Honoring Our Nation’s Heroes—By Looking At Crap
By Anonymous
I’m spending Memorial Day wrestling with the First Amendment.
The Constitution lays it out perfectly clearly:
“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.”
So what part of “Shall make no law” is confusing?
I’m spending Memorial Day looking at crap. Disgusting, stupid, un-sexy crap. Crap that, because it features penises, vaginas, and buttholes, is under indictment. That is, the people who make it and sell it are under indictment. If they lose, they will pay enormous fines, go to jail, and have their cars, houses, and 401(k)s taken by the government.
I’m spending Memorial Day discharging my duty as a witness in an obscenity trial. In a few weeks, I’ll be asked — as a witness — my opinion on various aspects of this crap, and the people who look at it.
What I’d like to say is “excuse me, this is America. All the people in these films have proven they’re over 18. All the people buying them are over 18. So for what reason could the U.S. government possibly be interested? And how could the government’s interest possibly be legal?”
Instead, I have to participate in the Miller Test game. I’ll be asked to discuss the potential literary, artistic, political or scientific value of the crap, and to judge the interest the crap’s consumers have in it—shameful? Morbid? Playful? Ironic?
America’s obsessive pursuit of censorship disgraces our great nation. The belief that some adult material is “over the line” or “blasphemous” or “sick”—and therefore outside the bounds of our glorious social experiment in free speech—is a stain on our great contribution to human history, the American constitution.
So this Memorial Day, I won’t march in a parade, wave a flag, or talk about wars won or not yet won. I’ll be honoring our nation’s past, and defending our nation’s future– by looking at crap, and looking for loopholes in disgusting laws so that the light of our transcendent Founders can shine through.
The Author of this piece shall remain anonymous
