies, experts, etc., etc. It seems that one will always be able to find studies, experts and testimonials saying what one wants to claim regarding pornography.

Personally, I am willing to accept the notion that as alcohol can and does lead to nice things, as well as bad things, so too, porn can and does lead to nice things as well as bad things. Just as alcohol arouses passions and lowers our inhibitions, so too pornography arouses passions and lowers our inhibitions.

But, in our society today, there’s no push to banish alcohol, as there is an overwhelming push to banish porn. Yet the banishment of alcohol would not infringe upon any constitutional rights while the banishment of porn would. How do we explain this political circumstance?

One may be quick to point to extremist, such as fire and brimstone religous fanatics and feminazis; but they do not account for the breath of middle of the road support anti-porn measures have.

I suspect it is because more women consume alcohol than consume porn, at least openly, and therefore it is more socially and politically accetable than porn? We tend to incorporate from a very young age the puritanical notions of our ancestors, without much examination, almost as unconsciouly as we inherit DNA passed down from one generation to another. But men have been historically excused more than women from the puritanical shame heaped upon men and women alike for their sexuality.

Nonetheless, I do dare say if one were to compare the totality of the harm caused by alcohol, alone, with the totality of harm caused by porn, alone, one would find the harm caused by alcohol to be significantly more than the harm caused by porn. Why isn't NPN focusing on banishing the consumption of alcohol to the same places that it advocated banishing porn? No bad secondary effects have been associated with drinking establishments, historically?

It’s just another incongruity in our warped, puritanical society where the prison sentences for drug possession in some states can be far more severe than prison sentences for fraudulent business executives of large corporations, even though the harm caused by the fraudulent business executives far exceeds the harm caused by the ordinary drug user. Perhaps with all the best intentions, this is the insanity that NPN nonetheless ultimately serves to perpetuate.

(No, here I'm not advocating one way or another on the issue of the legalization of drugs.)

Pedophilia and Porn

2007-01-31T23:33:00.000-08:00

Recently, in the greater Happy Valley there have been two highly publicized child porn cases, and there is no doubt that in each case, neither man could be said to have had merely a passing curiosity. One was a high school teacher where the materials were found at his home; the other one was a pre-school teacher/day care center worker who admitted to viewing child porn at work, among other places. Neither is known to have actually molested any children at this time, although the consumption of child porn with live “models” almost surely means kids were molested in its production.

Like most of us, I can’t relate to anyone who takes an interest in child porn, save for research and prevention purposes. So, for me these incidents at first raised more questions than provided answers, and correctly, I think, forced me to challenge my own, pro-free speech, opinions about pornography.

I favor laws which prohibit the production of porn using children and measures to prevent pedophiles from having positions where they are entrusted with children.

The most obvious justifications for this position to me are: first, the bodies of prepubescent children are not ready for sexual experiences; second, prepubescent children cannot be expected to make informed choices; and, thirdly, even if well informed, we cannot expect prepubescent children to have a meaningful choice when interacting with adults (or pubescent teenagers) upon which they are dependant or taught to respect.

But, the anti-porn advocates have used these sad and tragic circumstances locally to justify their stance against all, including adult, pornography, and thus their continued invalidation of the naturally occuring, graphic sexual orientation of others, primarily heterosexual men. I think this is wrong.

In contrast to child porn, the consumers of, and participants in, adult porn are in far better positions to make informed choices and to make meaningful choices, however often such adults feel they had no real choices or conclude they were mistaken in the choices that they made.

To be sure all pornography, including adult pornography, can be and is often harmful for consumers and participants. But as my blog readers know, I’ve pointed out that the same can be said historically of consumers and providers of alcoholic beverages, among other socially accepted things. For example, just as there are porn addicts, there are alcoholics. But we, as a society, already have learned the hard way about the futility, if not the evils, of prohibition.

More specifically, anti-porn advocates argue that the adult porn fantasies of the catholic schoolgirl variety (e.g., with titles like “Barely Legal”) cause child molestation, just as adult porn fantasies of sex with adults cause rape. Arguably, child porn and adult porn do stimulate the tendencies of some people to molest and rape and, therefore, increase the incidence of molestation and rape. So, innocent third-parties are hurt, too. But, in the case of adult porn, at least, I doubt the incidence of rape and sexual abuse is increased more than drinking alcohol increases the incidence of spousal and child abuse and neglect, among other things. I really do not know in the case of child porn; how many people openly admit to viewing it, after all?

Certain anti-porn advocates are even more wrong, or naïve, I should say, when they harp upon child porn addiction as justification for banishing pornography. Unless they have spent years in alcohol, drug or sex addition programs such as AA or NA, I highly doubt that they are addiction experts. The real addiction experts, the recovering alcoholics and addicts with many decades of sobriety, will tell you that the roots of, and cure for, addiction are rooted in one’s personality, and in a higher power of their own understanding, not in the prohibition of the addictive substance or censorship of the sexually explicit materials themselves.

More impressive to me than the anti-porn advocates is someone identified as “Annie Mus” who wrote in the Talk Back feature of the on-line edition of the Gazette:

“Mary Higgins Clark, Smith School of Social Work, ServiceNet, Gov. Patrick, Department of Social Services, Church leaders, citizens of the Valley....Help these people BEFORE they harm our children, before we have to hate them because our daughters (and sons) suffer the shame and humiliation of being their ‘victim.’ It is time, no! past time, to offer help and support to pedophiles to come out of their deep dark closets and realize that, albeit they have these desires there are ways to keep them at bay.”

Now, there’s a voice of reason. Thank you, Annie Mus, whoever you are.

- AC

PS – Let us not forget …

2006-12-27T19:41:00.000-08:00

NPN’s friends in City Hall in their Memorandum dated October 12, 2006 made official factual findings that where the interior display area of adult content is restricted to 1,000 sq. feet or less that there are no adverse secondary effects caused. See the Memorandum again incorporated into TBN’s “The City’s Justification” post at
http://talkbacknorthampton.blogspot.com/2006/10/citys-justification.html. Yet, NPN continues to rant on and on that the Cap Video store will cause the feared secondary effects.

Gee, may be because one (size) has little to do with the other (secondary effects)? NPN may be onto something... :)

Yours/AC

The Law of Unintended Consequences Strikes Back!

2006-12-15T15:14:00.000-08:00

Last night the Planning Board considered Cap Video’s site plan. So as to avoid any legal grounds for its submission to be denied, Cap Video naturally submitted the bare minimum necessary. Well, almost. It did submit a photo of that naughty bondage store front display from one of its other stores.

After the board and the public made it became clear that the photo was not helpful to its cause, Cap Video withdrew the photo as part of its submission, and submitted an oral representation that it would abide by the Victoria Secret standard. NPN will have to write to Victoria Secret and find out what that is! But we've all seen the store fronts in malls across the country. (I noticed the scantily clad and suggestive, but tasteful, dress of the manikins in the Fredricks of Hollywood store front tonight at the Ingleside Mall.)

Many of the board members were clearly uncomfortable finding the site plan acceptable, but they did do their duty, as they were constrained to do, and I commend them for that. With the window display withdrawn, the plan clearly complied with the legal requirements, including the 1,000 square ft. rule.

At the meeting, it quickly dawned upon them, and the public, that the passage of the anti-porn zoning ordinances this fall was a waste of valuable time and effort on the part of the City. Instead of focusing on the content of the wares to be sold in the privacy of the store, the City could have and should have instead focused on passing measures more specifically aimed at up scaling that area of King Street and other external concerns, as I urged it to do.

But this last fall and summer the City was driven by the stridently intolerant no-porn cabal lead by NPN and so it focused on measures based upon content and not the specific potential secondary effects external to the store we all sought to prevent. I'm sorry that it did not.

Yours/AC

NPN: Repeal the First Amendment

2006-12-14T12:07:00.000-08:00

I don't know why NPN in its post today tries to make Michael Pill's history as a lawyer relevant. When in the business of representing clients in adversarial proceedings, lawyers are civil mercenaries; over the course of an entire career, it’s not uncommon for them to be found representing different clients with inconsistent points of view.

Our freedom of speech may not be absolute, as nothing is, but because freedom of speech is a constitutional right, when we put it into the scale of conflicting rights and interests, it ought to be given significantly more weight than non-constitutional rights and interests.

NPN needs to reconcile itself to the truth of its position which in effect means our right to free speech should not be a constitutional right, and honestly admit that it would have us repeal the first amendment. It would be a compassionate step on their part; NPN's denial of the truth hurts us all, including themselves, very deeply.

Child Pornography & The Ames Letter

2006-12-13T14:32:00.000-08:00

Editor's note: I posted the following comment to the letter to the Editor published today (December 13, 2006) by the Hampshire Gazette. Bill Ames, a respected former educator (and city council member?) wrote with respect to the recent news that police had busted Ron Garney for the possession of child pornography in his home. Bill questioned whether or not it the mere possession and viewing of child pornography in the our own homes justifies the government’s intrusion into our privacy. In other words, whether or not it should be criminal to possess and view child pornography in the privacy of our own homes, for if it was not criminal, then the government’s prosecutorial power to conduct such “search and seizure” missions would be unjustified.

I believe the production of child porn should be illegal. As much as I disagree with society’s obsession with protecting children these days, I do agree children that young are bereft of the exposure and life experience (and rights, even if they do have the exposure and life experience) necessary for them to have a meaningful choice in the matter of being involved in the production of pornography.

But I commend Bill Ames for his courage to speak out. Historically, we might be surprised to learn how much in other societies, from the Greek and Roman to whatever, sex with and between minors (and related pornographic imagery) was accepted as perfectly legitimate. So, too, was gladiator fights, etc.

There seems to be a lot of debate about whether or not violence in movies, television, video games, etc. causes more violence. There are also websites where for free or for a fee I can see graphic images of actual beheadings. For example, go the website for radio jockey, Michael Savage, at
http://www.homestead.com/prosites-prs/index.html. The “actors” in the actual beheadings no doubt have been abused and their participation is involuntary. So, there are a lot of abusive “productions” - both commercial and non-commercial – that we are free to view in the privacy of our homes. Undeniably, they espouse and celebrate social and political ideas and viewpoints that are highly offensive and threatening, just like child pornography does, but they are ideas and viewpoints of a social and political nature, qualifying for first amendment protection.

This morning I happened to be in a conversation with a dyed in the wool, politically correct feminist lawyer and a news reporter. Perhaps it should not have come to me as a surprise, but it did, that both of them believed it wrong to criminalize the mere possession of and viewing of child pornography in the privacy of one’s own home, however sick and abhorrent it seemed to all of us.

Bill, you are not alone.

Yours/AC

Why We Protect Porn & The Alameda Books Case

2006-12-13T14:06:00.001-08:00

I was amused a while back on 11-30-06 when NPN posted its missive, “US Supreme Court Sets Reasonable Guidelines for Adult-Use Zoning in City of Los Angeles v. Alameda Books (2002).” While no justice would say they were retreating from the leading City of Renton opinion, Alameda Books has proven to be the beginning of the end of the Renton opinion in many of the federal circuit of appeals courts, as explained below.

First, to NPN’s credit, NPN did not edit out the most important part of the Supreme Court’s majority opinion in the Alameda case which modified and eroded, in effect, the controlling Renton opinion. Now a city enjoys merely a rebuttable presumption of reasonableness in passing a no porn zoning law; the aggrieved retailer of sexual content can now come forward with evidence rebutting a city's presumptions about secondary effects and prevail. As its states:

"This is not to say that a municipality can get away with shoddy data or reasoning. The municipality's evidence must fairly support the municipality's rationale for its ordinance. If plaintiffs fail to cast direct doubt on this rationale, either by 'demonstrating that the municipality's evidence does not support its rationale or by furnishing evidence that disputes the municipality's factual findings, the municipality meets the standard set forth in Renton."

I cited a few of the cases where the plaintiff has in fact succeeded pursuant to the Alameda decision in my blog at http://talkbacknorthampton.blogspot.com/2006/10/constitutional-zoning-law-secondary.html.

Second, nonetheless, I think the majority opinion is Alameda was wrong to equate the private display and sale of sexually explicit expression with captive audience billboards and non-speech industrial factory activity, without requiring more from a city to justify a prior restraint upon, that is banishment of, constitutionally protected expression.

After all, should not our constitutional rights enshrined in the Bill of Rights be treated as more important than rights that are not? To be sure, the private consumption of sexually explicit expression is far less important to many, if not most, of the public than other rights which do not enjoy constitutional protection. Typically, sexually explicit materials express and celebrate points of view about what are acceptable manners to behave that are very contrary to the values and morals upon which our Judeo-Christian society rests. And in graphic form its very powerful expression. After all, "a picture is worth a thousand words." This powerful combination is therefore very threatening. But so are many other points of view, such as those shared by Islamic fundamentalists.

Third, the majority opinion in Alameda soft peddles the issue of whether or not sexually explicit material can be made and will be still readily accessible to the public in preferred forms. If the internet was an entirely satisfactory means of communicating all of the serious and not so serious intellectual material the public desires to offer and consume, then no commercially viable video and bookstores would remain downtown. But, in fact, people want and, to a significant extent, still need, the brick and motor, hard copy experience for the enjoyment of non-sexual as well as sexually explicit material. And the retailers, themselves, will testify as to how important location is; it’s critical.

So, in sum, where no captive audiences are involved, the Alameda court should have applied a strict scrutiny standard applicable to political speech, instead of the intermediate standard, in my opinion. Would it be more burdensome for cities? Sure, but not everything a city planner needs to be concerned about is enshrined in the constitution.

More On Moslem Zoning – Texas Style

2006-12-13T13:43:00.000-08:00

Most of the comments made in response to the “Moslem Zoning” satire I posted (see the post under the “lighter side”) were negative because they did not see apparently the connection between freedom of speech and freedom of religion. I was surprised because no less than four people reviewed it prior to its publication. Among the pre-publication reviewers were an attorney who favored the zoning measure, a PhD and a journalism student. All of them saw the parallels I drew between City’s proposal to effectively zone out of town offensive sexual expression and, in the satire, the City’s proposal to effectively zone out of town offensive religious expression.

To me, it is all too obvious that free speech is intertwined with other issues, such as cultural and religious issues. When we feel a speaker should not be allowed to express a point of view in the manner he or she is fit to express it, either because it is not politically correct, appropriate, or too controversial we are limiting the debate coercively, rather than through argument, that is, reason.

