The Great American Symphony Orchestra -- Book Review The Sex Abuse Industry and the American Police State
The Great American
Symphony Orchestra
by
Anthony J. Cirone. Galesville, MD: Meredith Music Publications. 2011.
The
Great American Symphony Orchestra is an informative,
well-written overview of how a symphony orchestra operates. It is a primer, an outline, a guidebook, not
an in depth exploration or analysis. It
is not Ball Four, or The Paper Lion. I attend San Francisco Symphony performances
frequently, and over the years have developed a number of questions about just
how does all of this come about and what keeps it going. Cirone answered many of my questions,
especially about the organizational structure of the symphony. What you see on the stage is only the visible
tip or a rather large enterprise. In his
Appendix B he lists the many departments that support and administer the
orchestra. He says the ratio of support
staff to orchestra members is one-to-one, but it seems to me like it must be more
than that. There are many people behind
the scenes that make a symphony orchestra possible.
Cirone was percussionist with the San Francisco Symphony
from 1965 to 2001. During this long
tenure he served under Music Directors Seiji Ozawa, Edo DeWaart, Herbert
Blomstedt, and Michael Tilson Thomas and noted guest conductors such as Leonard
Bernstein, Igor Stravinsky, Aaron Copland, Eugene Ormandy, Kurt Mazur, Rafael
Kubelik, and James Levine. He has vast
knowledge of the symphony and its personalities. I wish he would share more of
what he knows. What you get in this book
is the public tour. The Symphony as it
would like to have itself presented.
Throughout the book he stresses the dedication demanded of
the musicians to reach the high level or performance required of orchestra
musicians. It is an arduous process to
create a symphony orchestra musician that begins early in life and continues
throughout. He describes in detail the
training that musicians must undergo, the audition process for admission to the
Symphony, which is very interesting, the rehearsals in preparation for a
concert, the process of moving a symphony orchestra on a tour, the expenses of
a symphony orchestra and its sources of funding. There is a very nice chapter on Arthur Fiedler
and his tenure presiding over the San Francisco Pops. I was very interested in the role of the
conductor and how the conductor shapes the character of the orchestra. I would like to have heard more about the
relations between the musicians within the symphony. These are people who spend a lot of time
together and are a rather close knit group that continues over years. These very intimate relationships which he
talks about only in generalities. He is
very discreet about the family business.
One point that he obliquely touches on, but does so repeatedly, is that developing
extraordinary musical skill stunts young people in other areas of their
development.
Professional musicians practice
constantly; in fact, they become slaves to their instruments. Even as young children, these artists-to-be
spent years developing technique and preparing etudes for lessons -- time that
often replaced social activities. (p. 25)
Students who excel as music
majors at the undergraduate level and want to pursue graduate-level studies in
this field love to perform and have no other strong interest. (p. 39)
Although members of a family
have hobbies, this is not always the case with symphony artists, many of whom
have no interests outside of music. . . To
excel in any one area takes a great amount of energy and when family
obligations are added into the mix, little time is left for anything else in a
busy musician's schedule. (p. 18)
This theme of the personal and social cost of producing high
caliber musicians recurs throughout the book although he does not develop it in
detail or illustrate it with specific anecdotes. But I have the sense that there is some
regret or ambivalence about his life as an orchestra musician when he weighs
what he has missed in terms of his personal life against the notable
achievements of a symphony musician.
Professional musicians spend an
inordinate amount of time practicing in order to maintain technique and learn
new music. Besides juggling a major
orchestra schedule, many players perform in chamber music ensembles or hold
teaching positions in universities and conservatories; others compose, conduct,
and participate in a variety of music-related activities. These never-ending endeavors leave little time
to master the personal life skills so necessary for enduring friendships and
close relationships. (p. 197)
This de-emphasis of the personal is also reflected in how
the book is written. The book is detailed and engagingly written. He includes anecdotes from his personal
experience that add interest and color to the narrative, but his anecdotes are
generally not revealing of himself. This is not a personal perspective on a life
in the symphony. It is not about his
personal point of view on the symphony, it is written almost in a journalistic
style that concentrates on the facts and the processes, while at the same time
keeping the reporter's subjectivity in the background. I think it is in keeping with the mentality
of a player in a symphony orchestra.
Symphony musicians are team players par excellence. Individualism is discouraged. The symphony musician must suppress his own
idiosyncratic interpretations of the music to create a unified whole in the
context of the group. The individual
musicians are submerged into this well-integrated totality. He wrote the book as a member of the
symphony, who executed his part flawlessly, carefully observant of the smallest
details, but very discreet in his choice of what to report, and otherwise kept
his mouth shut.
