High Court blocks Knox appeal

In a profound setback for freedom of expression in the US, the Supreme Court on January 16th refused to hear an appeal from Stephen Knox, a Pennsylvania man who was convicted under federal "child pornography" laws for possessing videotapes showing girls in leotards and bathing suits, girls whose genitals were completely covered by clothing and who were engaged in no sexual activity. The high court's refusal leaves US youth porn laws in an ambiguous and contradictory state, and represents a further erosion of Constitutional protection for an area of expression that is already subject to draconian penalties and ongoing popular and political hysteria. These circumstances are sure to be exploited in the coming months and years by police and prosecutors, before any sort of clear standards of legal permissibility are re-established.

The legal question at stake in the Knox case is whether a minor's genitals have to be visible to constitute a "lascivious exhibition," the minimal standard for a photographic image to be "child pornography" under the federal statute. The US government's new official position - which the high court refused to use the Knox case to contest - is that whether a minor is clothed or unclothed is irrelevant as to whether an exhibition is "lascivious." This position reverses the Justice Department's stated policy as of a year ago, and is an interpretation without basis either in the history of the youth porn statute or its current language. Nonetheless, the right wing grandstanded the Knox vase over the past year in a successful effort to win official backing of this interpretive leap.

source: Article 'High Court Blocks Knox Appeal' by Bill Andriette; NAMBLA Bulletin, Vol. 15, No. 8; December 1994