After I published the Moslem zoning satire, however, another friend explained to me that the connection between freedom of religion and freedom of speech is not as self-evident to most people as it is to me. I should have explained that because the communication of ideas is an important part of the free exercise of just about any religion so too then is the unabridged freedom to express those ideas, however offensive and dangerous. And there is little doubt that radical Islamic fundamentalism espouses many ideas, often very graphically, that many in western culture find abhorrent, including very much myself.

Both pornographic and radical Islamic (and Christian) fundamentalist expression and practice are very offensive and threatening to many of us and merit our concern and criticism. The difference here is merely that censorship of sexually liberated heterosexual citizens is fashionable, but censorship of “oppressed” Moslems is not, particularly in politically correct Northampton. Some people have even speculated, albeit wrongfully, I believe, that anti-porn Noho feminists would conspire with radical Islamic extremists to ban exhibition of women’s bodies behind Muslim Sharia Law veils and scarfs.

So, freedom of religion is very much dependant upon freedom of speech, and attacks upon one often resemble the attacks upon the other. Just the other day, for example, I noticed a headline, “Residents use pig races to deter building of mosque.” The complaints and ostensive “concerns” of near by residents in that Texas town cited in the article echoed many of the complaints and concerns voiced by NPN and its supporters:

“ ‘Its not an appropriate place to have a [porn shop] … As a house of [sexually explicit material], they shouldn’t be disturbing the peach and tranquility of 15 homes’ … Neighbors tell us they’re concerned about traffic …” and no doubt about the people who will be working and visiting the mosque, which will also include a gym and school. Imagine the stuff they may be viewing and teaching there. Who knows what may happen if those ignorant murderous misogynous Moslems get to your kids!

One neighbor’s proposed solution in that Texas town was to hold Friday night pig races next to the mosque. In our case, we may lament “if only the City had such imagination.” But evidently, when dealing with the potential secondary effects of pornography, City Hall did not.

You might still be able to view the article at http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/story?section=local&id=4808968&ft=print.

Yours/AC

NPN’s Store Front Shocker!

2006-12-12T23:16:00.000-08:00

Editor’s note: In NPN’s recent post about Cap Video’s plans for its storefront NPN takes to task Cap Video. NPN suggests that the store front plans are prohibited because of their darker sexually suggestive nature, among other things, which NPN contends conflicts with Cap Video’s prior representations. The "plans" were photos taken of a Cap Video store front at another location. Having had conversations with the General Counsel for Cap Video I was disappointed by the plans but not surprised. The following subsequent dialogue I (A.C.) had with NPN explains why.

AC:

As for the store front and signage, I’m afraid Cap Video may not see any point in trying to improve upon their other store fronts when it appears they would never be accepted by NPN et al. no matter what they did or do, so why invest in making the effort? Your alienating attitude toward Cap Video made it abundantly clear that Cap Video would not be accepted under any circumstances. … or … Could you ever accept them and let them be, as you do others who sell sexually explicit materials? As for the inside of the store, Cap Video said they would comply with the zoning ordinance and the plan indicates that they will by condensing all of the adult material together into one compressed section…As for parking, I really don’t see how anyone at this point can say there is any reason to believe it will be more of a problem for a Cap Video store than the A to Z children’s store just down the street… And is the signage of the auto body shops, hardware and etc., stores in the surrounding neighborhood more artful than the signage Cap Video seemingly intends to use?As for noise, lighting, etc., first, while I share these concerns, I do not know if the City can legally consider these factors. Second, if not, amelioration of the potential secondary effects by examining such measures should have been the focus of the City’s efforts over this past many months, rather than attempting to zone the store out of town based upon the content of the wares sold inside.This is what I urged the City to do, but to no avail, no thanks to you NPN. So, after the courts have ruled on all this, if we end up stuck with an ugly Cap Video store at that location, the City probably has no one to blame more than you.

NPN:

While Capital Video may not have a legal obligation to have a tasteful appearance, they did promise it. They have now gone back on that promise in a big way, reinforcing our opinion that they are not to be trusted.If the people could trust adult enterprises to locate in reasonable places, not endanger public health, and respect community opinion, there wouldn't be such a need for adult-use zoning, would there? …It's true that we will always object to films … We are also critical of companies that profit from portraying …
We might not be able to achieve all our desires in a short period, so we strive to secure as much benefit for Northampton as we can at each point.For months we've been hearing a lot from you about the merits of First Amendment-safe urban planning that will meet the needs of the community. Have you come up with any specific recommendations or examples?

AC:

Examples and recommendations? I’ve made a number of suggestions and you know it, NPN. So why do you raise the question but to infer that I have not? These suggestions were made in posts I made to the talkbacknorthampton blog site. See, e.g., http://talkbacknorthampton.blogspot.com/2006/10/talkbacknorthampton-presents-real.html, and http://talkbacknorthampton.blogspot.com/2006/10/real-evil.html.

First, you maintain the intellectually dishonest position of claiming you support free speech while being entirely intolerant of the private communication of speech you find offensive; second, you made unfounded accusations that Andrew Shelffo had been secretly compensated by Cap Video to switch his position; and now, third, you accuse me of never making any alternative suggestions to the zoning ordinance? How deceptively disrespectfully low will you, NPN, go? …

Reasonable places? Yes, as far as I am concerned every neighborhood needs an adult establishment or two. In my opinion, sexual appetite and gratification should be understood as just another facet of normal and healthy living according to how we are made, and your ever increasing prudish attitude towards it is more unhealthy and unsafe for a community on balance than the proposed Cap Video store. The spirit of puritan Salem lives on …

Cap Video promises? To be sure I heard them, too. But you didn’t rest with passage of the ordinances you championed to drive them out of town. NPN et al. made it clear that NPN et al. will never tolerate them regardless of what they do. So why should they try to upscale and be more sensitive to the community’s sensitivities?

Yours/AC
TalkBackNorthampton

The Smut Played by Pleasant Street Theater …

2006-12-11T00:10:00.000-08:00

Is really good. A couple of friends and I went to see the independent feature “ShortBus” at the Pleasant Street Theater last Friday night. Chock full of cocks and balls, tits, ass and pussy, male on male, female on female, male and female two-somes, three-somes and more, fighting and fucking! One fellow is even shown blowing himself and swallowing his own come. I’ve certainly never seen that before!

So, why isn’t NPN sounding the alarm and whipping up the troops to banish Pleasant Street Theater out of town? Or are they again going to be intellectually dishonest and try to distinguish this instance of grossly graphic sexual expression as their non-gratuitous “erotica” or something?

Go ahead NPN, make my day.

Yours/AC

NPN Still Will Not Come Clean!

2006-12-05T15:44:00.000-08:00

Editor’s note: Below is a) the response of NPN to my request that it apologize to Andrew Shelffo for insinuating that he was secretly acting on behalf of Cap Video by demanding that he declare that has not been, even though he long ago explained in public and at this blog why he changed his opinion about the anti-porn zoning ordinance that recently passed and b) my reply. See below
http://talkbacknorthampton.blogspot.com/2006/12/what-are-doing-npn.html, and http://talkbacknorthampton.blogspot.com/2006/12/npn-censorship-by-benign-neglect-im.html.

NPN’s Response:

Asking a journalist (even a citizen journalist) a relevant question about their motivations is just being a good investigator. By calling it "character assassination" you are discouraging free inquiry and short circuiting the feedback process between the media and the public. This does not serve free speech or quality journalism.I wasn't convinced by Andrew Shelffo's reasoning or yours about the basis for his arguments. I felt it important to press the question of a conflict of interest to get clarity on that important point.Mr. Shelffo's arrogant attitude towards our questions is not appropriate for someone who enjoys the privilege of having MassLive host their blog.

A.C.’s Reply:

Just how often are journalists put on the stand to defend their credibility without cause cited? It was not a relevant question unless NPN had a cited reason for asking Andrew in particular, as it has not questioned the integrity of anyone else in the debate, such as Bill Dwight. By not stating a reason justifying the question, NPN turned the question into an unfounded insinuation – an innuendo. It was dirty rhetorical question, and Andrew saw it for what it was.

In response to my asking NPN its reason for asking the question it claimed it just could not believe someone would change their minds after looking into the anti-porn rhetoric more critically than NPN does. Pretty lame reason. So lame that it makes me wonder if NPN really did have a valid reason to ask the question when they went after Andrew, other than to silence him by leveling upon him a personal attack. As a father of young children who disagrees with NPN’s point of view living approximately no further from the proposed Cap Video store than NPN does, for NPN he is a particularly threatening figure in the debate.

Masslive can make its own decisions as to who should have the “privilege” of being hosted by them. Who is NPN to tell Masslive who it may host? Is NPN jealous that it is not hosted by Masslive or something?

Further, NPN continues to cover up the fact that it went after Mr. Shelffo even though Andrew had explained himself weeks ago before the council and on-line at my blog. It knew or should have known as the responsible "investigative" journalists they claim to be that Andrew had long ago explained himself and there was no reason to believe he was acting on behalf of Cap Video. Yet NPN still covers up its malfeasance and pretends to be so righteous as to preach to us journalist ethics!

Congratulations, NPN, you have joined the ranks of Rush Limbaugh and the like. What next for you, a show on Fox News?

All I asked is that NPN admit that it wronged Andrew and make an apology to restore its own honor and credibility; but it refuses.

What are doing, NPN? ...

2006-12-02T16:04:00.000-08:00

Editor's note: the following was submitted today as a comment to NPN's continued scolding of Andrew Shelffo by "...applaud[ing] Mr. Shelffo's new found candor, [etc.]" in its post at http://nopornnorthampton.org/2006/12/01/andrew-shelffo-denies-ties-to-capital-video.aspx dated 12-1-06. Let's see if they will now PROMPTY post the below copy of the submission and restore their honor, OR WILL THEY CONTINUE TO THEIR COVER UP?

What are you doing, NPN? Just earlier this week in a comment to two separate posts that you had made on this issue, I asked you why you were demanding Andrew Shelffo to disclose if he had any ties to Cap Video, and when you responded because Andrew never explained why his thinking on the issue had switched, I then submitted, twice, an explanation that Andrew had in fact explained his shift in thinking when he first spoke up at a City Council meeting. I noted that I had posted his comments incorporating his explanation at my blogsite not long after Andrew made them before the City Council. This post was made on October 28th. Go to: http://www.masslive.com/northampton/prospect/weblog/ . Instead of forthwith posting my explanatory submission, which cleared up the matter, you chose to post at least three rather lengthy features burying the matter of your misadventure, rather than fess up.

Even more remarkable is that the last of those three posts by you was all about the importance of trust and transparency between bloggers and their audience! Then, just yesterday I posted on my blog notice that Andrew had explained himself before, and yet today you still crow that Andrew was in error for taking offense at your accusations? Are you becoming slightly psychotic in your obsession to banish erotica which you consider unacceptably pornographic?

Adam and Jendi, please be the better people I know you can be and usually are. Apologize to your neighbor Andrew for your unfounded character assassination and give yourself some rest!

Yours/AC

NPN: Censorship by Benign Neglect; I'm Back, Sadly.

2006-12-01T13:31:00.000-08:00

I ceased contributing to the TalkBackNorthampton blog after the City Council passed the proposed zoning ordinance to banish Cap Video out of town. For better or worse, unless Cap Video complies with the regulation (which it may), the constitutional issue will be decided by the courts in due course. I also found it less than healthy for my own well being to be so wrapped up into such an acrimonious public debate for so long. Having moved here from tumultuous New York City, I had hoped enjoy the relative peace and tranquility that the Northampton area offers.

I did continue to submit comments at the NPN website from time to time, and noticed the continuation of a disturbing tendency on the part of NPN. Because NPN “moderates” submissions, the submissions typically do not appear, if at all, until long after the NPN blog entry has been featured and replaced by new material, and then only if NPN has developed a rebuttal response. So, as a practical matter few, if any, of the public will notice the submitted comments once they are posted by NPN, and only then when NPN has the last word.

The most recent example of this is when in a submission I asked NPN why they were demanding Andrew Schefflo to disclose if he had any ties to Cap Video, which was posted with their contention in response that Andrew never explained why his thinking on the issue switched. I then submitted an explanation that Andrew had in fact explained his shift in thinking when he first spoke up at a City Council meeting, and noted that I posted his comments incorporating his explanation at this blogsite not long after Andrew made them before the City Council. See http://talkbacknorthampton.blogspot.com/2006/10/is-children-or-fear-driving-city.html.

Instead of forthwith posting this submission, which cleared up the matter and demonstrated how little attention NPN really pays to opposing points of view, NPN in the meantime instead chose to post at least three rather lengthy features to their website burying the matter of their misadventure, rather than fess up. Even more remarkable is that the last of these three posts by NPN is all about the importance of trust and transparency between bloggers and their audience!

Its is sad to see NPN first sink to the level of implicitly alleging that Andrew was connected to Cap Video without mentioning any justification for casting him in such a light, and then to bury their error with moralistic and ethical rhetoric.

There’s been nothing pornographic about the comments I have submitted; they are all within the realm of political discourse one would assume NPN believes is worthy of respect, not censorship. Nonetheless, NPN appears to be more concerned with spewing forth whatever material they can find which solely supports their viewpoints. After all, in public debate quantity of speech often trumps quality of speech. No wonder one of NPN most common arguments is that the quantity of speech they can find which supports their viewpoints, rather than the quality of such speech, far exceeds the quantity of speech in support of contrary viewpoints. But this "common sense" which they trumpet is hardly in depth and critical analysis. If “common sense” were to rule the day, the world would still be flat, and women and children - who NPN claims to be so concerned about -- would still be the chattels of men.

Its time for NPN to be honest with us -- as well as themselves, if necessary -- and fess up to the truth: they do not believe the right to free speech should be a constitutional right justifying a broad and special scope of protection, and they would have us repeal the first amendment. While this point of view may be verboten in America, internationally it would not be so controversial. Many a democracy, such as the United Kigndom, thrive without a constitutional right to free speech. Further, censorship as a civil right has become more important both domestically and internationally than free speech. See the blog entry below on this trend at http://talkbacknorthampton.blogspot.com/2006/09/is-censorship-civil-right.html.

It may be very well time for the constitution to catch up to the reality of the laws and judicial opinions by which we really live and end the intellectual hypocrisy perpetuated by the Supreme Court and NPN, among others. But, having little patience for intellectual hypocrisy, I am back to blogging for better or worse.

Danger, Pictures! Cap Video Writes to City Council

2006-11-02T11:43:00.000-08:00

Editor’s note: I learned that Cap Video wrote the City Council and the Mayor yesterday about its plans for its store in Northampton, and its willingness to discuss matters with the City. So, I asked Cap Video to send me a copy and the below is what I received, including pictures of the interiers and exteriors of a store. In a follow up email to me Cap Video indicated that it would be willing to upscale even further its exteriors and interiors to be more tasteful and conservative in presentation than in the store appearing in the pictures.

