In a particularly egregious and self-humiliating act of mind-boggling legal insanity, the state of Michigan has arrested and charged a Muskegon man, Evan Emory, with ”manufacturing child sexual abusive material” – a major felony – for posting a YouTube video in which he spliced together scenes of himself singing a funny but sexually explicit song to an empty classroom, inter-cut with “reaction” video of 1’st graders who were actually listening to a completely different, G-rated song he’d recorded earlier. The resulting video he posted merely made it appear as if he was singing the explicit song to the kids.
If convicted, he faces up to a twenty year prison sentence!
If anyone still doubted it, this again makes it abundantly clear that American law is West and reason and justice are East, and never the twain shall meet. When it comes to running for office (regrettably, judges are also elected in Michigan, which explains a lot), a candidate who chooses a platform of “protecting” our children – which in actuality means nothing worthwhile at all and merely translates to an ever-increasing spiral of forcing ever greater sentences for ever more trivial and harmless “offenses” – is a sure winner with “think about the children!” conservative nutjobs, a very large segment of the population.
Here’s a link to a brief CBS News Online story of the case, and here’s a link to his YouTube page: Evan Emory Music
Note that the video in question has been removed, and I can’t find a copy anywhere.
While he did get permission from the elementary school to record the video of himself singing the G-rated song, I don’t know whether he also got permission to record the kids’ reaction. But even if he did, I agree with others – including Emory himself – who have commented that he exercised poor judgment and acted in bad faith by not telling the school the whole story of what he intended to do. Many have also claimed he should have gotten signed releases from the kids’ parents to use their images, but while that would certainly have been the ethical thing to do, I’m not sure if the law actually requires it.
But the ”manufacturing child sexual abusive material” felony charge represents an outrageously despicable new low for Michigan law, and that’s what I’m here to barbecue with relish and lots of Tabasco-soaked mesquite. According to the Muskegon County prosecutor in charge of the case, Tony Tague, Michigan law – quite horrifically and with utterly loathsome contempt for reason and fairness – doesn’t distinguish between images that actually feature child sexual abuse from those that merely appear to show nothing more than merely using sexually explicit language with children within earshot!
The mind reels! What ludicrously irrational bullshit!
Here’s a link to the statute reportedly involved: Michigan Section 750.145c
Now, I’m not a lawyer and I haven’t parsed through it all at length, but I can find no reference there to merely using sexually explicit language at all, let alone creating a video in which it only appears to be used in front of children.
Fuck you, Michigan legislators who voted for such an egregiously anti-rational and hate-fueled law, and fuck you too, Tony Tague for so cravenly bowing to pressure from those mindless, knee-jerk, over-sensitive “think of the children” cavity-headed uni-balled organgarglers!