Welcome to my running commentary on life.

Welcome to my running commentary on life.

Thursday, February 23, 2012

Censorship in the Land of the Free


Constitution of the United States of America

BILL OF RIGHTS

AMENDMENT I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

It’s been a while since my last post.  I apologize for it.  I’ve been very remiss.  For those of you who visit here looking for something pithy, something that gives you a moment to relish someone else’s domestic miseries, I apologize again.  This is not that post.

Let’s be serious for a moment.  Allow me to discuss something horrifying that is happening more and more often of late in our beloved homeland: Censorship.

To be fair, I’m not talking so much about what the government does daily to silence people.  That may be a topic for another day.  The subject of this post is censorship imposed by corporate entities.  The latest attack has been imposed by such banking corporations as PayPal.

PayPal, as well as other on-line banking services have taken it upon themselves to tell publishers just what kind of stories they may sell to the poor, misguided public.  That’s right, my friends, they’ve decided to ban any seller of certain types of . . . dare I say it?  EROTICA!  ThereIsaidit.  Whew.

This is not a ban on all erotic stories, mind you . . . at least not yet.  It’s only certain types.  These semi-taboo and taboo subjects are not exactly my cup of tea, but to paraphrase the words of Evelyn Beatrice Hall who wrote under the pseudonym S.G. Tallentyre when she summed up the beliefs of Voltaire, I may not like what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it. 

The thing is I shouldn’t have to defend it to the death.  I live in the “Land of the Free”.  This freedom of speech is written in stone.  No, really.  There are plaques and monuments all over the country where these words are inscribed in stone.  And they should be in every country, every land, every culture.  The free exchange of ideas, creative expression and bawdy jokes is a freedom every single human being should enjoy, but many don’t.  Here in America, the line is being drawn.

It’s being drawn against one of our most sacred laws.

As I indicated earlier, the types of stories under attack aren’t really my kind, but I do write stories with erotic content.  Not all my work has sex, but some of my most popular titles do. 

Okay, let’s see a show of hands.  How many of you actually read my work?  I see a lot of women, but judging by my fan mail, there are just as many men.  Come on, guys, don’t be shy.  There’s nothing wrong with indulging in an action-packed romantic escapade where the girl gets the guy, and in the end they make lots of babies and live happily ever after.  (My favorite was the ex-Marine who expressed his anger at me for bringing him to tears—you know who you are.)

How would you feel if you couldn’t buy the new title waiting in the wings because two people in the story have the audacity to engage in intercourse—which we probably all agree is the natural progression of things when two people fall in love.

PayPal hasn’t gotten around to banning such titles yet, but it’s a real danger.  What’s next?  By their reckoning, the Bible should be banned, as well as many other religious and holy books, too.  It’s an interesting—albeit frightening—course in this life.

Let’s explore other writers.  Much fine literature is rampant with sexual content.  Consider, if you will, the following authors and their titles:

Thomas Keneally, Schindler’s Arc (from which comes the massively successful movie, Schindler’s List)
Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary (even in France when it was written, it was realized that the right to publish it far out-weighed the government’s authority to crush it.)
Radclyff Hall, The Well of Loneliness (Oh, wait.  That one was successfully censored by our own government in the 1928 U.S. obscenity trial, due to—heavens!—lesbian sex.  All copies of the novel were destroyed.  Of course, someone rather naughty saw to it that it was republished in recent decades.)
James Joyce, Ulysses (Holy &*^%, there’s masturbation in the story!)
Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson, And Tango Makes Three (It’s a children’s story, for crying out loud, but because it deals with two male penguins bonding together to care for an egg—you know, like in real life—people want it banned as having “gay” overtones.)
J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye (So darned sexual! It’s the third most challenged book.)

Many of you have read some of these exceptional titles.  Many of you have read classic and recent titles by great authors and found more than one titillating scene in them.  We read them to feel, to escape, to learn and to experience.  Should any of them be banned?

Our freedom of speech is a powerful tool—and a powerful weapon.  It was used as a weapon to free this country from oppression over two hundred years ago.  It’s still useful today.  The time is now, ladies and gentlemen.  It’s time to speak up before these revered works are no longer available. 

Let’s show these over-bearing corporations that we, the people, are not misguided, ignorant or in need of Big Brother to decide what we can read, what we experience and what we want to learn.  I, for one, will be making my stand against censorship and any other form of oppression that threatens my freedom.  

2 comments:

  1. Molly you are confusing censorship which really and only is the government preventing free speech, with economics (shitty economics but nevertheless) which is when the companies that we use to move money around decide not to move money in certain cases.


    The case in this case is the one where these companies get enough charge-backs that it interferes with their Royal Right to Make a Profit. Socially dodgy subjects like incest are going to garner a whole bunch of deniers-after-the-purchase.


    At the same time, of course the market for adult stuff is big and bustling, and MasterCharge and Visa do make a lot of profit in handling it. Thay don't want to let go
    of a single penny if they can help it. I am willing to bet that the dicta we are seeing is the results of a careful balancing of greed and caution.

    The strictures that the moneymovers have placed on what money they wish to move does NOT infringe with your freedom of speech. You can easily post to the internet. It does interfere with your ability to make money off of your artistic endeavors. Which is a whole other ball o wax.

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  2. A friend of mine claims he was told by an employee of Paypal that the best way to avoid being screwed by Paypal is to not use it. I'm inclined to agree.

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