Dear Mayor Higgins and City Council Members:

I am writing on behalf of CAPITAL VIDEO CORPORATION to clear up any misconceptions regarding its proposed business in your community.

Capital Video operates over 40 'AMAZING' stores featuring the concept of “Excite Your Life”. The stores are oriented more as a ‘sensuality’ style business, with a focus on couples and women in the adult market. The company operates a few high visibility stores, including units on Rte 9 in Northboro, MA; on Rte 1 in Peabody, MA; and a store off of Rte 95 in Providence, RI. These stores are designed in a ‘mainstream’ manner, much like one would see in a Victoria Secret in a mall, with pleasant colors, music, carpeting. The stores carry a wide variety of adult novelty items, along with lingerie, gag gifts like one finds at Spencer Gifts, greeting cards, lotions, games, along with sexually and sensually oriented movies and magazines. Amazing even sells higher priced original erotic and sensual art and memorabilia. Attached hereto are pictures of actual operating Amazing stores.

Capital intends on opening an 'upscale' store in Northampton, and would be very receptive to discussions with the community on the look, feel and the approach that the store presents to the community. Unfortunately, a campaign has been waged against our business by individuals that have maligned the reputation of Capital Video. Contrary to published reports, Capital enjoys an excellent relationship with its host communities, and has not encountered any of the problems or detrimental effects that have been put forth. Our employees and the stores they operate are responsible members of their communities. A recent article in the Stonington Times in North Stonington, CT highlighted our store and its employees, exemplifying that they have been accepted with open arms by the community. There is absolutely no truth that our business increases crime, or detracts from the neighborhood in which we operate.

The ability for Capital Video to work with the community has been short circuited by the presentation of certain ordinances that have not allowed for any discussion about Capital’s specific plans, except for the short presentations given during the open council session. The company is not blind to the fact that sexuality and sensuality are touchy subjects, and it has an obligation to present itself in a mature and non-offensive manner. Capital’s intention is to drive more pedestrian traffic to the proposed location on King Street, and to create an environment that would enhance the development of other businesses in the area. We would be hopeful to be having a dialogue with the community to work on a plan that will improve the area, and provide a comfortable environment to all.

Northampton does not need the ordinances that have been proposed regarding adult businesses. The assumption that the proposed plans of Capital will be detrimental to the community are totally misplaced. Creating laws that are focused on stopping one business almost always creates reprecussions to many other businesses. Why create a law that is just not needed?

Capital Video encourages the Council to consider all the facts before it makes a rash decision, and hopes that the community will maintain its present laws that provide a culture that is sensitive to the needs of all members of the community.

Thank you.

Lesley S. Rich, Esq., CPA General Counsel
Capital Video Corporation
1060 Park Avenue Cranston, RI 02910

Neighborhood Planning Aikido

2006-10-31T16:11:00.000-08:00

Editors note: Ueshiba declared, "To control aggression without inflicting injury is the Art of Peace." Aikido is the marital art where one meets aggression with an effective but merciful response, and a means of finding harmony in conflict. In the following I justify why, as a practical matter, the City should try aikido in this instance where our rights of free speech and expression are at stake rather using crude zoning laws.

Dear Readers (and Critics):

I have thought a lot about the local planning control and economic development concerns many people have had with respect to adult establishments. I think the City should take a case by case approach, rather than acting upon the presumption that all adult establishments over 1,000 square feet are bad. After all, if public presumption were to rule the day, the world would still be flat.

The 135 King Street area is not exactly an upscale or residential strip, littered with empty lots, auto, hardware, muffler, fast food, etc. shops as it is. But for those of us who would like to see it improved upon, such as myself, many of us seem to believe a Cap Video store would be step in the wrong direction. I think it depends upon what Cap Video would actually do there.

Most of us assume adult establishments will be seedy, shoddy, etc. places, if not downright threatening. But this is not always the case. As you drive or walk by many of them you probably do not even notice the more upscale or quainter adult establishments which do not fit into your preconceptions. Adult establishments can be non-threatening and inoffensive on the outside and tasteful (no pun intended) and fun on the inside; some prefer to call these adult establishments “spas,” “clubs” or “sensuality shops,” for example.

As I understand it, the City’s long term plans for that section of King Street are for it to become more residential orientated and pedestrian, like the core of downtown is. I dare say a full sized sensuality shop at 135 King Street may advance the City’s hope and dreams for that section of King Street more than hurt them. It will draw many more pedestrian travelers and drive-by shoppers from downtown to stop and shop in that area than there are now. And with that pedestrian and other traffic will come the trendier retail establishments and other development that better fits into the City’s vision for that section of King Street.

As the United States 11th Circuit Court of Appeals remarked in a recent case, Peek-A-Boo Lounge v. Manatee County: “The evidence in the record relating to conditions in Fulton County shows unequivocally that property values in neighborhoods adjoining the Clubs have increased during the time the Clubs have been in existence, and that surrounding buildings show no signs of blight, or lack of physical maintenance.”

While I still am upset that Mr. G has not come to town and stood up to face the fire of public opinion, like many of us have, I shared our local planning control and economic development concerns with the attorney for Cap Video. I received the following from the General Counsel of Cap Video:

Dear Peter:

We sincerely appreciate your efforts, and your presentation of the issues. As Capital Video has developed stores, it has definitely been moving in the direction of a "Sensuality Shop". We have a few of these currently, including on Rte 9 in Northboro, MA; on Rte 1 in Peabody, MA; and a store off of Rte 95 in Providence, RI. These stores are presented in a much more mainstream manner, much like one would see in a Victoria Secret in a mall, with pleasant colors, music, carpeting. These stores carry a wide variety of adult novelty items, along with lingerie, gag gifts like one finds at Spencer Gifts, greeting cards, lotions, games, along with the so-called "porn". We even sell higher priced original erotic and sensual art and memorabilia in some stores.

We most certainly intend on opening an 'upscale' store in Northhampton, and would be very receptive to discussions with the community on the look, feel and the approach that the store presents to the community.

Unfortunately we have been short circuited in the process by the presentation of the ordinances that do not allow for any discussion.

Your efforts to establish a dialogue with the council and mayor are appreciated. I am available at most any time to sit and discuss different approaches to the issues, and to design a store that would not be offensive to the neighborhood and the community.

Please contact me at any time to discuss this further.

Lesley S. Rich, Esq., CPA
General Counsel
Metcap Management, LLC
1060 Park Avenue
Cranston, RI 02910

In light of this offer by Mr. Rich, for the City Council to take action here likely to result in needless litigation in this instance is just plain political convenience or grandstanding rather than responsible public service.

I think its time, even for the City Council Members who would ban adult materials entirely if they could, to put on hold their plans to pass the proposed adult entertainment zoning until the City and Cap Video have tried to work out a plan which will advance their respective interests and goals for 135 King Street and the surrounding area.

Yours/AC

Adult Businesses and Crime

2006-10-31T12:25:00.000-08:00

Editors note: Here's something that Andrew Shelffo posted at MassLive today.

There's been a lot of discussion about the so-called "secondary effects" of adult businesses in Northampton. The argument goes like this: if the City Council doesn't pass the zoning ordinances before it on Thursday and Capital Video opens on King St., then Northampton will be subjected to an increase in crime. It's worth noting, however, that Northampton already has adult businesses operating in town and has not seen evidence of secondary effects.

The NoPorn people will tell you, however, that's because the adult businesses in town are not run by Capital Video. I am not defending Capital Video and its business practices, but I did notice this week that Warwick, Rhode Island, which has a Capital Video store, was just ranked at the 42nd safest city in the country. In addition, Springfield announced last week that crime has been down this year. Yes, there is a Capital Video store in Springfield.

Today's Republican reports that Springfield's Police Chief is upset with Springfield's place on the safest cities' list. He does not, however, blame adult businesses for the city's low rankings. "We've got the same hot spots that everybody's got," Chief Flynn says.

It's quite possible that for all of the "evidence" NoPorn has presented about secondary effects, that it's far from a foregone conclusion that the sky will indeed fall if an adult business opens on King St.

Final Vote on Moslem Zoning Thursday!

2006-10-30T19:54:00.000-08:00

Editors note: The Adventures of the partners, Adam Cohen and Peter Brooks, continue. If you are not familiar with this saga, read the posting titled “Erotica Specialty Store Raided; former Mayor Higgins Mystified” at http://talkbacknorthampton.blogspot.com/2006/09/erotic-specialty-store-raided-former.html

From the Mrs. Potterville Gazette, October 30, 2011, by A.C.

The City Council will take a second vote this coming Thursday on the proposal to zone Islamic establishments 500 feet from any non-Islamic church/house of worship, day care center, park, playground, school, residence, or other Islamic establishment. Islamic establishments with display and Islamic activity areas under 1,000 square feet would be exempt from the proposal. The first vote was 6 to 3 in favor of the proposal.

The proposal followed swiftly upon the heels of the announcement by Adam “Allah” Cohen and Peter “The Prophet” Brooks to open an Islamic mosque and book, video and novelty store at 135 King Street, the A & P Islamic Prayer & Poetry Center. Adam “Allah” Cohen is the former partner of Jendi Reiter, who mobilized the neighborhood against the plans for the Center with her website, NoMoslemNorthampton.org.

Readers may recall that before becoming Allah and The Prophet, Adam and Peter formerly operated a small porn and poetry shop at the same location and sublet the balance of the premises to a drug store, Dolly’s, but nonetheless ran afoul of Mrs. Potterville’s adult establishment zoning regulations.

Upon their arrest, Adam and Peter voluntarily undertook the Treatment. The Treatment is the reeducation camp program where, we previously reported, former Council Member Bardsley inadvertently found himself after being mistakenly caught in one of Mrs. Pottersville’s Vice Squad sting operations.

Impressed with their progress, neighborhood judge Marianne “The Merciful" Richards let Adam and Peter keep the 135 King Street property and their homes, but she could not ignore her constituents’ demands that they be punished and sentenced them to no less than 2 years.

According to Adam and Peter, while serving their time and obsessed with thoughts about how to protect women and children from pornography, they talked with the Islamic members of their new community. They were very moved by Islam’s concern for protecting women from men’s prurient interests by requiring women to wear the burka and the hijab, and be veiled, among other things. So, they converted.

Now they are determined to make 135 King Street an Islamic center for prayer, sermons, books, videos, and novelties, like knifes, swords and whips used for meting out justice in accordance with Islamic law and custom. They purchased the Northampton franchise rights from an Islamic center franchisor, Fatwa Video.

Many believe the head of Fatwa Video, Mr. “Big Bucks” Ghaalib, is associated with al-Qaeda because he formerly had business relations with the Taliban in Afghanistan. It is known that he even dined with Osama bin Laden. They are positive that the Fatwa Video store will be just a money laundering operation or large billboard for the website on a heavily traveled artery of the City. As Mr. Bill said, “why would they want to establish a large scale Islamic center here?”

The original plans for the Center included a social lounge exclusively for men of all faiths to visit. For free they could chat as they shared a cup of coffee and smoked from the hooka, or “relax as the belly dancers entertained them when nothing important is on the television, like a Patriots or Red Sox game.” Peter continued, “We do have our neighborhood entertainment priorities straight!”

But, community outrage against the social lounge for a number of reasons prompted the pair to delete the social lounge from the plans. Nonetheelss, said one employee of the nearby body shop, “We’re really bummed about that ...” Fatwa Video’s representative protested, “The men no touch the dancers. If they do, we cut off their fingers!”

The neighbors became alarmed when they visited the Fatwa Video website and saw that its stock included magazines and videos that graphically depicted and celebrated female circumcision and the defacement -- even the tortured murder -- of errant women, and other corporal measures, such as the beheadings of infidel Christians and Jews found in Islamic lands.

But most of all, they objected to the dark robed men armed with knives “already streaming” into the neighborhood, visions of pro-jihad murals and graffiti splashed across the storefront and to “those damn shrieking” calls to prayer. Adam protested, “Neither murals nor loudspeakers are included in the plan, and no one complains about the clanging of those ‘damn’ infidel church bells! So, …”

Many citizens, particularly if accompanied by children, say they will avoid walking or even driving past the Center. The City’s Memorandum justifying the proposed zoning by its Planning Director states in pertinent part:

“Because the large scale Islamic Establishments greater than 1,000 square feet have the tendency to create blank, inactive voids in the street fabric due to their size and façade treatments it is important to ensure that such establishments are not located within 500 feet of such walkable neighborhoods that include churches, residences or schools. These voids discourage walking or decrease the number of trips that are done without a car or are done by younger children on their own, …”

“Additionally, the secondary effects of larger scale Islamic establishments with Islamic material often include impacts to adjoining businesses that may result in economic decline and declining property values which further spread the inactive void along the street façade. This economic decline may be less serious in areas where everyone drives and is cloistered from the effects of nearby business, but in Mrs. Pottersville where many people walk, and we are investing large sums to increase the number of trips done on foot (and by bicycle) the impacts would be devastating. …”

In an earlier radio debate Jendi Reiter claimed that Adam and Peter have “no right to subject her neighborhood to excessive physical risks, risks documented at NoMoslemNorthampton.org.” and that “the relocation of the Fatwa Video store to the outskirts of town will be but a slight inconvenience.”

Adam retorted, “You act like you own the neighborhood. Jendi, you don’t.” Peter and Adam also live near 135 King Street. In fact, closer than 134 North Street where Jendi and Adam lived together.

Peter protested that the public which they wish to reach are the pedestrians and bicyclers who roam the downtown area, as well as drive-by shoppers who may pass the Center as they come and go from the downtown area. “After all,” said Peter, “if you are not already a follower of Muhammad the Prophet, would you make a special trip to an Islamic Center somewhere behind the Wal-Mart?”

Adam further claimed that “the Center should draw many more pedestrian travelers, albeit many at first who are Islamic, out further down King Street from the downtown area in accordance with the City’s goals for the City.”

In public hearings on the matter, the City’s Planning Director has identified, albeit vaguely, two places where he believes the Center could be located under the proposed zoning ordinance, but has not released any definitive study about either the presumed secondary effects or the availability of places where the Center could be located. Indeed, as Peter pointed out in the radio debate, “who knows even if the owners of those alternative locations would sell or lease to us? If not, what then? What purpose does the First Amendment serve if a City can, as a practical matter, zone you out of town?”

In the radio debate, Adam, tried to finish it off with a philosophical flourish, “If a tree falls in the forest, it doesn’t make a sound if there is no one there to hear it!”

