SF Weekly today published an article that essentially exposes research done by Schapiro Group as junk science, specifically highlighting the role played by the Women’s Funding Network and an Atlanta based anti-prostitution group called A future Not a Past.

It’s now clear it used fake data to deceive the media and lie to Congress. And it was all done to score free publicity and a wealth of public funding.

My previous articles about the Schapiro Group “studies” are here and here.

In addition to my coverage of these bullshit studies, Maggie McNeill has torn them up one side and down the other on her blog, The Honest Courtesan.

The real story here is that the mainstream media mindlessly repeats the ridiculous false claims made by these rescue organizations lending credibility to the scam, thereby aiding and abetting the fleecing of the taxpayers as well as anyone else who donates to these organizations.

And, if you’re a resident of Georgia, you will probably not be too pleased to know that your tax dollars helped fund this organization.  You may want to go take a shower, because you’ve just been violated.  Next time you want to get fucked, I suggest you check out the online adult classifieds and hire a professional.  You know, someone with integrity.

I wish to thank my regular readers and those who took the time to contribute their own thoughts.  I am very flattered to be in the midst of such honorable company.

Writing this blog has been an eye opening experience.  While there are some cases of responsible reporting by the mainstream press on the topic of sex, the vast majority of such reporting is intentionally concocted to be sensationalistic in order to attract an audience.  I used to think that kind of journalism was limited to the rags you see at the supermarket checkout stands, but the rationale has now fully infected almost all popular news sources in the U.S.    Traditional news outlets, rather than searching for the truth, now find it much more profitable to cater to the angry mob, even creating an angry mob where otherwise none would exist as they did so effectively when they targeted CraigsList.  Instead of being disinterested observers of events they now want to be part of the action and be actively involved in the making of news.

After producing this blog for only a year, I have come to understand that oppressive laws that target sexual activity are motivated by the same kind of prejudices that have been at the root of all persecution throughout history.  It is driven by human hatred of those who are different.  And it’s an equal opportunity affliction infecting both left and right.

The fact that you can be imprisoned for what you do on your own property with other consenting adults is tyranny.  Democracy only means that your oppressor is the guy who lives next door rather than some dictator.

Without sovereignty over one’s own body, there is no freedom.

“This is fair warning to those who sell or possess this product. Get rid of it or go to jail,” [Etowah County Sheriff Todd Entrekin] said.

The bath salts scare is just the latest in a perpetual sequence of ludicrous epidemic “threats to our children” that are now being invented almost monthly.  It was only weeks ago when the caffeinated alcohol drink Four Loko was the subject of a fear mongering feeding frenzy that ultimately got it summarily banned by the FDA.  Remember when it actually took a Constitutional amendment to ban something in “the land of the free”.  Now all to takes is a warning letter from some self-serving federal appointee.  We’ve come a long way, haven’t we?

So why is this an issue for the Sex Hysteria! blog?  Well, what caught my attention in this latest installment of drug war idiocy is how Sex Toy Freedom Fighter Sherri Williams is treating the impending ban.  Sherri Williams is owner of Pleasures,  a chain of sex shops in Alabama, and her antics have become the topic of several postson Sex Hysteria! (here, here, and here).   Sherri will comply with the law, but she’s a veteran in the war against Alabama government absurdity and it shows in her attitude:

The bath salts have been sold in many stores across the Valley including Pleasures in Huntsville but Tuesday morning, the store put up a sign saying “Last Day! Bath Salt Banned Buy Now!”

Reid thinks prostitution isn’t a moral enough business for the gambling capitol of the United States.

“We should do everything we can to make sure the world holds Nevada in the same high regard you and I do,” Reid continued.

Be sure and vote in the reader poll and take note of which viewpoint is favored.

And, also, take note of the fact that this proposal is being initiated by a liberal.  I too often hear from the left that the nation’s war on sex is the fault of conservatives.  The reality is that laws designed to regulate sexual activity are almost always supported by both major political parties.  Many popular women’s rights groups are among the most ardent advocates of laws that criminalize a woman’s use of her own body to earn a living.  Make no mistake, it doesn’t matter if the laws target the demand or supply side.  Women are always the ones who suffer for it.

Basically, among a hand full of other sites seized by ICE was mooo.com which is used to resolve the domain names of the 84,000 other websites.  Until the matter was rectified, visitors to sites that use mooo.com were greeted with the following banner:

“Advertisement, distribution, transportation, receipt, and possession of child pornography constitute federal crimes that carry penalties for first time offenders of up to 30 years in federal prison, a $250,000 fine, forfeiture and restitution.”

Nice work, ICE.  You slandered thousands of people in the worst possible way and then have the nerve to brag about the great job you’ve done.

Anyone who thinks the United States is in some way different from any other country that wields absolute control over the internet is in for a surprise.    The fact that the U.S. uses secrecy to shield itself from the public eye is ominous.  There is, in fact, no way to know what the shuttered sites contain and the owners of those sites are not about to risk their legal defense by publicly refuting the government’s claims.

The mere mention of protecting children cuts the average IQ of the American public in half.  Just like the 9/11 attacks had people stampeding to give up their Fourth Amendment rights, the mention of child porn has them stampeding to hand over their First Amendment protections.

