True, but just because you weren’t allowed to sue for it doesn’t mean management didn’t take it seriously. Postal workers wanking in their trucks to the latest copy of Playboy instead of delivering mail or “misplacing” pieces into their own pockets. Or some bastard can watch your mailbox and lift it after the mail carrier delivers it and then the Post Office has to deal with the headache of another complaint of “lost mail”. Any way you look at it obscene items in the mail, especially if they are easily identifiable as such, disrupt the system. My point was that these laws won’t be changed today because of the, justifiable, fear of “hostile workplace” claims.
Kindof. The USPS benefits from many subsidies such as being able to borrow at a lower rate than its competitors can get. It also doesn’t have to pay taxes on any of the buildings and trucks that it owns. USPS employees are lumped in with Civil Servants in general, which means they get the bargaining power of the entire population of the civil service when negotiating health care and retirement issues. The USPS pays into the Civil Service Retirement Funds(that’s what the recent rise in postage was for, there was going to be a shortfall) but they aren’t a “self-supporting corporation” in the traditional sense. Plus you have to remember the decades and decades when they were taxpayer supported and all the infrastructure(buildings, trucks, planes, trains, etc) that was taxpayer-bought and then essentially gifted to this “corporation”.
That’s what bugs me about this case. I’ve read as much as I could handle of the Affadavit posted on The Smoking Gun and I saw no references to the packages being anything other than plain, unmarked parcels. I guess the arguement could still be made that if they are dropped and pop open, or if they end up as dead letters(undeliverable because of address SNAFUs or no forwarding addresses, or a dozen other reasons) then some poor postal inspector at the dead letter office may open them to see if he can find some more info on who to return them to or an alternate delivery address(not sure they do this, they may just warehouse dead letters for a while and then destroy them) and then the worms go everywhere.
Still, pretty much all the reasonable arguements I can see for restricting transport of obscene material fall apart when the item we’re talking about is a plain brown box.
Well, the fact they have no 1st Admendment, and I got ahold of a porn vid with all the anal sex scenes edited out, and it said “edited for Canada” (and there was something like that on some porn auction site, too). I have also heard of our porn being held at the border.
Ah… the classic personal anecdote. That you have seen a video that was “edited for Canada” must represent our contemporary view towards sex. You’ve clearly proven that depictions of anal sex are illegal in Canada.
Which they’re not of course.
Regarding your other point, there was a case where books were seized at the border. “Little Sister’s” bookstore is famous in Canada because of how they have been treated by customs officials. Fortunately, the Supreme Court struck down the relevant provision in the Canadian customs act, and from now on the onus will be on the government (rather than the importer) to prove that material is obscene.
So I admit that we have some oppressive policies. But the distinction I was trying to raise has less to do with policy than values (notice I used the word “values” in my original post). The difference is in the values of the citizenry. If you can’t see this difference when comparing Canadian and American culture, try comparing European and American culture. What I believe to be you’re countries misplaced values should then become more obvious.
I feel I may not have explained myself very clearly. Let me know if you need me to clarify any of my points. cite
I forgot to address your point regarding the 1st Amendment. We do have a Charter of Rights and Freedoms and this charter is part of our constitution. Among many other coveted rights, this charter gives us the right of:
I’m not a lawyer, so I don’t think I’m the proper one to argue about our laws. That being the case, I’m willing to accept this compromise.
However, DrDeth, let me clarify further that the degree of “openess to sexuality” is less important than your country’s clear glorification of violence (both structural and physical). Whether or not both of our countries are “hung up” on sexuality has little to do with my , I am trying to point out the contradiction of America’s obsession with violence (and this obsession is certainly not as pronounced in my country - here there can be no compromise).
How nice that you boil down the value of any speech to how well it sells. Forget whether it has any serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value, and tell me how much it cleared at the box office!!!
Feel free to have anybody you want to take a crap in your mouth (insert "full of it already joke here), that’s not what this debate is about. It’s about whether some types of speech are deserving of First Amendment protection from Congressional restrictions. The Supreme Court has said there is some speech that can be regulated and I agree with them.
In your world, it must be better to have any opinion at all rather than one based on facts. If this quote is any indication of how you engage in debates, I fear for you. I didn’t give an opinion on whether something is obscene because I haven’t seen it. Seemed like the prudent thing to do rather than rant about something I have no idea about. But if you don’t have to let stuff like facts get in the way, keep it up.
The major problem with the government regulating obscene speech is the test for it. Determining if something has any serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value is a subjective decision, and what one person believes has value, another may not. The government should not be deciding what citizens can or cannot see. If someone wants to watch a movie of some girls takin’ a crap, it’s not the government’s place to make a moral judgement on that video and say that nobody can see it. The girls consented and were probably paid, what is the big deal here? Unless people are being forced to see obscene content like this, there shouldn’t be regulation of it, besides the obvious things like requiring the consent of those involved.
Personally, I think those things shouldn’t exist in the first place and those people who choose to buy/watch/make that sort of thing don’t deserve an ounce of human dignity or respect.
In the United States, we have laws guaranteeing certain freedoms until they prevent others from exercising their own rights. In many ways, that is a great thing.
But some things are not acceptable on a moral level. Pornography seems to degrade those who are portrayed as well as drag down any meaning to actual sexual intercourse and relationship outside of sex.
I personally have a huge problem with the existance of porn and strip clubs and the like, but the law does not prohibite that sort of thing.
I watch pornography from time to time. According to you I don’t deserve an ounce of human dignity or respect.
Yes, yes it is.
I don’t think that sex is neccesarily degrading, either to partake in or to watch.
There are lots of men out there (such as myself) who would prefer an actual, non shallow relationship with a woman that involves some physical intimacy, but for various reasons have difficulty doing so. Pornography seems to be the best subsititute, not because we want to degrade women, but because men tend to be stimulated visually. I’m guessing by your name that you are a woman, so it may not be easy for you to understand why people buy/download this sort of thing.
