WOT: Texas Appeals Court Finds a Legal Way to Keep Perverts Out of OC Parks, and MALAGUEÑA!

By
Greg Diamond
– September 19, 2014Posted in: "The OC", Fresh Juice
Marilyn Monroe with upskirt photographer

Somehow, adding the additional character completely ruins it.

I haven’t had time to read this entire decision, which just came out today, but from what I can tell it is actually as stupid and vile as it seems.  (Its only saving grace, I’d think, is that it may be SO stupid and vile that it could elect Wendy Davis as that state’s new Governor.)  This text comes from this story in Cosmo online:  http://www.cosmopolitan.com/lifestyle/news/a31262/texas-appeals-court-rules-for-upskirt-photos/  (Hey, really, I got it from a friend, OK?)

Quoting from her opinion again, [Presiding Judge Sharon] Keller wrote that protecting someone, even a child just trying to have fun in a splash pool, “from being the object of sexual thoughts,” is something the First Amendment stands against. Furthermore, a ban on upskirting and the like, she says, represents the “‘paternalistic interest in regulating the defendant’s mind’ that the Amendment was designed to guard against.” Taking the defendant’s case, Peter Linzer, a professor of constitutional law at Houston University’s Law Center added, “it’s hard to see how you could make taking a picture a crime.” One more awful quote from his arguments to the court:

“To think that it’s unlawful to look at a little girl in a swimsuit, when you have lascivious thoughts, in public? And you did not do anything to that child? That cannot be made a crime in the United States. The fact that some people might find that very offensive doesn’t change anything. … You can’t prevent someone in public from looking at you and having dark thoughts.”

On these free speech grounds, the court’s ruling thus invalidates parts of a Texan law that had previously criminalized examples of invasive, sexualized photography.

Finally, a constitutional alternative to the rights-busting plan that DA Rackauckas had to bar anyone on the sex offender registry from public parks: attract them all to Texas!  Adios, cowpokes!  Hope someone doesn’t break your cameras (and your fingers)!  (That’s not strictly true — actually, I do.)

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Meanwhile, Chairman Vern has been recording YouTubes again, and this is him playing Malagueña, a composition by Cuban pianist Ernesto Lecuona based on traditional Spanish flamenco tunes:

This is your Weekend Open Thread.  Talk about that or anything else you’d like within reasonable bounds of decency and decorum.

 

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About Greg Diamond

Somewhat verbose attorney, semi-disabled and semi-retired, residing in northwest Brea. Occasionally ran for office against jerks who otherwise would have gonr unopposed. Got 45% of the vote against Bob Huff for State Senate in 2012; Josh Newman then won the seat in 2016. In 2014 became the first attorney to challenge OCDA Tony Rackauckas since 2002; Todd Spitzer then won that seat in 2018. Every time he's run against some rotten incumbent, the *next* person to challenge them wins! He's OK with that. Corrupt party hacks hate him. He's OK with that too. He does advise some local campaigns informally and (so far) without compensation. (If that last bit changes, he will declare the interest.) His daughter is a professional campaign treasurer. He doesn't usually know whom she and her firm represent. Whether they do so never influences his endorsements or coverage. (He does have his own strong opinions.) But when he does check campaign finance forms, he is often happily surprised to learn that good candidates he respects often DO hire her firm. (Maybe bad ones are scared off by his relationship with her, but they needn't be.)