To live in a culture of contradictions is frustrating for me, as a Christian thinker, who sees the obvious inconsistency in the actions of people versus the laws governing us. For instance, the right to freedom of speech has allowed pornography which feeds an ever growing perversion among those who engage in it, which eventually leads to lewd public behavior of varying degrees of severity. Feed the beast inside, and it’s going to eventually manifest itself through outward behavior.
Here is an example of that. As of March 7, 2014, in Massachusetts, it is OK to shoot sneaky photos of women and their underwear. Believe it or not, a court ruled in Boston that photos, which were taken of women’s underwear unknowingly on a public transport system, was NOT a breach of law because the women were not naked or partially naked. WHAT?!?!?! Are you kidding me?
A man is currently being sued for using his cell phone to take these pictures and record video “up the skirts” of women. When laws were written against lewd public behavior, cell phones didn’t exist. Like any other kind of loophole, some took advantage of this fact. But not much longer. After the state’s highest court ruled in favor of this man who was accused of what is being called “up skirting,” lawmakers responded by writing a new law to make the lewd behavior a crime. The governor says he’ll sign the bill.
The irony in all of this is that our laws say it’s okay for porn to proliferate the internet, and yet you can’t “up skirt.” We are sending double messages to the public – porn is okay, but take a picture of a women in her underwear and you break the law. I realize that “upskirting” is a privacy issue – that women didn’t want their pictures taken. Don’t get me wrong – I completely agree the law needs to be changed and make upskirting illegal. But as a society, however, we’re feeding an ever growing hunger for lewd sexual practices, saying it’s okay as long as you keep it in your own homes under mutual consent. That works in theory, but statistics are proving that it’s not staying behind closed doors. It’s spewing lascivious behavior onto our streets with different levels of seriousness, from this relatively mild upskiritng fiasco to acute forms like sex trafficking and rape.
So lawmakers, go ahead and slap the hand of the upskirter, then go home and watch some porn. How’s that working for ya?