“Adam,” Peter said, “I think its ‘If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?'”

“But, Peter ….”

“Whatever!”

In other news, President Cheney invited Mayor Mrs. Potter, one of the leading socially conservative “red” democrats, to visit the White House and boost her campaign for Governor …

My Experience With Breast Cancer

2006-10-30T08:47:00.000-08:00

The Gazette today published a letter to the editor by Tarn Martin, who wrote, "I understand that people are having a difficult time with the idea of a porn shop moving into town but, honestly, shouldn't we be putting our efforts toward something that is truly work fighting for, such as breast cancer." Four years ago in October of 2002 my beloved, Siyeta, passed away from breast cancer after a seven year battle. I think in the end she was just tired of it all, the kemo, the red tape, the etc. She just wanted to live a normal life again which she did for a number of months before the lack of regular kemo treatments ... I'd just like to share with you all a couple of special things that I learned from the experience that may help.

First, in 2000 when Siyeta was thin and frail and falling out of bed and could not get out of the tub on her own and the doctors had exhausted all the kemo options ... she learned of a dietary supplement called MGN-3 that had helped a friend of a friend ... She began to take significant quantities of it daily and over the next few months, in combination with the kemo treatments, she remarkably recovered. It helped boost her immune system. MGN-3 is no longer on the market, the distributor having run afoul of the FDA, but I believe with a little research you can find virtually the same supplement under a different name from a different distributor.

Second, I discovered a wonderful support organization called CancerCare. CancerCare is a national nonprofit organization that provides free, professional support services for anyone affected by cancer. Although I learned of it too late to save Siyeta, in her case at least it enabled us to cut through the red tape of social services in her final weeks so she could rest comfortably in the care of the hospital and doctors she preferred. I just can't express how great my appreciation for them is .... Here's their contact info: Call 1-800-813-HOPE or email info@cancercare.org.

Yours/AC

A Parent's Concern That Fear Is Driving The City Council

2006-10-28T19:08:00.000-07:00

Editors note: Here are the comments that Andrew Shelffo made before the City Council at its last meeting before it voted 6 to 3 for the proposed zoning concering adult book and video stores, etc. Andrew lives not far from me and 135 King Street in Northampton with his wife and two children. He is also the author of The Prospect Perspective Blog on Masslive.com.

The link to his blog is: http://www.masslive.com/northampton/prospect/weblog/

I come here tonight to speak about the proposed zoning ordinance regarding the size and location of adult businesses. I come here not as a pro-porn person or an anti-porn person, but as a husband and father who lives near the King St. location.

When I first heard about the store proposed for King Street, my immediate reaction was that I didn't want it to be there. I have two young children and I envisioned having to have uncomfortable conversations with them about what "that store" is all about. I didn't think that having the store there would be a good thing for parents who go by that location with their children; there are some things, after all, that parents should have the right to explain to their children on their own terms and not be forced by external circumstances.

However, as the debate has gone on and I've done some research on the subject and thought about the consequences involved in trying to regulate this material and the very real first amendment issues involved, I've found that my position has evolved. And as anyone who's a parent knows, that's a major part of parenting: the need to adjust your beliefs in the face of new challenges as you struggle to deal with the day-to-day stuff. In addition to that, thanks to the recent protests and the headlines in the newspapers, I've had initial conversations with my older son about what pornography is. And I've realized that having that conversation is important and represents an important opportunity for me to teach my children about some of the more uncomfortable things in the world.

The fact of the matter is that pornography of all stripes exists in our society and is readily available in Northampton. The proposed regulations will do nothing to change that. And the suggestion that the regulations will "protect" us and our children from pornography is fear-mongering at its worst. Pornography is a multi-billion dollar industry that has grown tremendously in recent years. If pornography is as harmful as some people would suggest, we would expect to see a resulting rise in sexual offenses and sexual deviance in people who've been exposed to pornography, but this has not happened. What has happened is that the media has become enamored of sensationalism and the most lurid and disgusting stories get the most attention. This, too, plays upon people's fears.

And that's what I see happening here. Fear has turned into panic and we're scrambling to try and come up with an ordinance that will protect us from something we don't need to be protected from. That, to me, is a bad way to make laws.

Constitutional Zoning Law & Secondary Effects

2006-10-27T20:29:00.000-07:00

Editor’s note: The below was primarily prepared by our remote research staff, who happen to be professional researchers. They require that their identities not be revealed for fear of losing their “day jobs.” The very fact that researchers, all of people, feel they may lose their jobs … I think speaks volumes as to what this debate is ultimately all about: the “politically correct” or "appropiate" suppression of unpopular, if not downright offensive, ideas and expression, and the coercive effect it has upon public discourse -- an element essential, I think, for the health, vigor and maintenance of a democratic society.

To combat the development of adult businesses, many cities have relied on the crude instrumentality of zoning laws to protect their communities from the adverse secondary effects of these businesses. Supported by the Supreme Court’s opinion in City of Renton v. Playtime Theatres past court decisions have often ruled in the favor of the cities. However, things have begun to change. In City of Los Angeles v. Alameda Books the Supreme Court ruled that cities can “rely on evidence reasonably believed to be relevant to demonstrate a connection between adult businesses and adverse secondary effects.”[1] However, the Court also demanded more from the cities in terms of the evidence used to demonstrate this correlation between adult businesses and secondary effects. “Cities can no longer rely on the ‘reasonable belief’ argument when the affected businesses produce evidence casting doubt on the regulations’ effectiveness, underlying rationale, or tendency to reduce speech.”[2] In short, with respect to zoning measures which banish adult establishments from the proximity of most of their customers, as well as residences, churches, etc., cities only have the benefit of a “rebuttable presumption” that an adult establishment will cause adverse secondary effects to an unreasonable extent. Several recent court cases have highlighted the more restrictive criteria that cities must meet.

In the case of Daytona Grand v. City of Daytona Beach a United States District Court ruled in favor of a nude dancing club. In this case, the plaintiffs provided expert testimony (Drs. Linz and Fisher, whose background the court ruled established their expertise in secondary effects) that showed “the City’s pre-enactment evidence consists either of purely anecdotal evidence or opinions based on highly unreliable data. Most notably, the City’s evidence lacks data which would allow for a comparison of the rate of crime occurring in and around adult entertainment establishments with the rate of crime occurring in and around similarly situated establishments.”[3] The experts for the plaintiffs also conducted their own secondary effects studies of crime around adult cabarets in Daytona Beach, and they did not find an increase in crime linked to the cabarets. The court ruled, “In failing to renew support for a theory justifying its ordinances, the City leaves the Court with only one option: to declare Ordinances 81-334 and 02-496 unconstitutional and strike them accordingly.”[4]

Another recent case was R.V.S., L.L.C. v. City of Rockford (7th Circuit 2004). In this case, the city of Rockford, IL passed an ordinance forcing exotic dancing nightclubs to apply for a special permit and not operate within 1000 feet “‘of a church, school, residential district or another exotic dancing nightclub.’”[5] Again, the court ruled in the favor of the plaintiffs. The court’s decision was based on “Rockford does not identify any studies, judicial opinions, or experience-based testimony that it considered in adopting the Ordinance…. Most of the Rockford’s evidence, at least as presented to date, does not appear to be directly relevant to the type of entertainment that Rockford seeks to regulate…. Additionally, the Ordinance does not appear to be narrowly tailored to affect a category of business establishments shown to produce unwanted secondary effects—or even establishments that could conceivably produce them.”[6]

In addition, there is less and less evidence that adult business necessarily tend to cause adverse secondary effects. The United States 11th Circuit Court of Appeals remarked in a recent case, Peek-A-Boo Lounge v. Manatee County: “The evidence in the record relating to conditions in Fulton County shows unequivocally that property values in neighborhoods adjoining the Clubs have increased during the time the Clubs have been in existence, and that surrounding buildings show no signs of blight, or lack of physical maintenance. Moreover, the Fulton County police study found greater reported crime connected with establishments that served alcohol but did not feature adult entertainment. In other words, local studies commissioned both by the Clubs and the Board found no evidence of the secondary effects with which the Board was purportedly concerned. The question thus becomes, was it reasonable for Defendants to ignore relevant local studies and rely instead upon remote foreign studies in determining whether adverse secondary effects were attributable to the Fulton County Clubs?”[7]

The plaintiff, Peek-A-Boo Lounge, presented three studies that demonstrated that the Lounge did not cause adverse secondary effects. The studies were:

Dr. Terry A. Danner, Chair of the Department of Criminology at St. Leo University, conducted a study utilizing the County’s own crime statistics that examined the criminogenic effects of the Appellant’s specific businesses and found that Appellants businesses did not cause such effects. Dr. Randy D. Fisher, Associate Professor of Psychology and Director of the Survey Research Laboratory at the University of Central Florida, prepared a study titled “Evidence for the Adverse Secondary Effects of Adult Entertainment: The Manatee County Record,” which examined the record submitted by the County in support of Ordinance 99-18 and concluded that because “the only statistical data provided [in the record] showed lower rates of crime . . . [and] substantial increases in property values, both in the long run and in the shorter run, in the areas around the existing adult businesses,” the specific evidence relating to the Appellants’ businesses contradicted any suggestion that “the two existing adult businesses in Manatee County have ‘adverse secondary effects.” Finally, Mr. Richard Schauseil, a licensed Florida real estate agent, conducted an extensive “Market Study and Report” on the effects of Appellants’ businesses on neighboring properties which found that there were “absolutely no signs of any negative effects on adjoining property values or conditions” resulting from Appellants’ businesses.[8]

Once again, the city did not (or was unable) to provide any data that could contradict the adult business' findings, and the court again ruled in favor of the adult business.

Dr. Daniel Linz (University of California, Santa Barbara) and Dr. Bryant Paul (Indiana University) have published several papers on adult businesses and secondary effects. Their research has found that the methodology of many secondary effects studies is flawed;[9] that there was less crime around adult businesses in Charlotte, NC than control areas;[10] and there was not a crime problem at peep show establishments in San Diego.[11]

In a couple of federal circuits, the courts seem to follow the Alameda Books opinion in words more than spirit, particularly the 10th Federal Circuit, which includes states like Kansas. Was it Kansas where in the public schools they banned the teaching of evolution and required creation theory to be taught?

Nonetheless, the above court cases and studies highlight that most cities at least can no longer rely on past studies and their pre-existing impressions to find that all adult establishments, regardless of how sensitive to the community and responsibly operated they are, tend to cause adverse secondary effects to an unreasonable degree. Cities are being drawn into lengthy and expensive legal battles to fight a problem that, as these studies suggest, may not be any more problematic than bars and other entertainment establishments may be.

Footnotes:

[1] Lawlor, James. “Adult Business Rules Subject to Closer Scrutiny.” Planning 72.4 (April 2006): 49.
[2] Ibid. 49.
[3] Daytona Grand v. City of Daytona. 410 F.Supp.2d 1173. (M.D. Fla. 2006).
[4] Ibid.
[5] R.V.S., L.L.C. v. City of Rockford. 361 F.3d 402. (7th Cir. Ill. 2004).
[6] Ibid.
[7] Flanigan’s Enters., Inc. v. Fulton County, Ga. 242 F.3d 976, 986. (11th Cir. Fla. 2001).
[8] Peek-A-Boo Lounge v. Manatee County, Fl. 337 F.3d 1251. (11th Circ. Fla. 2003).
[9] Bryant Paul, Daniel Linz, and Bradley J. Shafer. “Government Regulation of "Adult" Businesses Through Zoning and Anti-Nudity Ordinances: Debunking the Legal Myth of Negative Secondary Effects.” Communication Law & Policy 6 (2001): 355.
[10] Linz, Daniel, et. al. “An Examination of the Assumption that Adult Businesses Are Associated with Crime in Surrounding Areas: A Secondary Effects Study in Charlotte, North Carolina.” Law and Society Review 38 (March 2004): 69.
[11] Linz, Daniel, Bryant Paul, and Mike Z. Yao. “Peep Show Establishments, Police Activity, Public Place, and Time: A Study of Secondary Effects in San Diego, California.” Journal of Sex Research 43.2 (May 2006): 182.

The Real Evil ...

2006-10-26T15:43:00.000-07:00

(abridged edition)

Is that devil loathsome fear.

In our horror at the prospect of a triple-X porn store in our midst, we fail to venture forth to even imagine better solutions for an increasingly common problem: how to protect the free flow of expression and ideas, on the one hand, and women and children and the integrity of neighborhoods, on the other hand. Didn’t one of the greatest leaders in our history once declare, “We have nothing to fear, but fear itself!”

A hip-hop club and bar could not be stopped from doing business at 135 King Street and utilizing the entire 6,000 square feet based upon the assumption that its content alone causes bad secondary effects, but many justifiably claim adult establishments can be.

This is so because the Supreme Court’s City of Renton opinion (written by the same justice that would uphold laws criminalizing homosexuality) says that bad secondary effects flow from the pornographic content of an adult establishment inevitably as light from the sun.

The truth is that the content of adult establishments do not cause secondary effects anymore than hip-hop music in clubs and bars. What really makes the difference is how adult establishments and hip-hop clubs and bars are managed and operated.

Nonetheless, many of us seem all too eager to zone adult establishments out of town based upon the content of the materials they sell, alone. Just because the Supreme Court states that a law is constitutional does not make it right. The Supreme Court upheld “separate but equal” laws for decades.

The City’s Memorandum to the City Council justifying the zoning proposal states that the issue here is size. But this is not a big box issue; Cap Video has no plans to expand the size of the existing structure, which really is no larger, and may be smaller, than many establishments nearby.

A far smaller triple-X porn store at 135 King Street, however, would still be allowed. So, what does the zoning law and other proposals accomplish? Not much really unless they become the first step of a progressively more repressive agenda. As one leading council member stated in the last city council meeting, “We should not stop now.”

If history is to be consulted as our guide, yes, no doubt, these measures will be the first step. The tyranny of the majority in a democracy never successfully starts out looking like what it is. It begins by preying upon the people’s most noble sentiments to protect what the public believes to be most vulnerable, be it women and children, public morality and decency, the integrity of neighborhoods, or our sacred “American way of life.”

The goal will become banishing a certain type of adult content entirely because implies that certain types of offensive and harmful sexual conduct should be tolerated, if not accepted and celebrated. But the second step shall be merely to put all of our pornography in places where pedestrian residents and customers of downtown Northampton are highly unlikely to travel, and thus be less likely to consider the merits of its “bad” message for themselves. Oh my …!

