From: Bill Stewart <stewarts@ix.netcom.com>
Date: Wed, 31 Jan 1996 16:48:04 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: [FACTS] Germany, or "Oh no not again"
Message-ID: <199601310810.AAA00286@ix10.ix.netcom.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


A message claiming to be from
>                          SANDY SANDFORT
allegedly wrote:
>> Isn't there something in U.S. Code about crossing state lines
>> for immoral purposes?
>No relevance here.  Originally enacted to combat the "white 
>slavery" trade, it was probably used more to prosecute unmarried
>lovers for sexual activity outside of marriage.  I don't even
>know if it's still on the books, but as I said, no relevance in
>the current debate.

There's a lot of US law about transporting various materials
across state lines or using interstate carrier services or
in ways that _might_ affect interstate commerce.  
Politically incorrect language or imagery (obscenity for adults;
indecency for children), politically incorrect vegetable products,
politically correct but economically incorrect vegetable and animal
products, geographically incorrect humans, mathematically correct
but politically incorrect image-manipulation bitstreams all are affected.

While the German censorship is evil, immoral, and impractical,
I have to agree with Dr. Vulis that many American laws are similarly
wrong, and the Germans are at least trying, in their inadequate and
immoral way, to fight genuine evils that are far worse than the stuff
the US government is attempting to censor.

BTW, today's "Recorder" (Bay Area legal newspaper) reports that the
US 6th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the Thomases' conviction.
96 C.D.O.S 609.

ABTW, they didn't need those laws to fight "white slavery"; kidnapping
and rape were already illegal, but any opportunity to make a law....


#--
#				Thanks;  Bill
# Bill Stewart, stewarts@ix.netcom.com, Pager/Voicemail 1-408-787-1281
# http://www.idiom.com/~wcs