The ACLU is right again... two times in as many years

For the second time in two years the ACLU is right on an issue. Now considering there is an ACLU chapter for each state, and a national umbrella organization you would think that they would get things right more than only once a year on average.

This time the ACLU is filing suit against a prosecutor in Pennsylvania for threatening to charge 3 teenage girls on child porn charges for sending nude and semi-nude photos of themselves in a craze now known as "sexting". There are more than a dozen of these cases around the country where teens have been charged with adult child porn and endangerment charges for sending, receiving, or distributing (as teens would do, boys to be cool, girls to be malicious) these pictures to other people.

The most recent case is a few miles away from where I live in which a 14 year old middle school girl is facing child pornography charges, the mandatory result of which is life time registry on a sexual offender's list. This girl posted what is being described as "explicit" photos of herself on Myspace. So this 14 year old girl is facing up to 17 years in jail and a lifetime of registry as a sex offender (as a registered offender your neighbors will know you are on the list but not why and you cannot work in many professions such as nursing, teaching, or even volunteering with scouting or a coach)... all because she put up some picture of her bare bottom and some full frontal shots.

Child pornography is reprehensible, but not as reprehensible as prosecutors who willingly misinterpret the laws or claim they "have no choice". It also demonstrates why common sense must be used when drafting these laws, that are often the result of knee jerk hysteria over a single case, and the need to amend them when unforeseen variations of what was envisioned when the law was drafted occur.

Instead of saying "We need to imprison and ruin the life of an 8th grader who put pictures of her breasts on her Myspace" they should say "We need to fix this law right now, this wasn't the intention".

These kids need to learn the dangers that are out there with child predators and how it can ruin their life (at least in the short term) by sending these pictures, which will never go away in the digital world. There is a documented case where sexting caused a young woman to commit suicide due to the taunting from her peers. This education is what the people involved need, not jail and not a lifetime of explaining to their children why they can't coach Little League or go on a mother-daughter camping trip.

So like a stopped clock the ACLU is right twice... in two years.