Censorship? You ain’t seen nothing yet.

I’m always amazed by people who refuse to support the CBLDF because they perceive the organization as solely interested in protecting the publication of adult-only comics. Since such nay-sayers find such comics in poor taste, they don’t understand why the CBLDF would fight for the rights of any adult to purchase them. And when it’s pointed out that other material may well be targeted, they dismiss such claims out of hand.

I wonder what they would say to what’s currently going on in South Carolina, where the U.S. government seized a comic book because–get ready–it featured a parody of George W. Bush.

Not that that’s what they admit to, of course. From the intro to the case at www.cbldf.org:

“On October 27, U.S. Customs sent a letter to Top Shelf Productions notifying them that copies of the anthology Stripburger had been seized, charging that the stories “Richie Bush” by Peter Kuper and “Moj Stub” (translated, “My Pole”) by Bojan Red

108 comments on “Censorship? You ain’t seen nothing yet.

  1. Was someone here arguing that, if homosexual marriage was legalized, we should have unfair barriers to entry JUST FOR THEM?

    The argument is that people want a barrier to prevent legalizing it to begin with.

    Just as there have been attempts by people to prevent gays from adopting kids, etc.

    But there are no such barriers (legally) to prevent a hetero couple. There is nothing to prove that they are actually a loving couple, just as there is nothing to really stop them from getting a divorce.

    Yet, I believe divorce to be far more destructive to the “institution” of marriage than gays ever will be.
    The whole argument boils down to the fact that alot of people in this country prefer gays to be second-class citizens.

  2. Civil marriage is the problem. The main reason we have civil marriage is tax, property, and inheritance/survivorship. You can tax a married couple differently than singles, most property laws default ownership to a surviving spouse, etc. You can’t even say child custody rights are inherant in marriage, as unmarried parents have pretty much the same custody rights as married parents.

    So the solution is to remove marriage from the civil arena. If anyone wants to preserve their idea of traditional marriage, let them do so within their religion, where this kind of discrimination is allowed. Trying to defend the attempts to limit the definition of civil marriage as anything other than a religiously motivated action is a sham.

  3. I’m not pushing that we ask people to prove they’re a loving couple before they get married — just that they’re a committed couple, and that they fully understand the magnitude of what marriage means. I’d expect that of any couple getting married, whether the couple was a hetero one or not.

    I’m not sure that not allowing gays to marry is necessarily relegating them to second-class citizenship. It all boils down to how we see the definition of marriage. If you see it as merely a union (conveying legal benefits) between two people who’re in love, then I can understand why you’d see it that way. If you see it as something based on the male/female pairings that God commanded, then I understand why you’d see it as a bad thing that the definition is changed. I understand both points of view, and while I lean more toward the second, I respect those who hold the first.

    In the end, I tend to agree that divore is more destructive to the “institution” of marriage than homosexuals are. People who’re married five or six times over the span of 20 years do far more to erode the public perception of marriage as an institution than a committed homosexual couple that’s together for 20 years ever would.

  4. both parties have to want to save the marriage for it to work. But if there is no expectation to even try (assuming there is no abuse, adultery, etc.), then we are setting the bar way too low.

    This is a good point; but I’m not sure that setting the bar high is something that can be legislated. A reluctance to get divorced seems to be more of a societal expectation, independent of the laws.

    It’s been mentioned here before, but once more: the US has twice (or more) the divorce rate of any other Western country except the UK. Yet most of these other countries make it easier to get divorced than the US does.

    Also consider that “no-fault” laws in most countries have generally been enacted some years after the divorce rate rose (usually in an attempt to unburden overloaded civil courts).

    That suggests that the expectation to try and make a marriage work has very little to do with the laws on the books, and that fine-tuning/supplementing divorce laws would have little to no effect.

    Perhaps it’s better to spend the energy on asking what’s putting the pressure on couples in the first place. Crass commercialism making people focus on material needs? Unrealisticly high standards? Overwork? Britney setting a bad example? Hard to say.

    (Fun facts: Southern Baptists have the highest divorce rate in the US; Lutherans the lowest. Atheists and agnostics have an even lower rate, but are still more likely to get divorced than people in other countries).

  5. Sorry, formatting didn’t work; in my previous post, the following was by Jim in Iowas, and was supposed to be quoted/italicized:

    “both parties have to want to save the marriage for it to work. But if there is no expectation to even try (assuming there is no abuse, adultery, etc.), then we are setting the bar way too low.”

  6. You know, the act of seize and censor is sufficiently offensive that you don’t have to fabricate imagined reasons to make it odious. By making it about something that’s completely unprobable all you do it make it easier for people to dismiss the entire story as paranoid ramblings.

  7. It is really sad i fell upon this site while looking for support our troops stuff. This is something none of you care to do. How sad that a bunch of so called adults sit around and read comic books. There is a whole real world out there. What are wrong are you afraid? Oh i am sorry maybe you can’t understand me, I voted for Bush I just couldn’t stand the thought of having a so called man whose wife financially supports terrorists, believes in abortion and wants to allow gay marriages. I think instead of reading you little kiddies magazines you need to get out what so of us like to call the GOOD WORD, you know the bible. By the way i am also a southerner a Georgia southerner at that. How low can you get?

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