Yesterday, the Gunman had a cute post about a Christian sex toy website. And yeah, it is kind of creepy when you get the 'Ned and Maude Flanders' picture in your head and then try to add a vibrator to the scene. But of course Ned and Maude Flanders aren't the true picture of Christians; that's just an overblown, cartoonish depiction… right? Of course when I think back to some of my friends' Christian parents and then add the concept of sex toys…yeesh. (I think there were a few who could have desperately used 3 or 4- at once.)

But hey, why can’t two married Christians have hot and horny sex? (Like real married Christians- not the nuclear family with the father ala Ted Haggard who tells his wife he’s ‘going bowling’ every Friday and ends up two cities over at the ‘Fudge Palace’ in assless chaps.) Why can’t they have hot, wet, sweaty, heavy, grinding, lip biting coupling? The kind where your back arches and your toes curl. Why shouldn’t they? Why shouldn’t she dress up in the tawdry cheerleader costume? Why shouldn’t he? Why shouldn’t they explore every iota of their carnal desires- aren’t they together? Then what’s left to hide?

But it's not just 'Christians' I guess when I think about it. It’s what perplexes me about the human animal- the allover contradictions. We relentlessly search for 'that one person' to fulfill our lives yet we hide from the person that we’re supposed to be most intimate with. Male or female, we'll hook up with some completely impractical scag to tryst with because it’s easier than bridging that intimacy with the person you've decided you're going to 'spend the rest of your life with'. Married couples get together for stupid reasons and split up over even stupider ones. No matter what the 'reason', all it's ever about is that huge resistance to being completely and fully intimate with each other. Two people can yell and scream at each other for 23 years and think they have a marriage when in truth they don't really know each other at all. That's why I believe marriage is only for certain types of people. The ones with fortitude. Courage.

There ain't many of those left.

I have to giggle at it though. My first start up was a housecleaning business and that's where I discovered what a bunch of dirty, dirty liars Americans are. How we will say one thing without blinking- all while standing on a Rocky Mountain sized range of bullshit. Oh, I had to giggle at the vast majority of prudish Americans who wanted Miley Cyrus hung from her thumbs and given 30 lashes for her 'tawdry' photos. Puh-leaze. It doesn't matter if it's a 2 million dollar home or a 1 bedroom apartment, this is the same America that hides a monumental stash of dildo's and 'Barely Legal' porn under its bed, right along with stiff crotchless panties and fuzzy handcuffs. I should know. I've sucked up the cord of your Gigantico 3000 vibrator into my vacuum plenty of times. I finally learned to look under your bed before vacuuming to move (with a broom) the half dozen or so butt plugs you keep under there. Do you know how much hell those damn things play on a vacuum? They'll bang up the roller bar and snap the belt faster than you can say 'hypocrite'.

Oh, how many times have I dusted high shelves and come across your hidden stash of magazines, books and videos that depict everything from pregnant women to black men to dogs and donkeys. And ladies- some of you rival the men in this area. Or- oh God- dusting across the VCR, accidentally hitting play and getting an eyeful of your 'homemade videos'? And what about that time of walking in on my client's husband and the exchange student? The male exchange student.    Yeah.

You wanna learn a lot about the secret lives- the real lives of people- go clean their houses. While we're panicking over violent video games, there's a lot of you with BDSM and rape porno stashed under the mattress. (Hey- you're the one who wanted me to make your bed. The sheet has to be folded exactly 6 inches down from the top and tucked in all the way around, remember?)

America's obsession/repression with sex/intimacy- I actually think it's very interesting. I do have my ideas about sex and I think sex is a fine thing. I never got obsessed with it the way I was told I should have been or was supposed to be. (I enjoyed it just fine. It just kind of… never made my list of the top ten things to do.) Maybe when I am in the retirement home I can become the resident slut and work on it then. We'll have to see what time affords. I'll be sure and wear my glasses though. Don't wanna hide my bananas under the bed and keep my dildos in the fruit bowl.

The other day (Saturday) a little old lady knocked on my front door. I answered of course, how dangerous could she be? She produced a large clip-board and said:

 "Hello, I'm from the Electoral Roll Office, we're just checking to see who lives here. We only have one peron by the name of  x.xxxxx registered here, is that right?"

Well colour me 'fucking stupid'. How insidious is that !!?? So I just said: "Yup" (a lie) and she left. The point is that in this country the Bureau of Statistics has the right by law to ask you any questions they want to and the Electoral Roll Office has the right to ask for the registration details of any person at your home.

I don't vote, because it's compulsory and I object to being told by the government what I can and can't do. I also object to them knowing my details as I want my privacy. I haven't been on the electoral roll for some time and I don't fill in the census form. The government will tell you that they keep all your details confidential and that if you have nothing to hide then you shouldn't need to keep details from them. I believe this is the very same logic the Nazis used in the 1930s.

I have nothing to hide, I just don't want to share. I'm not a sharing person and I don't trust the government of today or, more importantly tomorrow to keep my details private.

