Discrimination for Your Own Good

New Law Proposes to Make Any Sexual Imagery of People With Disabilities Illegal

A proposed law spearheaded by a western Massachusetts district attorney and backed by Massachusetts State Rep, Kathi-Anne Reinstein will make any material that includes sexual imagery of someone over 60 or someone with a disability illegal, and anyone who produces such material subject to “child pornography” like sentences.

I first came across this in a bizarre article in the Boston Herald, which began like this:

“Pervs preying on the elderly or disabled could soon face harsh new penalties under a first-of-its-kind proposed law that would punish sicko peddlers of geriatric and handicapped porn the same as child pornographers.”

The article goes on to describe actual monsters that are apparently under your bed right now, and the horrors of back injuries resulting from careless children stepping on cracks in the sidewalk.

Here’s the actual wording of the proposed law, taken from lawyer Marc Randazza’s post on the topic:

“Whoever, either with knowledge that a person is a child under eighteen years of age, an elder or a person with a disability, or while in possession of such facts that he should have reason to know that such person is a child under eighteen years of age, an elder or a person with a disability and with lascivious intent, hires, coerces, solicits or entices, employs, procures, uses, causes, encourages, or knowingly permits such child, elder or person with a disability to pose or be exhibited in a state of nudity, for the purpose of representation or reproduction in any visual material, shall be punished by imprisonment in the state prison for a term of not less than ten nor more than twenty years, or by a fine of not less than ten thousand nor more than fifty thousand dollars, or by both such fine and imprisonment.”

In essence this law would make consensual acts illegal if they involved someone with a disability or an older adult. They’d also make it illegal for a person living with a disability or an older adult to take sexual pictures of themselves. Let’s remember that there are already laws meant to protect people from being coerced into making sexually explicit material. Whether those laws work or not is a separate issue, one not addressed by this recent proposal.

There’s a long history of sexual material featuring people with disabilities being treated differently both in the eyes of the law and of the general public. My first encounter with this was when Annie Sprinkle was arrested for a series of photos she took with fellow adult performer Long Jean Silver who is an amputee. The images were considered obscene not solely because they were sexual, but because one of the people in the pictures was visibly disabled. The same photo shoot minus the absent limb would have been fine.

Let me propose something that might seem radical to state representative, the district attorney and the possibly absexual journalist at the Boston Herald. If you want to keep your fellow citizens safe and indeed protect all citizens from sexual exploitation, what we need is equal rights, not unequal laws.

Read more (if you dare) - Boston Herald: State puts porn pervs in sights

Previously - Adult Film Offers a Good Opportunity to Talk About Sex and Disability