If you’ve been keeping up with this story, you know that Polk County, Florida, Sheriff Grady Judd had Colorado resident, Phillip Greaves, arrested last Monday for mailing a book called “The Pedophile’s Guide to Love and Pleasure: A Child-Lover’s Code of Conduct” to Florida cops.
It should be noted that Greaves is not accused of pedophilia or any other act of injuring a child. He simply wrote a book that discussed the topic.
And the man who had him arrested? Well here is what Sheriff Judd says about the case:
“This has nothing to do with free speech and everything to do with obscenity,” Judd said. “We had a law in Florida that applied. We only needed jurisdiction.”
So, not only is Sheriff Judd completely ignorant of the historical conflict between obscenity laws and free speech, he sees absolutely nothing wrong with enforcing Florida state laws on Colorado residents.
When it comes to egotistical idiocy, Judd is clearly off the charts. And, of course, who pays for that idiocy? Well, certainly not the idiot. Nope. Phillip Greaves must sit in jail waiting for court system to throw out the charges, which is a near inevitability. But Judd will be a hero because there is no such thing as being too hard on anyone accused of a crime against children. Innocence or guilt does not factor into the lynch mob mentality which is the force that modulates the public in cases like this.
Finally, as reported in AVN, in order to extradite Greaves, it was necessary to charge him with a felony, but his book apparently doesn’t violate any of the felony provisions of the law under which he was charged. In order to rise to the level of a felony, the book would have to include pictures of actual children.
This apparent manipulation by Florida law enforcement of its own statutes could undermine the case and lead to even bigger headaches for the County.
Judd in his rush to exploit the sensational story to his own ends might wind up being sued (which really only penalizes the taxpayers).
The story, said Walters, was a national one even before Judd stuck his nose into it, which he probably did for the very fact that it was national. But the national appeal of such a case could also provide Greaves with a legal defense team that he could never in his life afford. He will probably be forced to use a public defender at first, said Walters, but soon, he expects to see a team of top drawer First Amendment lawyers descend upon the state and offer Greaves their services.
As is often the case, the porn industry is at the forefront of the fight to defend the First Amendment from those who would gladly trample it to satisfy their own narrow moral or political agenda.
In the end, as I have often written, the First Amendment contains no exceptions for obscenity. The Supreme Court pulled obscenity exemption out of its collective ass. It’s like saying that the First Amendment protects free speech unless its really offensive to enough people, in which case we will pretend there is no First Amendment. The fact is, of course, the First Amendment is designed specifically to protect offensive speech.
So,now people not only have to worry about images,but also about mere written words.Everything is punishable.It’s like nobody even understands the meaning of free speech any more.
Actually, there have been a few recent cases of people being prosecuted for both written text and cartoon illustrations that portray sex with children.
Portrayals of sex between adults and children is nothing new in literature and film. Of course, you get an automatic exemption if such prosecution would result in too much negative publicity (like prosecuting a major film production of Nabokov’s Lolita, for example).
Well I was aware about cartoons and artificially-generated-images.But this is the first time I have heard about written texts being punished.What has the world come to?
I have watched a few Italian films of 90s recently and it looks like the concept of boy-woman love is quite popular in Italy.(Or at least it used to be until very recently,I don’t know if it is still popular after the hysteria).And in Italy it looks like it is(or was) a common practice among fathers to take their sons to sex-workers when they hit puberty.And in no way are these boys “scarred for life”.
The First Amendment wasn’t intended to protect any speech, only the speech that people in power like and agree with! No wonder Sheriff Judd thinks free speech is such a silly and irrelevant issue!
This case really worries me. On one hand I find anything that deals with pedophilia reprehensible and there’s a big part of me that wants to see him in jail. I can’t help it- I’ve been around abused kids and it alters my perception of this. On the other hand, I don’t want it to mess with freedom of speech and I really don’t like the sneaky way these guys are trying to go after Greaves. It’s slimy.
I guess in the end I’ll have to support his freedom of speech to promote a book like that. I hate that it was made, but I’d hate having freedom of speech eroded even more. Today it’s a pro-pedophilia book. Tomorrow it could be Harry Potter.
Boodle,
Welcome and thanks for sharing your perspective.
I agree that people are going to say a lot of things under protection of the First Amendment that I find supremely objectionable but, like you, I value the First Amendment.
Ideas are best fought with competing ideas. Open debate exposes people to arguments that can actually change their minds (and their actions) whereas stifling debate suppresses the very challenges to their way of thinking that could make them less of a threat.