We in Oz still live under the "convict mentality" that the government must give us permission to do things and that we must ask permission to be allowed to do things. We still feel that the government is our 'Boss' and that we should obey when we're told to. The government uses the Bureau of Statistics (in the form of the census) and the Electoral Roll Office (you must be registered to vote if you're over 18) to gather information about you and to keep track of you. By the way, if you refuse to give them information or you don't enroll to vote (and keep your details current) you are liable to be fined OR IMPRISIONED at the discretion of the judge at your hearing.

It's time we demanded some freedom and some privacy! Stand up for yourselves you lazy bastards - Revolt!!! SAY NO! Demand that the government works to ensure and support your freedom and your privacy, make them work for you!

No doubt the federales could, if they chose track me down via my IP address and pursue legal action for my terribly revolutionary views and actions. I wonder if they will. Stay tuned for "My Life - Under Guard"

,{:-)   

Please note:  This article was pulled from their server, apparently at the request of the DoJ.  Some kind soul reposted the text on a message board.  I claim no rights to this article whatsoever - I just think the information is important enough and timely enough to warrant reposting.

The stormtroopers are coming, and they are coming for you.  You think you haven't done anything wrong?  They can fix that, and make it apply backwards to the beginning of time if they want...

Banned in America

BME: Banned in America
“Censorship reflects society’s lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime.”
- Justice Potter Stewart, US Supreme Court
As of June 24, 2005, publishing BME was made illegal in the United States, with my wife Rachel and I each facing life in prison due to our involvement in the site. In no way am I exaggerating the risk we were at. Our lawyer, who specializes in free speech issues, advised us that there was a good chance of prosecution, beating the charges would be far from guaranteed, and that if we had any sense we’d leave America immediately and tell others to do the same.
Taking his advice, we moved all of our servers back into Canada which has far broader protection of speech and the press, as well as the required privacy protections. Bringing BME back to Canada where it started cost us a great deal of time, money, and effort, but in the long run will be essential in keeping us online. Without this move it would have been only a matter of time before the site was forced to shut down, have its records seized, and seen us imprisoned.

What caused this?
The specific laws in question are the “18 USC 2257” regulations, a set of record-keeping rules which the US government claims have been put in place to combat child porn. They stipulate that for all photos published, copies of ID and other information must be kept and that these must be made available to the US Department of Justice for at least twenty hours a week, without warning or warrant required for inspection of the records or our place of business (ie. our home).
This doesn’t affect only photos or video directly produced by BME; this would also affect content produced by BME members — so every photo on BME and every photo on IAM could have these requirements applied to it. Any photo that is “sexual” in nature or of a “sadistic” or “masochistic” subject matter (even if the photo is blurred or behind a password wall) is affected — this would certainly include suspension, play piercing, nipple piercing, genital piercing, and of course everything in BME/HARD and BME/extreme.
“The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws.”
- Tacitus

How do the 2257 regulations affect BME?
In simple terms, to continue publishing BME in the US I would need to do the following:
• For every photo on the site, I would need to get a copy of the person in the picture’s ID as well as other information like all of their online aliases, when and where the photo was taken, and share this with the US government.
• Only US content could be posted to BME, in part because of US ID requirements, and in part because such record keeping would be a violation of foreign privacy laws. Almost all foreign content would have to be removed immediately, and foreign members banned.
• Rather than simply “beginning now,” these laws are retroactive to almost the day that BME started and would affect all past photos posted as well as new ones.
• Any photo that I could not (or would not) provide full ID records for would need to be removed immediately.
• Linking to BME by other sites could be illegal as well.
Clearly most people submitting to BME would not be willing to share such records with the government, nor should they have to. Every single photo found to be in violation would be a $25,000 fine plus five years in prison. There are nearly a million photos on BME. You can see that they’ve been very clever — this is not a direct attack on free speech, but a set of requirements that more so violate search and seizure laws and privacy concerns. As such, I hope you understand why we chose to leave the US to Canada where far more liberal publication laws allow us to continue running BME without these changes, rather than taking the risk and expense of trying to fight this in court as foreigners.
“America is at that awkward stage; it’s too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards.”
- Claire Wolfe

How do the 2257 regulations affect piercers, suspension groups, and artists?
If a US body piercer publishes photos of nipple piercing, genital piercing, or anything else that could be considered sexual, sadistic, or masochistic in nature, this could be covered by the new laws. In addition, this could cover play piercing and suspension if there is nudity involved or if a court decided to class these activities as sadistic or masochistic. That means that if you’re an American piercer or suspension group that wants to operate inside the law, you will need to keep copies of ID of anyone you work with, along with records on the dates and times and locations of any photos or video taken, share that with the US government, and make a public statement on your website detailing this compliance — and don’t forget this is retroactive ten years back.
Please note that this only marginally affects US people publishing on BME because now that BME is outside of the US we can not be forced to share records with the US DoJ and have no intention of ever doing so. In addition, with photos on BME, we are the “producers” of the content, so the risk of prosecution falls to Rachel and I rather than to you. I don’t believe you have to worry.