The fact that this story barely gained any exposure in the mainstream media is a pretty powerful indication that the press can no longer be counted on to hold government accountable.  In fact, if anything, the mainstream press is more a partner of the government than a watchdog over it.

Last week, Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, urged Facebook to take “immediate and tangible steps” to help protect democracy and human rights activists who use its services, including addressing concerns about not being able to use pseudonyms.

Of course, I’m pretty certain that Facebook would be expected to immediately share any and all info about its users should the U.S. government demand it (regardless of any Constitutional prohibitions) as they have been known to do in the past.

It should also be noted that, while Facebook has no policy specifically prohibiting the use of its network to bring down a government, you’d better not be posting pictures of women breast feeding their babies.  I mean, there are limits to what a socially responsible mega-network will do in the name of freedom…

It takes no conviction in court to end up on the registry – only a finding by Iowa Department of Human Services staff that it was “more likely than not” that the person neglected a child or, in a much smaller number of cases, abused a child.

Of course, state agencies, with their act first and ask questions later approach to child protection, have established reputation for harming children almost as bad as the accused child abusers themselves.  It’s no wonder that the credibility of the child abuse registry is being questioned:

Iowa’s 51,960-name child abuse registry could get an overhaul in the wake of complaints that the list damages reputations and job prospects for the accused before they’ve had a fair hearing.

“There are too many innocent people on that registry list,” said Rep. Bruce Hunter, D-Des Moines. “This isn’t about letting people guilty of child abuse off the hook. Those people shouldn’t be anywhere around children.”

So, Iowa DHS is willing to smear people without due process, effectively denying them employment in their career, and encouraging future persecution of them all in the name of protecting children?

Nice work Iowa.  How much longer before you start crucifying citizens on Main Street to set an example to others that, when it comes to protecting children, you are willing to destroy as many innocent people as it takes?

Vermont lawmakers are considering making it a crime for convicted sex offenders to use false names on social media sites like Facebook, after one such incident was reported in the state.

One incident?  I guess it doesn’t take much to get a law introduced in Vermont.

Interesting how Facebook has taken over from Craigslist as the main playground for sex crazed adults looking to violate children.

The bill under review would make the crime a misdemeanor punishable by up to two years in jail. The committee said it would continue to consider the bill.

So merely using an alias can get you up to two years in prison, huh?  Remember the old days when you actually had to have an actual victim to get prison time?  Of course, the U.S. does have an reputation to maintain.

Thanks to Maggie McNeil for the link to this story.

But what really sets up the Lorain, Ohio case as a crowning achievement of justice gone completely off the tracks is the fact that, after the sentence of these two was thrown out in 2009, they are now headed back to prison because the Ohio Supreme Court reversed that two year old decision last month.

Read the entire article and you will have a pretty clear picture of what was happening all over the country in the 80s and 90s but to see the same cruelty repeated twenty years later is a travesty.  It’s incredible that current child sex abuse paranoia in this country isn’t met with more skepticism in the wake of the witch hunts that destroyed so many lives and families over those two decades.

When faced with any activity or proposal that is justified by claims of “protecting children”, the entire population of the U.S. suddenly gets gullible and stupid.   And it’s for that very reason that nearly all moral crusades are presented in those terms.    Sex offender registries are justified by the fear of pedophiles behind every tree and anti-prostitution groups try to convince the public that hundreds of thousands of children in the U.S. are being forced to be sex slaves.  And it works.  The media repeats it without a hint of skepticism, politicians exploit it to get headlines, and the public swallows it whole.

I guess I should stop referring to it as “the sex abuse panic of the 80s and 90s” because it didn’t end in the 90s.  It’s still going as strong as ever.

The case was largely decided on the testimony of pediatrician and child advocate Nancy Kellogg who immediately suspected the case was a satanic abuse case after examining the victims when the accusations were made, two months after the incident occurred.  By the mid 1990′s the impossible claims made during the satanic ritual abuse panic were already being discredited wholesale, but that didn’t stop Ms Kellogg from proceeding with this case.

Kellogg’s theory of Satanic ritual abuse was not directly presented to the jury, but the language of Prosecutor Philip Kazen certainly seemed to be tying the case to teh notoriety of the nationwide day care cases:

“We’re going to ask you,” Kazen told jurors, “to believe a 9-year-old little girl who was sacrificed on the altar of lust.”

Typical of other sex abuse cases or the era, teh case was aggressively prosecuted and guilty verdicts were reached despite the ample room for doubt.  The first warning sign was the fact that pediatrician Kellogg was pushing the Satanic ritual abuse angle in spite of its having been discredited.  Secondly, the children’s stories were perpetually changing.  Physical medical evidence was hardly conclusive.  The two girls had a history of making rape accusations.

Typical of innocent people, the four women rejected plea deals, opting to go to trial.   There is little comment from the actors in the ordeal.  Reviving this case won’t doing them any good.

Two advocacy groups, the Lubbock-based Innocence Project of Texas, or IPOT, and the National Center for Reason and Justice in New York, or NCRJ, have taken up the women’s case.

Let’s wish them luck.  The child sex abuse witch hunts of the 80s and 90s are proof of the utter cruelty people are capable of when given an excuse.  The fact that there are still victims of that crusade of languishing in prison is an example of the indiscriminate destruction that can be wrought under the mantra of “protecting children”.