Dear City Citizens and Council Members please be free to counter with speech and ideas the speech and ideas that you find offensive and harmful, but by making it far less likely for pedestrians like me to incidentally consider certain ideas and expression, you now embark upon censorship of ideas and expression based upon what you alone deem to be without merit. No, I should have the right to judge for myself, thank you.

Moreover, as a practical matter, enactment of the pending zoning ordinances will no doubt sooner or later prompt litigation by Cap Video or another adult retail vendor intent upon expanding into our community. These measures in practice prove most successful with respect to spawning litigation that makes lawyers, like me, rich.

I say, let’s put off the proposed zoning ordinance until the parties have exhausted themselves on negotiations. After all, what’s the rush? Adult establishments are not grandfathered – protected from subsequent zoning by the City – under Massachusetts law.

With all of the diversity of opinion in America there are few things that we, the people, including pornographers, seem to agree upon, aside from opposing taxation without representation and making lawyers rich for no good purpose.

And there lies the common ground from which the City and Cap Video can begin to negotiate a solution that addresses their respective concerns and interests.

The City could begin, as I have suggested before in The Real Challenge, by asking Cap Video to comply with a licensing scheme similar in certain respects to the licensing scheme applied to bars. It could also ask if Cap Video would invest in that area of King Street in a manner that would advance the City’s hopes and dreams for that area.

If Cap Video had a vested interest in protecting, if not improving upon, the quality of life in the same neighborhood, it would be far less likely to tolerate a drop in the quality of life and the irresponsible management of its adult establishment located in the very same area. But, to my knowledge, the City leaders have not engaged Cap Video in a discussion of this nature.

John Lennon once wrote the song, “Imagine,” expressing for an entire generation our inner most desires. Yes, with all the intellect and creativity we have to draw upon, imagine the difference we can make here and now, just by refusing to repeat the same old litigious insanity … Yes, sweet Northampton, Imagine. For with respect to that effort, at least, I say we have nothing to fear, but fear itself.

Yours/AC

My Boo-Boo

2006-10-26T15:38:00.000-07:00

In the city council meeting last week I contended that the award of attorneys’ fees the City of Revere had to pay the plaintiff pornographer for violation of its first amendment rights had been set at $900,000 +; I was wrong, apparently. The issue is still before the trial court after remand by the appellate court. The appellate court reduced the award in certain respects merely because the plaintiff’s attorneys had failed to ask for their fees for certain segments of the litigation at the appropriate times before the appropriate courts. In other respects the appellant court did question, among other things, the necessity for the work that was done by plaintiff’s attorneys.

I stand corrected.

Yours/AC

The Point of View of a NPN Neighborhood Father of Young Children

2006-10-24T13:55:00.000-07:00

Editors note: Andrew Shelffo lives in Northampton with his wife and two children. He is also the author of The Prospect Perspective Blog on Masslive.com.

The link to his blog is: http://www.masslive.com/northampton/prospect/weblog/

I moved to Northampton in 2001 because I liked the scenic beauty of the area, the slower pace of things (when compared to the New York-Metropolitan area) and the variety of things there are to do here. I chose to move here and raise my family here also because I value the diversity of thought that exists here in Northampton and the generally tolerant attitude around here.

Recently I've been disappointed to find out that one of the qualities that I thought existed here in Happy Valley may not be so abundant as I thought. I'm referring to the quality of intellectual rigor and honesty.

I've spent enough time in college, and in school after college, to know a bad argument when I see it, and the NoPorn people have been foisting a bad argument upon the people of Northampton for weeks now. The truly alarming part, though, is that people, particularly some on the City Council, are buying the argument. I can only assume that's because they haven't taken a good look at what NoPorn is saying.

First of all, despite the smoke screen that NoPorn has been emitting from their website, pornography already exists in great supply in Northampton, both the "good" kind and the "bad" kind, according to NoPorn's own definitions. This means that whatever the outcome of the current debate regarding zoning ordinances, the amount of pornography available in the city won't really change.

This is important to note because much of NoPorn's arguments center around the evil that they consider pornography to be. They blame pornography for everything from divorce to addiction and child molestation. Despite the questionable validity of these beliefs, the fact remains that their actions won't eradicate pornography from Northampton.

The second point is closely related to the first. NoPorn has done a really good job of scaring people into believing that if Capital Video opens a store on King Street, it will only be a matter of time before Northampton is inundated with prostitutes, sex fiends, and criminals because pornography and the stores that sell it bring with them negative "secondary effects." As evidence, NoPorn ignores the stores that sell pornography in town and the lack of negative effects they've had on Northampton and instead has consistently pointed to two things: Kittery, Maine, and their own petition. Kittery Maine had some problems with a Capital Video store in town that had viewing booths. While those problems were very real, the Capital Video store proposed for King Street won't have viewing booths, which seems to make any comparison between Kittery, Maine, and Northampton moot.

The second piece of evidence they throw out when people question the pertinence of the experiences of Kittery. As a matter of fact, they used this very argument on Valley Free Radio the night of October 15th. "Well," the argument goes. "You many not see the similarities, but the 1,100 people who signed our petition do, so that's evidence of the potential harm of secondary effects."

So, let me get this straight: NoPorn scares people into believing that Northampton is going to hell in a handbasket and then uses evidence of that fear to show that we are, in fact, going to hell in a handbasket? Can you say, circular reasoning?

Thanks to NoPorn, there's been a lot of discussion around town lately about movies. NoPorn, in fact, sent out a letter to everyone in Northampton that contained some rather salacious titles and plot summaries of pornographic movies available from Capital Video. I want to thank NoPorn for the recommendations, but I'm not particularly interested in these movies, and if the store does open, I don't plan on shopping there. But I do want to recommend a movie to them, a good, old-fashioned family movie.

One of the highlights of this movie is when the protagonist points out the dangers of playing pool. Playing pool, he says, will lead to degradation. "Look, folks!" he says. "Right here in River City/Trouble with a capital 'T'/And that rhymes with 'P' and that stands for pool!"

In our case, it would be, "Right here in paradise city/Trouble with a capital 'T'/And that rhymes with 'P' and that stand for porn!"

So, rent The Music Man and watch a professional charlatan as he uses song and dance to convince a town that they're going down the wrong path. As you do, I hope you picture the song and dance that the NoPorn people have been doing for the last four months.

The City's Justification

2006-10-24T13:06:00.000-07:00

The below is a copy of the Memorandum that the City intends to rely upon to justify the proposed zoning measure to banish adult establishments to the outskirts of town. You know, where few, if any, downtown residents and busniess customers will have ready pedestrian access like they do for any other book and video stores that may locate in the vicinity of 135 King Street. The irony is that the City's justification is that the porn store will inhibit, rather than promote, pedistrial traffic in that section of King Street.

If Cap Video was targeting non-Northampton residential customers, then it would have found far less expensive property to buy or lease further away from downtown, closer to and more visible from Interstate 91. Instead, the store is conveniently located to draw to the King Street neighborhood pedestrian traffic from downtown, as people go about their daily business or their evening festivities.

And the City really presents no hard evidence to justify its claim that the threat of potential secondary effects is any less based upon the mere size of an adult establishment. This is not a big box issue; Cap Video has no plans to expand the size of the existing structure, which really is no larger, and may be smaller, than many of the establishments nearby.

What the City really intends to accomplish is clear. Banish a certain type of adult content because it implies that certain types of offensive sexual conduct should be accepted, if not celebrated. Put it where the residents and customers of downtown Northampton are less likely to travel, and thus enjoy the material and consider the merits of its message. Dear City of Northampton, be free as Nopornnorthampton to counter speech you find offensive and harmful, but how dare you disingenuously contend that this proposed zoning is anything but real censorship of objectionable speech.

The Supreme Court opinion in the case City of Renton upon which the justification for this zoning proposal rests is just as disingenuous. It was written by the same man who voted to uphold criminal laws against homosexuality.

Many of our civic leaders happen to be gay. It seems that many, but not all of them, believe it is now safe to turn upon the very same liberalization of sexuality and free speech that historically allowed them to gain the acceptance of mainstream society that they enjoy today. In fact, they gleefully rely upon the City of Renton Supreme Court opinion to prove that they are not violating free speech.

Now, that is reprehensive.

Yours/A.C.

Long Time Resident Writes to the Gazette

2006-10-23T21:06:00.000-07:00

Letter to the Editor
Daily Hampshire Gazette
Opinion@Gazettenet.com

Dear Editor:

Until the recent controversy over the effort by Capital Video to establish a business in Northampton, I took pride in being a long time citizen of this city, having seen over the decades many dramatic and positive changes in the culture and infrastructure, and have always taken pride in the city's values of diversity, tolerance, and inclusion.

The recent opposition to Capital Video’s plans, and the Planning Board's recommendations of 'adult' ordinances, seem in direct opposition to our community's values, and serves to solidify my views that diversity, tolerance, and inclusion have been increasingly defined by the city's 'progressives' liberal circle. There is, in my opinion, rank hypocrisy and sanctimonious statements of opposition to Capital Video by the one-party liberal elite who try to enforce their views on others.

I am proud to have made the first unsolicited contribution to TalkBackNorthampton, a group that I believe is wise in its formulation of the issues, and appropriately raises the issues of unintended consequences on other businesses in Northampton. As a clinical social worker, I am concerned about fairness, diversity, and tolerance. Rank hypocrisy is exhibited when opponents of Capital Video use an elitist argument of "...anywhere but in my backyard...", ie. put the establishment away from the central business district. And, “...doing it for the children...” is, in my opinion, a tired old-saw that political liberals and conservatives, alike, have used for decades.

The article by Drs. J. Wesley and T. Boyd, professors of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, in addition to other scientific research on the effects of pornography, are well-founded. The arguments against pornography are not based in logic, reason, or statistics, but in demagoguery. Ideas and values have consequences, and I hope this fair city can sort them out in a positive manner.

Sincerely,

David Banas
71 Leonard Street
Leeds, MA 01053

Cap Video Response To Brooks Letter

2006-10-23T20:35:00.000-07:00

Mr. Guarino is a no show for now ... his loss?

Dear Mr. Brooks:

I am writing on behalf of Mr. Guarino in reference to your letter relating to Capital Video's applications to open up its business at 135 King Street in Northampton. Your insight into the issues regarding this application is appreciated.

Capital Video operates many stores throughout New England. Please be assured that the company’s business is committed to the health, safety and welfare of its employees, patrons, and the community, and the business consistently follows and promotes those safeguards that are available and under its control. The company does not display sexual explicit signage, nor are there any depictions of sexual conduct that are visible from the stores. Capital Video recently re-opened its store in Peabody, MA with a new, fresh look, and has been upgrading its stores to provide a very comfortable atmosphere that is pleasing to adult men, women and couples, and to be pleasing aesthically to the community. The business to be built in Northampton will be of the same caliber as Peabody, and should offer a very pleasant atmosphere, presented in a tasteful and appropriate manner.

The company would like to work with the community to develop a cooperative relationship going forward, and will be happy to meet with the Planning Board and the City Council to discuss, and further develop ideas regarding any issues reglating to the proposed store. Capital Video hopes that the community will continue to respect the rights of all of its citizens.

We appreciate your sincere interest in protecting the first amendment constitutional rights for everyone, and appreciate your support in this regard.

Lesley S. Rich, Esq., CPA General Counsel
Capital Video Corporation
1060 Park Avenue Cranston, RI 02910

Do You Know ...

2006-10-23T16:10:00.000-07:00

That the Advisory Board and the Legal Affairs Committees of the Feminist For Free Expression are made up of the women listed below? Nopornnorthampton and others have questioned the creditability of the FFE’s information we posted below on October 10th, titled "Did You Know ...." We ask you to take notice of the credentials these women possess and then consider the likelihood that the FFE's information is discreditable.

Legal Committee

Ann Beeson (Co-Chair)
ACLU

Jody Kelly
Jenner & Block

Jeanne Baker
Baker & Moscowitz

Jane M. Whicher
ACLU of Illinois

Harriette Dorsen
Bantam Doubleday Dell, and
Former General Counsel of Random House

Amy Adler
NYU School of Law

Marjorie Heins
NCAC

Cathy Crosson
Weston, Sarno, Garrou & DeWitt

Advisory Board

Marilyn Fitterman
Past President, NOW NY

Nadine Strossen
President, American Civil Liberties Union

Betty Friedan
Author, 1921-2006

Joan Nestle
Lesbian Herstory Archives

Did You Know...

2006-10-11T08:35:00.000-07:00

That half the adult videos bought or rented in the US are done so by women or women in couples? Surprised? TalkBackNorthampton presents the following article from the Feminists for Free Expression Free Speech Pamphlet Series which debunks many widely held beliefs about pornography, such as:

Pornography causes violence against women.

Pornography is responsible for "copycat" behavior

Pornography degrades women

Pornography is only (or overwhelmingly) for men

Pornography inherently exploits and abuses women

Pornography is inherently "bad"- sexist, violent, etc.

The "offensive" offensive nature of pornography warrants government action

The full text of this highly informative article can be found at Feminists for Free Expression

NP

Feminists on Artistic Expression and Free Speech

2006-10-11T08:32:00.000-07:00

Should feminists be concerned about artistic expression? Does sexist or indecent art harm women? The following informative pamphet from Feminists for Free Expression rebuts the idea that free speech comes at the expense of women and that meaures taken to retricit, ban or exclude indecent or offensive artistic works from the general pubic will expand the rights of women. FFE instead demonstrates that the best remedy for countering harmful expression is free expression!

See the full text here.

TalkBackNorthampton Presents: The Real Challenge

2006-10-04T14:08:00.000-07:00

The Real Challenge
An Open Letter to the City of Northampton

The real challenge facing the City of Northampton is how to deal with the secondary effects that might flow from an Amazing porn store, and others like it, while preserving as much latitude to all forms of expression and diversity of lifestyle as possible. I submit that in our panic to banish threatening porn stores to the outskirts of town, we verge on losing exactly what makes Northampton so special: its renowned tolerance, if not celebration, of intellectual, artistic, cultural and life style diversity. In large part, that is why Northampton is a destination for many who visit us and why so many of us who live here feel truly at home.

Northampton, stand back and look at the sweep of the various amendments to the zoning laws we are considering, a perfect storm of censorship, all really because of one proposed porn shop. Let’s be honest. Even if an Amazing porn store at 135 King Street displayed less than 1,000 square feet of adult material many of us would still believe it would sit there like filthy fly, infecting the neighborhood.

How pitiful that, in our panic, we feel compelled to use a sledge hammer to swat a fly where a swatter would serve us better. After all, what will this sledge hammer accomplish? After smashing into the furniture, our sledge hammer will have only made this fly and flies like it move to different spots not so far from where we first swung.