How do the 2257 regulations affect IAM members?
IAM has been moved to Canada along with the rest of the BME servers. None of IAM’s logs or records will be shared with the US DoJ, so even if you are American, no definitive evidence against you could presented via IAM use. In any case, as far as I know you can’t be prosecuted for photos of yourself (although you could be if you took a photo of someone else at a BBQ that was explicit), and with BME as the “producer”, the charges would likely be levied at us rather than at you.

Banned from the USA
The crazy thing about these laws is that even though I am a Canadian, don’t live in the United States, and the site is published outside the US and served out of Canada, I could still be arrested if I ever set foot in the United States — even if just on a stop-over taking a vacation to somewhere else. It sounds nuts — how can they arrest you for an act that you did in your home country, that’s legal in your home country? It’s like arresting a Dutch citizen for smoking pot in Amsterdam two weeks earlier when he visits NYC on vacation.
I suppose because the Internet is considered “international,” the US feels that it can prosecute “online criminals” no matter where they may be from and no matter where they may have acted. Let me briefly tell you the story of Dmitry Sklyarov, a Russian programmer who was imprisoned in just this way.
In Russia, many computers are older, slower, and far less powerful and considered obsolete in comparison to the ones that are common in America. Because of that, US companies often develop products which can only be used by the wealthy in Russia. A good example is Adobe Systems, who developed the PDF standard. Now, PDF readers exist for almost every computer, including the lower-end Russian machines, but they had a protected eBook variant whose copyright protection limited its use to only more expensive modern computers.
Under Russian law, selling someone an eBook and then blocking them from using it because of the type of computer they have is a violation of the law (that is, Adobe was in violation of Russian law because of the type of copy protection they were using), so Dmitry didn’t feel that he was doing anything wrong when he developed a piece of software that allowed eBook owners to convert the files to standard PDF format so they could read them on older computers as well as on devices like readers for blind users (and his software was designed to work on only legitimately purchased products, and was not intended as a tool for theft in any way).
Adobe caught wind of his software and he was invited to give a talk in California on it. His flight was paid for, they watched his talk from the audience, clapped, and, as he walked off the stage he was immediately arrested by the US Department of Justice and incarcerated. He had committed no crime on US soil, nor had he committed one on Russian soil, but in jail he rotted.
“Take away the right to say ‘fuck’ and you take away the right to say ‘fuck the government.’”
- Lenny Bruce

Why not just comply?
The invasive record keeping and sharing requirements put forth by the 2257 regulations are a violation of Canadian privacy laws (and those of many other free nations). For me to comply with 2257, I would need to violate the civil rights laws of Canada, so I am now forced to never set foot again in the US until the 2257 regulations are struck down (assuming that happens).
More importantly, much of what is documented on BME is private expression (of the sort that the general public frowns upon), and even expression that sometimes borders what is legal and what is not (extreme modification, suspension in some areas, even tattooing and piercing at times). Because of this, revealing the identities of everyone in the photos could be disastrous to their public lives. Couple that with dubious and deceitful prosecutions against modification artists and modified people by the US government, and few people would continue feeling safe in submitting photos to BME.
Even if there were no issues with non-US submissions, choosing to comply with the 2257 regulations would absolutely stifle BME’s members ability — and right — to express themselves and share their lives with each other without fear of being monitored by repressive government agents.
“Wherever they burn books, they will also, in the end, burn people.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

So what’s going to happen?
We made the decision to leave the US because of these laws, and are thus no longer ruled by their draconian regulations. In summary BME will protect itself and BME will protect its members. By moving out of the US and staying out of the US and choosing a host country that values civil liberties, we are able to continue publishing without making any changes to the way BME is run or our general requirements.
You will not have to attach your ID to photos, and I will never share my records, logs, or email archives with the US government or any other government. The protection and privacy of BME’s members is one of our top priorities and we will do everything we can to allow body modification and play enthusiasts to continue communicating and expressing themselves.
If you would like to support the fight against these regulations, please consider joining the Free Speech Coalition at freespeechcoalition.com, an advocacy group that is currently challenging these laws in court.

Shannon Larratt
BMEzine.com
IAM members, click here to comment on or discuss this article.

Shannon Larratt is the editor and publisher of BMEZINE.COM, the largest and oldest full-spectrum body modification publication on the planet. He also is known for his promotion of radical individualistic politics, spirituality, and on a more base level, his main vice: exotic cars. Shannon is currently working from a portable computer as he vacations in Mexico with his family and friends.
Copyright © 2005 BMEZINE.COM. Permission is granted to reprint this article in its entirety as long as credit is retained and usage is non-commercial. Requests to publish edited or shortened versions must be confirmed in writing. For bibliographical purposes this article was first published July 3rd, 2005 by BMEZINE.COM in La Paz, BCS, Mexico.