How pitiful that we lack the imagination, with all the intellect and creativity around us, to more closely consider what exactly causes the secondary effects we fear and to devise the appropriate measures to more surgically and effectively deal with them.

Let’s take a closer look by asking if adult entertainment inherently causes the secondary effects we fear, or if there is merely a coincidence of secondary effects often, but not always, observed where adult entertainment establishments may be located. If the latter, then one may reasonably conclude that other factors may be involved, and porn and porn stores alone, are not the causes of the secondary effects.

Do undesirable secondary effects necessarily flow into a neighborhood from the purchase, sale and use of pornography, as many seem to believe? Of course not. Consider all the pornography being enjoyed in households and dorm rooms all across Northampton via cable and the internet every week. Has it increased crime in surrounding areas? Depressed the property values across the City? Created a City wide dead-zone? The belief that undesirable secondary effects necessary flow into a community from the distribution and use of pornographic material and adult entertainment alone is just silly.

Do undesirable secondary effects necessarily flow into a neighborhood from the mere presence of porn shops? Of course not. Consider the porn shops in the West Village on Sixth Avenue, West 4th Street and Christopher Street, the French Quarter in New Orleans, the Red Light district in Amsterdam or the existent porn shops in Northampton, Oh My …. and Pride and Joy. Have they ruined the cities and neighborhoods in which they are located? To the contrary, in the eyes of many, on a net basis, the adult entertainment establishments enhance their cities and neighborhoods. Not all pornographic and adult entertainment establishments foul the neighborhoods in which they are located.

Indeed we at TalkBackNorthampton are learning that the studies relied upon by Nopornnorthampton and others are fundamentally flawed, including the NYC Adult Entertainment Study touted by Nopornnorthampton. Reputable researchers who are not pawns of the adult entertainment industry find, upon close scrutiny, that these studies ultimately rely upon other studies which lack credibility. As the work involved in preparing a critique of these studies is quite substantial, our critique will be featured in separate posts at this blog site. Some preliminary critiques are provided as footnotes.

For present purposes I submit that the real problem is that undesirable secondary effects flow from adult entertainment establishments for the same reasons that undesirable secondary effects flowed from other retail establishments which historically were irresponsibly operated and insensitive to the interests of the communities in which they were located, be it laundromats, bars, tanneries or Chinese restaurants.

To be sure, porn shops do have a bad reputation, and well earned. This is not surprising when we consider how historically society has viewed pornography, adult entertainment and anyone openly involved with it. Historically, no responsible community member would openly have anything to do with it! So, to fulfill its demand for sexually explicit materials and entertainment, respectable society left the job up to the very characters that could not care less about the interests of the community and the responsible operation of their establishments.

So, what should we do? The demand for, and therefore the production and distribution of “erotica” or “pornography” will never really go away. Perhaps we should accept the facts of life and channel that energy in manner calculated to result in a town that resembles in part the West Village in NYC rather than Eight Avenue in Hell’s Kitchen? At the very least, we should search for measures to implement that would discourage owners and operators of adult entertainment establishments for insensitive and irresponsible behavior. Set forth below, I list a number of ideas to start the process of devising viable alternatives to the proposed amendments to the zoning ordinances, many of which will be easier to equitably apply in practice than the 1,000 square foot rule:

Face the Community. The owners of Oh My … and Pride and Joy are among us, so they must face and discuss with us the concerns community members may have. Why not require something similar for absentee owners and operators? See my letter to the de facto owner of the Amazing video porn store chain posted below.

Presence. Perhaps require the de facto owners and operators of adult entertainment establishments be either community members, or actually work at their establishments on a full time basis?

Esthetic Measures. The City Council is considering amendments to ban sexually explicit content from storefronts, but that alone does not guarantee esthetically pleasing storefronts. Indeed, the Amazing video store front in Springfield was nothing but a tawdry sign and ugly cinder block. Why not look into measures that could be implemented to require or encourage esthetically pleasing storefronts?

Care for Surrounding Areas. What about requiring appropriate outdoor lighting? Care and maintenance of the grounds surrounding the premises? Funding for extra police officers to patrol the premises and surrounding areas, if the establishment stays open during late night hours?

Licensing. Perhaps there could be implemented a licensing scheme where an adult entertainment establishment would lose its license to operate if there are repeated violations of the standards we require it to abide by? I note to my chagrin how Northampton bar owners, managers and staff throw out their customers as 2 am approaches with remarkable energy and vigor …

At this juncture, I really do not know if any of the above ideas will be particularly viable or legal, but there are two things I do know: First, adult entertainment establishments are not going away. Indeed, Capital Video may either reduce the size of their display of adult content to under 1,000 square feet or ultimately prevail in court. Second, when we fail to hold owners and operators of pornographic stores and adult entertainment establishments to high quality of life standards, but instead, just attempt to relocate them to already depressed parts of town, then, at best, we merely relocate the problem from one area of Northampton to another. For that we all should be ashamed.

Sincerely yours,

Always Controversial

Footnotes

The findings of the NYC Adult Entertainment Study are at odds with its conclusions (which were driven more by politics than science). The NYC study ultimately relies upon studies conducted in other cities to support its conclusions, many of which subsequently have been discredited. The only real causal link established by the NYC study was that the mere public perception of concentration of porn stores and adult entertainment establishments caused undesirable secondary effects, not necessarily the adult entertainment establishments themselves!

Here are just a few our notes which put the NYC study in a more unbiased perspective than Nopornnrothampton would have you believe:

1. The survey also interviewed community liaisons and beat officers in study areas. “When the survey and control block fronts were compared for criminal complaints and allegations, the officers generally did not link higher incidents with adult uses…. Four of the six officers thought the adult uses have no effect on crime” (50).

2. In the words of interviewed brokers: “Several brokers added comments to explain their responses about the impact of adult entertainment establishments on nearby property values. Some said that property value decreases would be minimal or that values may be affected differently depending on the age make-up of the area” (51).

3. On pages 52-54, the study attempts to analyze criminal complaints between survey areas containing adult entertainment establishments and control areas. However, the study admits “it was not possible to draw definitive conclusions from the analysis of criminal complaints. Land uses other than adult entertainment establishments, e.g., subway station access, appear to have a far stronger relationship to criminal complaints. It was not possible to isolate the impact of adult uses relative to criminal complaints” (66). (Emphasis added.)

4. On property value: “The analysis of trends in assessed valuation relative to adult entertainment uses was inconclusive” (54). Also: “While the total assessed values on the survey block fronts may be influenced to some extent by the presence of adult entertainment uses, demonstrating such effects is very difficult” (54).

5. The study also acknowledges: “In some cases, particularly in study areas with only one adult entertainment establishment, the DCP survey did not yield conclusive evidence of a direct relationship between the adult use and the urban ills affecting the community. This reflects the fact that, in a city as dense and diverse as New York, it is difficult to isolate specific impacts attributable to any particular land use. Other cities that have conducted similar studies have acknowledged the same difficulty” (62).

An Open Letter to Kenneth Guarino & Capital Video

2006-10-04T14:05:00.000-07:00

October 4, 2006

Via Facsimile and Regular Mail

Mr. Kenneth Guarino
Captial Video Corporation
780 Reservoir Ave.
Cranston, Rhode Island 02910

Re: 135 King Street, Northampton, MA 01060

Dear Mr. Guarino:

I am a resident of the neighborhood in Northampton, Massachusetts where you intend to establish another Amazing video store. By speaking out at City Council and relevant committee meetings, and running my blog, http://www.blogger.com/, I have become what some characterize as a member of the responsible opposition to the proposed amendments to the City’s zoning ordinances to banish your store to the outskirts of town. You may believe that I write to offer my support, but I write, instead, to call you out.

My complaint is that you have done nothing to address the concerns of the community about the secondary effects that your establishments have caused elsewhere and might cause here. While I do not subscribe to the theory that secondary effects inherently flow from adult entertainment establishments, there is no doubt that secondary effects flow from owners of retail establishments who are irresponsible members of the communities in which they operate, be it owners of porn stores, bars or Chinese restaurants. The mere content sold within your establishments is not responsible for the secondary effects. You are.

It is mostly because of irresponsible operators of adult establishments who are insensitive to the communities in which they locate that porn has the near universal bad reputation that it has. Little wonder that even our liberal community accepts as gospel truth that secondary effects flow as inevitably from a porn shop as light from the sun. For that reason, few people anywhere disagree with the sentiment that hard core porn retailers like you deserve whatever treatment they get.

Perhaps you prefer it that way, basking in your defiance, or just don’t really care. But, acting as a responsible owner of an adult establishment in the community is, if nothing else, just good business. The pendulum of First Amendment protection is swinging further and further away from you, and may get stuck there far, far away for a long, long time.

The public is becoming more and more accepting everyday of censorship measures more commonly associated with China, of all places, than the USA – so do not expect the Internet to save your business empire. Have you noticed how the government lately has shut down off-shore on-line gambling operations? Curtailed on-line tobacco operations situated on Indian reservations? Purely as a business decision, it’s time to rely upon something more than the First Amendment and your lawyers.

In light of first, the prevailing public perception that plagues hard core sex establishments, and, secondly, the advantages that may flow from reliance upon more than your shrinking First Amendment rights, you may be better off requiring your stores to be community leaders in the neighborhoods where they are located.

I visited your store in Springfield this last week. It is a small, low class joint with a bland cinder block store front in a neighborhood that needs a good sweeping, wash and paint job, at the very least. There was no reason to believe your store has hastened the demise of, or improved upon, the neighborhood. But I submit that it is in your best interest to require your stores to be better than the rest of the stores in a neighborhood. For starters, why was the sidewalk in front of your store no cleaner than the sidewalk in front of the neighboring stores? Why have you not spent the pocket change to put up an attractive mural on the storefront? Etc., etc.

Here in Northampton, you can start by acting as, or even better than, any other responsible local business owner would. Any other local business operator carrying on a type of business associated with undesirable secondary effects, be it noise, drunken patrons or refuse, in this small town must face the community in person and address its concerns, be it in the coffee shops, or in formal city council or committee meetings.

Why not you? You could pro-actively appear in person, negotiate and agree to specific measures to prevent and be held accountable for the secondary effects that may flow from the irresponsible operation of an establishment such as yours, like any other local business owner.

Sure, legally, I suppose you could send representatives in your stead, or hope your lawyers prevail in court, but that will only reinforce the impression among us that you do not respect the community, and if you do not respect it, why should it respect you?

You may think you need not prove to us that you deserve respect. You have reputedly partnered with tough characters in the past. But that hardly engenders the respect you seek, and may ultimately need, from this community.

Other owners of adult enterprises, such as Hugh Hefner and Larry Flynt long ago began to step up and still step up to face the public. But so far you have proven merely that you are afraid that a small town city council and its community members can stare you down.

In short, Mr. Guarino, you have proven nothing but that you are a coward, unworthy of respect. So, take your shoddy operation and get the hell out of town, or step up, face the public and be a real man.

Very truly yours,

Peter L. Brooks

The Possible Effects of Censorship on Art

2006-10-02T09:48:00.001-07:00

Below Nick Pell shares his concerns about the secondary effects theory and legislating the morality propounded at the Nopornnorthampton web site. While for myself (Always Controversial), personally, I may believe I am better off adopting in many respects, but not all respects, the morality Adam and Jendi recommend, I do share Nick's concerns about the secondary effects theory and legislating morality.

Tasteful erotica, we are told by NoPornNorthampton (NPN), depicts a state of love and commitment between participants. This idea, while perfectly fine as a personal preference, is incredibly dangerous to a society which values free speech, free expression and free choice when the proponent seeks to impose their preference on others. On the one hand, it describes a set of behaviors as normal and desirable, marginalizing those not in monogamous, heterosexual relationships or those with allegedly deviant sexuality. On the other, it seeks to eliminate specific content from the city. While NPN assures us that such limitations will be reasonable, I find little reason to accept their premise at face value. As always, political debates do not take place in a vacuum. The proposed zoning legislation comes at a time when the Bush administration is aggressively pursuing obscenity laws against artists, as well as speaking out in favor of repression of sexual minorities. In the final analysis, however, the rights of artists and a contemporary history of censorship lie at the center of this issue. Repressive elements in society have no shortage of reasons that consenting adults such as you and I do not have the right to make choices for ourselves. In considering the new zoning law, it seems prudent to consider what consequences could come later, particularly in regards to censorship and creeping fascism- two dangers far more insidious than the "secondary effects" spoken of time and again by NPN. The entire community should be concerned when a few vocal individuals take it upon themselves to not only dictate how we can choose to spend our money, but also what the "correct" forms of sexuality are. Allowing such voices to prevail can only lead down a slippery slope to an increasingly repressive environment. The First Amendment Center has a thorough and thoughtful analysis of how "secondary effects" are routinely used to undermine free expression, including using "secondary effects" to prohibit high schoolers from dying their hair unusual colors. The text can be read in full here.

It seems worthwhile to quote NPN: "We are not against sex. We are against mindless sex, abusive sex, sex without regard for issues like love, fidelity, commitment, pregnancy, disease and children." In other words, they are opposed to casual sex, polyamory, condoms and other forms of birth control. Why don't they- as someone has recently suggested on their website- move to Ave Maria, FL, a planned community for people who wish to avoid the terrible burden of being exposed to the sexuality of consenting adults. Just as the repression of pornography in Weimar Germany opened the door for repression of some of the best art of the period (Futurism and Dadaism were verboten), so will content-specific legislation open the door to repression of "obscene" or "indecent" or "degrading" forms of art- with the judge of such content not being the sensibilities of individual citizens, but a government censorship board in everything but name. Content-specific legislation will not only effect the kinds of "tasteful erotica" that NPN claims to support (such as how burlesque performers must have all of their naughty bits covered in the state of Massachusetts) but also art and literature. Universally lauded works of art as Ulysses and Naked Lunch have been banned as obscene. Recent critically acclaimed Vincent Gallo film The Brown Bunny (which features a potentially disturbing, arguably degrading act of oral sex as the film's climax), or even the television show Desperate Housewives (which depicts suburban infidelity and sexual relations between adults and minors) would be questionable using the criteria outlined by NPN above. The recent French film Baise Moi (translation- "fuck me") includes a graphic rape scene, with real penetration as did the similarly themed Irreversible, which Roger Ebert declared an essentially moralistic film. In short, sexually explicit and sexually transgressive art did not end with Henry Miller. The tradition is alive and well today, particularly in cinema but also in literature and the visual arts. How would the proposed laws effect a gallery showing of Trevor Brown or a midnight showing of The Brown Bunny? What of the measures enacted after what we are being told are the "first steps"?

Lest anyone think this discussion has become to abstract, I direct your attention to the National Coalition Against Censorship's Selective Timeline of Censorhip in the U.S.A. Many of these examples come from New York City, arguably the artistic capital of the world. The vague, undefinable nature of NPN's rhetoric should be cause for alarm. What is to stop, for example, films like Kinsey and Auto Focus being declared obscene because of their frank portrayal of sex? In fact, such films have been not merely protested by conservative Christian organizations but the subject of attempted bans. Robert Knight of the Culture and Family Institute states that "Just as Reagan was not content to contain communism but announced a rollback, pro-family organizations are not content to protest the latest outrage anymore, but will seek legislation and will punish sponsors of lewd entertainment." (Washington Post Article) Again, the groups opposed to the biopic about Dr. Kinsey did not outwardly protest, but rather ran a disinformation campaign aimed at smearing a man dead for four decades as a child molester and blaming him personally for AIDS, incest and pornography. NPN makes similar arguments attacking pornography generally- not the proposed location of Capital Video or relevant zoning laws. This should bring into question their claims about not being in favor of censorship.

In fact, NPN leader Adam Cohen has gone to great lengths to speak out in favor of the erotic material that he thinks people should be allowed to purchase. His list of signs that the pornography you consume may be "bad" can be found here.

The list seems to say far more about Adam Cohen's sexual ethics than anything else. This is further evidenced by Mr. Cohen's laundry list of material that he finds personally offensive, which can be found here. Included in the list is the infamous wedding night video of Paris Hilton, created between two consenting adults in a monogamous, legally-sanctioned relationship. So much for the claim that NPN seeks to do anything but proscribe a set of behaviors and choices in the community. It is my position that Mr. Cohen and his co-thinkers have the right to hold any beliefs they wish about pornography, sex and intimacy. What they do not have is the right to impose those positions on the broader community using legitimate concerns about the city's zoning as a smoke screen.

Secondary Effects?

2006-09-26T18:48:00.000-07:00

The following article, The Myth of Secondary Effects, casts doubt upon the studies which most municipalities rely for purposes of establishing an evidential record that undesirable secondary effects normally flow from the mere presence of an adult establishment. We at TalkBackNorthampton do not intend for this article to sum up our thoughts regarding the veracity of the secondary effects theory one way or another. Rather, we wish to examine the validity of such claims more closely.

We merely note for the time being that based upon our personal experience undesirable secondary effects do not result from the mere presence of adult establishments. Indeed, in the West Village of New York City, sexuality in all its variety is openly celebrated, but the West Village also happens to be one of the most desirable neighborhoods in New York City to live and raise a family - and businesses, including flower shops, thrive there, too.

The Myth Of Secondary Effects
by Mark Kernes, Senior Editor, AVN

Ever since the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Renton v. Playtime Theatres, Inc., 475 U.S. 41 (1986), municipalities across America have been given the power to limit the number of adult businesses in a community, as well as to severely regulate their location, hours of operation, floor space devoted to adult materials and several other ordinary business decisions, based on the "secondary effects" which adult businesses are alleged to have on the community around them.

Among the "secondary effects" which adult businesses - bookstores, video stores, cabarets and even Internet servers - are reputed to have are a decrease in property values, an increase in crime and, in some cases, an adverse effect on community health in and around the businesses' locations.

Moreover, the Renton decision allows a municipality to use not only whatever experience it may have with its own adult businesses, but also - or exclusively - studies done of the experiences other communities claim to have had with their adult businesses.

(Full Text of Article at the Free Speech Coalition's website)

Talk Back Northampton's First Donation!

2006-09-26T15:43:00.000-07:00

Talk Back Northampton graciously accepts our first donation from Mr. David A. Banas of Leeds, MA. Mr. Banas generously donated $10 to our efforts, unsolicited and has offered to aid us in other capacities. Represented below is a scan of Mr. Banas' letter and check. Thank you, Mr. Banas, from TBN and the entire Northampton community!

Is Censorship a Civil Right?

2006-09-25T19:19:00.000-07:00

NPN has attempted to frame the debate by talking about "balancing" free speech against other concerns. We link to the following article, which asks the question Is censorship a civil right?

Part 2
Part 3

Erotic Specialty Store Raided! Former Mayor Higgins Mystified.

2006-09-25T10:21:00.000-07:00

Editor's note: The City proposes to zone adult establishments to places on the outskirts of town (yet to be more than vaguely identified by the City) when the "total display area of a [adult estblishment's] adult material exceeds 1,000 square feet. Display area shall be calculated as all display areas in establishments and all buildings within a property, and in establishments and all building on adjacent properties under the same ownership or control, on which any adult materials, as herein defined, are displayed and any aisles adjacent to such display areas." As confirmed in a planning board meeting by the City, the word "any" means merely one adult magazine or video will cause an entire display area and adjacent aisle to be included in the calculation of 1,000 square feet. "Adult" material under the Massachusetts General Law includes works that merely describe sexual conduct or excitment. The following satire assumes the zoning law has been passed as set forth above.

From the Mrs. Pottersville Gazette, December 16, 2008, by A.C.

In a raid by the Potterville Vice Squad, A&P Poetry and Porn was seized and shut down last night. Today, all passers-by will see are darkened windows and chained up doors. Many of the patrons, as well as proprietors Adam Cohen and Peter Brooks, were locked up pending release on bail. They face up to one year in prison and substantial fines. Reached for comment, the proprietors stated their surprise, “No one complained about any secondary effects, and we strove to offer erotica in limited quantities appropriate for local residents,” said Mr. Brooks. “We made a special effort to make this shop a place where a mature woman could shop and be not only comfortable, but have fun, too” said Mr. Cohen, “Many women noted how tasteful and attractive the shop was.”

The specialty erotica shop in the back of the building at 135 King Street was just one small part of the premises controlled by the proprietors. The balance of the building the proprietors had subleased to a local drugstore vendor, Dolly’s, after Serios’ on State Street closed its doors in the early 2007. But among the goods sold by Dolly’s were romantic novels and magazines, such as Cosmopolitan, often purchased by underage teenage girls. Such fare has recently come under attack from social conservatives and feminist as “depicting, describing or relating to sexual conduct.” “To think my daughter may be reading such smut during this holiday season, well, that’s just outrageous!” said one woman. Her husband piped in, “We men don’t know what those girlie magazines and romance novels really contain!”

In response to specific complaints the vice squad conducted undercover operations and surveillance. “We were shocked by the explicit nature of this material,” said Pottersville’s new police chief, Mr. Puregood, “We had to do something to protect the children.” In this case, the 9 square feet of Dolly’s displaying such adult material combined with the square footage of A&P of approximately 992 square feet surpassed the 1,000 foot rule embodied in the 2006 ordinance. “Many citizens have been complaining that the ordinance passed in 2006 does not go far enough,” said police chief Puregood, “but unfortunately, we can only act when an establishment such as this exceeds the 1,000 square foot rule.”

Mrs. Potter, the mayor, announced she will introduce a measure at the next city council meeting to ban all adult orientated material from any establishment within her jurisdiction outside of the combat zone established by the 2006 ordinance. This may prove to be another proposal introduced by Mrs. Potter likely to pass after she and her colleagues swept into office in the last election. Mrs. Potter’s popularity has only increased since she took a tough stance against the local cable franchise’s transmission of sexually orientated materials.

Mrs. Potter is also known as a champion for more restrictions upon the transmission of adult material via the Internet. She advocates measures successfully implemented by free wheeling China to protect its citizens from pornography and other material the government has found to corrupt the good and moral character of its citizens.

Readers may recall that Mrs. Potter cobbled together a remarkable coalition of pro business, religious and feminists groups to defeat Mayor Higgins in the 2007 election. She attacked Mayor Higgins for, among other things, not doing enough to protect women and children from pornography. The ordinance passed in 2006 still allowed many establishments downtown to carry adult material because they did not breach the 1,000 square foot rule.

There were other reasons cited, too. As one concerned mother said, “Although I believe in women having real equality in all areas of government, I just didn’t think Mayor Higgins was the appropriate role model for my daughter in contrast to Mrs. Potter, who is married to a Mr. Potter, a well known banker and real estate developer.” The rise to power of Mrs. Potter reminded many political observers of the toppling of Ann Richards as governor in the state of Texas many years ago by George Bush and his canny political adviser, Karl Rove.

“Few would have predicted this when the ordinance was passed,” said Mr. Cohen, “I trusted that the judgment of a relatively educated population would prevent us from this extreme.” But others point out that Mr. Cohen apparently failed to take into account the evolving demographics in Pioneer Valley resulting from an influx of, among other groups, conservative retirees and immigrants from less liberal cultures, and his indifference to more conservative citizens whose families have resided in Pioneer Valley for many generations. Former Mayor Higgins said, “This is not how we intended the ordinance to be used. This raid would not have occurred under my watch.”

In 2006 Mr. Cohen founded Nopornnorthampton which spearheaded the movement to drive porn stores of greater than 1,000 square feet out of town. It was then that he predicted that if the laws were found in practice to unreasonably impinge upon first amendment rights, the city would surely take corrective action. But as Mrs. Potter has increased political support and has proposed to ban all adult materials from downtown, few expect the 2006 ordinance to be rolled back.

No one on the city council dares vote against any measure proposed to protect women and children against pornography. As one city council member confided off the record, “if it happened that a child or woman is sexually abused in my district and the abuser is found to posses adult material from a store downtown, my vote against this measure would surely be cited against me. And, Mayor Potter is certain win these battles as the political opportunities present themselves, so why risk my neck ...”

“Because I financed my part of the purchase price of 135 King Street by taking out another mortgage on my house, I’m now losing my home,” said Mr. Cohen. Mrs. Potter was unmoved. “Think of the harm these pornographers have caused to women and children; losing a home is nothing compared to any such incident of abuse!”

“I must apologize to Mr. Cohen,” said Mr. Brooks, “After the 2006 measure passed, I dared Adam prove his point about the difference between erotic and pornography by joining me in this small venture. Being a good sport, he accepted, and our friendship first established as adversaries blossomed into a working relationship to improve the King Street corridor between Main Street and the Stop & Shop. Now, look what’s happened to him.”

Someone else suggested that perhaps Mr. Cohen should apologize to Mr. Brooks, as well as others in the community.

In other news, President-elect Cheney cited the longevity of Clayborn Pell and Ronald Reagan ….

What is NPN's Real Agenda?

2006-09-25T09:17:00.000-07:00

The following has been written by Nicholas Pell, a Northampton resident and graduate of Umass- Amherst who is currently assisting Talk Back Northampton in their fight against censorship. It has not been written by the author of "An Open Letter to NoPornNorthampton" or the satirical news article about the potential dangers of adult business in town.

I appreciate the spirit with which NoPornNorthampton (NPN) has welcomed Talk Back Northampton (TBN) into the debate. A free and open marketplace of ideas seems essential to finding a reasonable, moderate solution to the present situation which includes all voices in the community. The crux of the issue seems to be over the definition and primacy of free speech in our community, as well as the unintended consequences of content-specific zoning laws which would rob us of our right to consume the kinds of entertainment we see fit. Regardless of the intentions of NPN, the proposed zoning law is content-specific and could be used later on to ban the tasteful erotica which NPN claims to support as free speech, as well as sexually frank works of art.

All concerned citizens of Northampton care about the effects of a large national retailer on the community as a whole. To be sure, Capital Video may be wise to open a dialogue with the community. But the specific concerns raised by NPN about the secondary effects of Capital Video are worth considering for any person interested in what kind of community we all wish to live in. But what will the proposed zoning law do? Some have suggested that such an establishment would be acceptable were it confined to an area further down King Street. This argument smacks of elitism. NPN apparently believes that a business which they seek to eliminate from their neighborhood is acceptable if located closer to the less-privileged sections of town- people in those neighborhoods are a lost cause anyhow, right? They also claim that the store will lead to harassment of passers-by, an idea that's slightly absurd to anyone who has studied how most publicity-shy patrons exit an adult book store.

I grew up outside of Cranston, Rhode Island in a city which boasted a combat zone comprised of a pornographic video store, several lottery sellers, cheap motels and a massive scrap metal heap. I know first hand that the secondary effects observed are not necessarily connected to the existence of adult businesses. Rather, pushing all unacceptable business into one section of a city, the poorest section, seems to be more a formula for the amorphous "blight" Mr. Cohen continually speaks of. A good theoretical topic to consider is the difference between an upscale bar and a dive. An argument about the relative merits of a bar in a neighborhood would be disingenuous if it painted all bars with the same broad brush. This debate may be more about packaging than content.

The issue, as I see it, is not conjuring up moralistic spectres with the goal of content-specific legislation. Consider for a moment another theoretical example. If, in the early 1950s, a communist group sought to open a book store across the street from Bridge Street School, there like would have been much community outcry, with similar rhetoric about protecting children from misguided attitudes and subversive characters. Would zoning an unpopular political group out of town be seen as anything other than censorship, even if the opposition groups assured the community that the material was "still widely available, particularly for anyone who has cable TV, a satellite dish, or access to the internet?" What of people who prefer to purchase hard copies of adult material? Many people have difficulty reading material on computer screens. Who wants to curl up in bed at night with a laptop rather than a book orreference magazine, be it the latest issue of Penthouse or the New York Times.

Further, the history of restrictive, content-specific legislation shows a slippery slope toward increasing restriction of our freedoms. The idea that such laws can be "loosened" down the road ignores the role of precendence in jurisprudence- laws are far easier to make than to unmake. How will we know when the law has gone too far? Shouldn't the zoning board be more concerned with content-neutral legislation which improves the quality of life in our city generally rather than specifically targeting one unpopular business?

I do not accept NPN's assertion that because of a high percentage of advanced degrees in the community we should have "little concern" about our freedoms being eroded. The claim is spurious. Germany was considered one of the most "educated" countries in Europe. It did not prevent the rise of Nazism. How will we know (and agree upon) when the law needs to be "loosened?" After all, there are reasonable and intelligent individuals on both sides of the present debate. NoPornNorthampton fails toprovide any practical guidance in this respect.

The argument regarding education further betrays the elitism of NPN. An anti-pornography voice (Shoshana Marchand, quoted in the September 22, 2006 edition of the Hampshire Daily Gazette) betrays the elitist underpinnings of the anti-free speech movement saying "[i]f the store existed out at Big Y plaza or anywhere else, I wouldn't have a problem with it." In other words, crime, blight and harassment of passers-by becomes more acceptable the closer it gets to the more underprivileged parts of King Street.

NPN's eloquent language about striking a balance between free speech and other interests soft pedals their preferences for even more restrictive measures against sexually explicit materials be they books or videos. Much of the website is dedicated not to a discussion of bettering the community using zoning laws, or even the secondary effects of such businesses on the surrounding neighborhood. Rather, NPN contains several prolonged attacks against the adult entertainment industry because they do not approve of the content. They have identified pornography as "hate speech" in their protests, a statement which should provoke a scandal among ethnic, racial and sexual minorities in the community.

NPN believes that adult women make the choice to appear in pornography because of their "judgment clouded by drugs, sexual abuse and our pornified culture." When reading such rhetoric it seems appropriate to ask who considers women adults who are capable of making their own choices, with judgment as clear as men's, in a manner that will not always be popular and who considers women easily duped children in need of extraordinary state protection. Don't take my word for it, go to their website.

NPN's rhetoric downplays their lack of opposition to such proven threats to the community as Wal-Mart and McDonalds by resorting to discredited, right-wing rhetoric about the adult entertainment industry. Anyone convinced that NPN paints an accurate picture of the adult entertainment industry unmotivated by ideology is directed to the writings of feminist porn stars Nina Hartley and Annie Sprinkle, the relevant section of Susan Faludi's seminal study of the post-war American male, Stiffed or any number of feminist writers who do not model women as helpless victims.

The "borderline legal status of the industry" which "makes performers reluctant to seek redress in court" is perpetuated by NPN and similar forces which push adult entertainment into such quasi-legaal status by creating sex panics. I little wonder why adult entertainment businesses become associated with questionable characters, similar to gambling or alcohol in the earlier part of the century.

NPN not so deftly dodges the issue of the exploitation and oppression of women and children at the hands of ideology and religion, citing a supposed lack of evidence that religions and ideologies are as or more harmful than adult entertainment. While not wishing to start a debate over the relative merits of religious and secular ideologies, it seems worth pointing to the conflict in Ulster, the recent scandals in the Catholic Church, the chattel status of women in many parts of the Islamic world, the 30 Years War, the Crusades or the forced conversion of Northern Europe to Christianity. Such examples are but the tip of the iceberg.

I welcome an open and transparent discussion of the issues. The secondary effects of all large businesses moving into town should be taken into effect both in the general and the specific. However, it seems that (intentionally or not) NPN is more likely to start a sexual witch hunt than protect women and children. If NPN seeks to marginalize and stigmatize specific lifestyle choices or forms of expression I merely ask that they stand up before the people of the community and state the (pun intended) naked truth. Their posturing that this is anything but censorship quickly falls flat when closely examined.

Shouldn't the city be nore concerned with content-neutral legislation which improves the quality of life in our city generally rather than specifically targeting one unpopular business?

Anti-Porn Activists Want to Decide for Everyone Else

2006-09-25T07:35:00.000-07:00

The following letter was published today in the Hampshire Daily Gazette. The author argues against Feminist Action Mobilization and NoPornNorthampton, in favor of personal choice. The letter is reprinted in its entirely by permission from the author.

To the Editor:

The town's Puritans are at it again, protesting the proposed Capital Video location in Northampton, using tired old arguments created out of whole cloth by the Christian Right, and without irony. The outlandish claim that adult films contribute to sexual violence has been refuted time and again by mainstream clinical psychiatry. Further, they demonstrate a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of women in the adult film industry. In fact, women are often paid more than and have a far longer "shelf life" than their male counterparts.

In a world where most sexual predators are not at Amazing Video but in the nuclear family, it is misleading to assingn blame for sexual violence on the adult entertainment industry.

But ultimately this is all beside the point. Any thinking person has trouble figuring out what is best for themselves in an increasingly complex and nuanced world. Every non-thinking person has no problem deciding what's best for everyone else. It seems clear what type of people these anti-sex activists are.

Nicholas Pell
Northampton

Australian Study on "Objectification" of Women

2006-09-23T15:00:00.000-07:00

Many residents of the city are rightfully concerned about the relationship between pornography and women. These concerns sometimes have nothing to do with the individual women in the films, concentrating instead on the broader social effects of pornography, women and violence. The following article, from the highly respected Journal of Sex Research argues against the conventional wisdom that the women in these films are treated as sexual objects, taking into account the harder, more graphic nature of contemporary pornography.

AN Australian study has cast doubt on the commonly held view that pornography shows women as nothing more than sex objects.

The study, to be published in the noted international Journal of Sex Research, analysed 50 of the bestselling pornographic videos in Australia to find out whether people were represented as sex objects.

Queensland University Professor Alan McKee, who led the study, said researchers compared the way women and men were represented in each video.

They noted such things as who initiated the sex, whose pleasure was paid attention to, whether people in the videos got to speak about what they wanted during sex and whose perspective the videos were presented from.

“We were surprised at just how active and in control the women were in these videos,” Prof McKee said today.

“This study suggests that mainstream pornography in Australia doesn’t represent women as sex objects, it shows them as active sexual agents.”

The findings are part of a three-year government-funded study - the most comprehensive of its kind - on pornography in Australia.

Interim results released in 2003 on the content of pornographic movies found super-size breasts scare some men, conservative voters love dirty magazines and adult videos have realistic plots.

Dr Alan McKee said those initial results had shattered the “dirty old man in a trenchcoat” stereotype of pornographic consumers.

Of the 320 respondents who said they used mainstream porn, 20 per cent were younger women, 33 per cent were married, 93 per cent believed in gender equality and 63 per cent considered themselves to be religious.

The researchers pored over the same 50 top-selling porn videos to analyse their plots and found most were believable and empowering for the fairer sex.

Most videos were imported from the US and bought through mail order companies in the ACT.

Dr McKee said most respondents were Liberal/National voters, which was interesting given those political parties were anti-porn.

The final results about the content of the movies will be released next year, and written into a popular culture book, with an executive summary to be given to the Federal Government.

(Reposted from Doug Henwood Talks)

It seems important to consider the facts when discussing the proposed zoning legislation rather than caving to irrational fears and propaganda. The study, is extensive and points in a direction which may seem counterintuitive, but is supported by clinical research:

(Full Text of Report at Find Articles)

The Sex Panic

2006-09-22T08:51:00.000-07:00

While some have framed the debate over the proposed King Street adult book store in terms of sexual moralizing and prescriptive legislation, Talk Back Northampton sees the issue of free speech and free expression as the central issues in this debate. But many in the community have legitimate concerns about the effects of adult material on women. To that end we present the following article reposted from the National Coalition Against Censorship which clarifies the issue. Simply put, the type of legislation being supported by NoPornNorthampton.org (NPN) and their supporters does not exist in a political vacuum. It comes at a time when the Religious Right is not only consolidating their base, but actively on the move against our freedoms. This article very sharply details how self-proclaimed progressives often- conciously or otherwise- parrot the arguments of religious demagogues in the name of "protecting" women.

Where are the feminists who oppose censorship? The women -- artists, writers, therapists, lawyers, educators, sex industry workers, and activists -- who believe censorship of sexually related expression is dangerous to women? Where are the historically informed, legally sophisticated, and politically impassioned voices linking women's freedom and sexual free speech?

Their voices were heard at The Sex Panic, a Conference on Women, Censorship, and "Pornography," May 7-8, 1993. There, through one of the Spring's most glorious weekends, over 170 representatives of a growing movement of anti-censorship feminists, sat, rapt, in the auditorium of the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. They were informed, entertained, and provoked to find creative feminist ways of thinking about and acting against censorship.

"We can't allow these myths to continue," said National Coalition Against Censorship executive director Leanne Katz, "-- the myths that censorship is good for women, that women want censorship, and that those who support censorship speak for women. That's why NCAC's Working Group formed," she said, "and why this conference was organized."

Full Text at National Coalition Against Censorship's homepage.

An Open Letter to Nopornnorthampton

2006-09-21T14:28:00.000-07:00

An Open Letter To Nopornnorthampton

Dear Nopornnorthampton:

Your point of view makes many valid points. Harm results from porn just as much as harm results from the production and consumption of goods in many other industries, such as the alcoholic beverage industry.

But pornographic material does make a social statement that sex, even uncommitted and so-called deviant sex, can be and is good for us and should be enjoyed without guilt and shame by those who wish to engage in it. Disagree with this point of view as you wish, but you should not have the right to deny First Amendment protection to adult material equal to your own.

You state that you would not banish “erotica” that you define as sexually explicit material depicting romantic love between committed couples. But one person's version of acceptable erotica is another person's porn. One should be able to browse the erotic material of their choice in any form as readily as any other type of material offered in hard copy downtown, particularly because for many of us living downtown the usual mode of transportation is by foot.

While I am not interested in most of what Capital Video offers, the proposed changes to the zoning law which you support may effectively zone out of our downtown area the stores most likely to carry the material many of us consider desirable erotica. Be careful, Nopornnorthampton, lest you throw the baby (our freedom) out with the dirty bath water. Your “erotica” is next.

Make no mistake - obstructing access to pornographic material by zoning it to the outskirts of town is, as a practical matter, actual and real censorship. If the subject matter of the material of the establish was solely religious or ideological in nature no one would seriously contend that zoning it to the outskirts of town represented anything but wrongful censorship. So, stop continuing to insult us by claiming that it not censorship. It is.

Indeed, more harm has been committed against women and children, past and present, by and in the name of religion and ideology than all the porn put together ever did.

Furthermore, the revolting or degrading nature of the material does not justify its banishment. Gay erotica is degrading and revolting to many heterosexual men, but no one would dare draft an ordinance banning homosexual erotica in this town. The truth is that when people justify banishment of pornography to protect women and children, they usually are merely seeking to protect themselves from the embarrassment or shame they feel about sex.

I also wish to see the King Street area improved upon. But instead of targeting the expressive content of the wares the King Street vendors offer inside their establishments, let’s work together on zoning requirements and restrictions which may improve the area, such as signage and storefront specifications, rather than dally with governmental restrictions that raise the specter of censorship.

Yours sincerely,

A. C.

Pro-Sex Feminism: Redefining Pornography

2006-09-21T13:29:00.000-07:00

In beginning to think sensible about the proposed adult entertainment store on King Street it seems worth reading this gem. The article questions the antiquaited notions of gender inherent in the anti-sex argument. It also provides a sharp and insightful look at exactly who is saying that women are "exploited" by the adult entertainment industry. This is a must read for anyone seeking to oppose the forces of sexual repression running loose in our town. Reprinted below are the introductory paragraphs to Michele Gregory's so-called "pro-pornography position paper."

“Feminism must not focus solely on what men have done to women. [It] must continuously seek ways in which women can unleash their own imaginary from the constraints that have been imposed upon them through rigid definitions of femininity.” — Drucilla Cornell

Censoring pornography will not only fail in preventing sexual violence but will also restrict the sexual expression of women and halt the progress of feminism. Censorship is a step back when all feminists should be making progress within this patriarchy. This does not mean that all pornography is inoffensive, but that bringing the law into what should only be a question of morality and opinion is dangerous. If it becomes necessary to strictly regulate pornographic materials by law, this will lead to restrictions in other areas of expression. Pornography is not a mind control device making sex offenders attack women. It is a realm, when used correctly, for the expression of a person’s fantasies without them actively participating in things that would be questionable in reality. There would be no need for a paper on this subject if every feminist agreed with the above statements (or found their differences to be slight) and others supporting and branching off from them. The evening news is hardly ever riddled with headlines like, “Top, Bottom, or Both: How Do You Butter Your Toast?” The problem is that not all feminist see eye to eye on the issue of pornography. Even this is a gross understatement when examining the heated arguments over this question.

The debate over whether pornography should be censored has been a significant dividing point among all feminists. There are three main factions within this debate. Anti-porn/pro-censorship, liberal, and pro-sex/pro-pornography feminists differ on what should be done about pornography and whether it is a main cause of sexual violence against women. An attempt to define and promote pro-sex feminism follows. A pro-sex feminist view of the pornography issue must begin with a definition of the word pornography. According to the American Heritage Dictionary, pornography is: “1. Sexually explicit pictures, writing, or other material whose primary purpose is to cause sexual arousal. 2. The presentation or production of this material. 3. Lurid or sensational material” (Bartleby.com, [1]). This can be contrasted with the American Heritage definition for obscene, “1. Offensive to accepted standards of decency or modesty. 2. Inciting lustful feelings; lewd. 3. Repulsive; disgusting...4. So large in amount as to be objectionable or outrageous” (Bartleby.com, [2]). While some feminists may consider pornography to be “repulsive” and “disgusting,” there is a marked difference between the two words. Even further, it can be argued that the distinction between something being pornographic or obscene is simply a difference of opinion.

Full text at Wit's End Zine

Thus I Refute Chyng Sun

2006-09-21T12:49:00.000-07:00

A big brain in the adult entertainment industry almost since it's inception, Nina Hartley has an unassailable record as a free-speech and feminist activist. Read her recent article refuting the same tired, anti-sex arguments we're hearing a lot of in Northampton and ask yourself who (if anyone) is being "exploited."

It was with a growing sense of outrage that I read Prof.Chyng Sun's report of her visit this past January to the Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas. I couldn't help wondering it the author had done any prior research whatsoever into the active, twenty-year debate among women over the impact of pornography on their individual lives and their status as a gender. There's nothing new in her indignation, nothing fresh in her insights and nothing unfamiliar in her arguments. As a sex-worker and sex-worker advocate for over two decades, I've heard and read it all before.

The professor appears wholly unfamiliar with the work of accomplished, feminist women who reject her fundamental contentions about porn and sex-work. If she bothered to consider the writings of Nadine Strossen, Carol Queen, Pat Califia, Susie Bright, Wendy McElroy, Sallie Tisdale, Linda Williams, Annie Sprinkle, myself and others, her homework wasn't reflected in what she showed me. Clearly, testimony that failed to corroborate her pre-conceived notions of what porn is "really" about, or what it "really" means didn't register on her radar screen.

I am an R.N., a third-generation feminist and a First-Amendment activist as well as a porn performer with the longest continuous career in the history of the industry. I'm easy to find. In fact, I was in one place for four hours each day on the floor at AEE. She certainly found my husband, writer-director I.S. Levine, (whose videos and magazines appear under the name Ernest Greene). At her request, he granted her a two-hour, on-camera interview in good faith, hoping but not expecting to receive an open-minded hearing. Why did Professor Sun not speak to me? Could it be because she knew that my very existence argues against her core assertions? Where was the honest, fearless intellectual curiousity that is hallmark of the pioneering academic researcher?

Full Text at Counterpunch