The other point that impressed me is the conservatism of
this music and the players who perform it.
The demands of the profession foster a very conservative, structured
lifestyle and personality. There is
great reverence for the printed score.
Punctuality is vital.
Interdependence is understood and taken for granted. People who are unable to subject themselves
to the regimen necessary to achieve the high level of technical proficiency and
maintain it over years are weeded out of a symphony orchestra. They will never even get close to one. People without the even temperedness and
tolerance necessary to be in close quarters with the same 100+ people for much
of the time including traveling for months on end together cannot be in a
symphony orchestra.
This book helped me understand why I have never been able to
warm up to symphony music. Although I
often attend symphonic concerts, it is not to hear the Symphony. I am far more interested in the soloists,
usually pianists or violinists. I like
seeing that single figure standing out apart from the mass with his sound
soaring out above the rest with spectacular strength and power, dominating the
attention of the listeners. In recent
years my tastes have broadened somewhat, having become more interested in the
different instruments and intrigued by the myriad ways a symphony orchestra can
be used to create communicative sound, but I've never been much of a team
player, unless I am the captain. When I
studied piano, I studied the solo repertoire, and I never liked to accompany
people. It is perhaps a limitation in my
character, but it is reflected in the kind of music I like. The Symphony interests me, but I do not feel
passionate about it.
This book gave me a greater understanding of the
organizational structure of a symphony orchestra, some of its inner workings,
and especially the wholehearted dedication demanded of its players and the high
cost it exacts on their personal lives.
I would like to see something that would fill out this picture more in
terms of a personal perspective, an introspective look at an orchestra and its
musicians. But this book is a good,
solid introduction for anyone who attends the Symphony.
The
Sex Abuse Industry and the American Police State
The Science of Sex Abuse.
By Rachel Aviv. The New Yorker, January 14, 2013. pp. 36-45.
The case reported by Rachel Aviv in the January 14, 2013
issue of The New Yorker documents the
growth of the American Police State over the last thirty years to the point
where it is now intruding into the inner space of our private thoughts,
desires, fantasies, and emotional longings, making our imaginings and
sentiments an arena of criminality and prosecution. It is the expression of a trend that has
always been present in American society, especially since the passage of the
Comstock Act in 1867, a draconian law which banned all forms of sexual material
from the U.S. mail, not only erotica of every kind, but also informational material
about birth control and other topics relating to sexuality. These oppressive restraints were partially
rolled back by a series of court decisions in the 1950s and 60s, but since 1982
there has been an increasingly brutal persecution of "child
pornography" and sexual activities involving children that has reached a
delusional fever. Rachel Aviv presents
one example of how distorted and perverse this has become, but there are many
thousands of equally grotesque cases.
She details the story of a man she calls 'John' and his
twelve year saga in the criminal justice system. In 1998 he was a 31 year old soldier
stationed in Fort Campbell, Kentucky. He
had served in Desert Storm and Bosnia and graduated from Penn State with a
degree in history. He downloaded some
child pornography on an internet site "after watching a television special
about how Internet child porn had become epidemic. He hadn't realized that it
existed." (This illustrates how the
media hype and hysteria over child pornography is actually fomenting interest
in people who would otherwise have little inclination toward it.) He went
to a chat room on a child pornography site and chatted with an FBI agent posing
as a girl. She offered him her fourteen
year old sister and they set up a meeting.
He told her he was looking for a relationship more than sex and wanted
someone who "could accept me as I am." When he arrived at the park where they
arranged to meet, he was arrested. He
pleaded guilty to possessing child pornography and using the internet to
persuade a minor to have sex and was sentenced to 53 months in federal prison
-- for looking at pictures and wanting
to have sex with a young girl -- not actually doing it. Aviv reports that the current average sentence
is 119 months, nearly 10 years, for simply possessing child pornography. Aviv tells us that in the past fifteen years
sentences for possession of child pornography have increased more than 500
percent.
After the passage of the Adam Walsh Child Protection and
Safety Act in 2006, the government extended the confinement of child
pornography offenders practically indefinitely through a contrivance called "civil
commitment," a procedure usually applied (and abused) to confine people
with severe mental illness. Most of Aviv's
excellent article details the nightmarish outcome of this ill-contrived
legislation and the needless destruction of a person's life, not for anything
he has actually done, but simply for what he likes to look at and think about.
The more I studied this matter the more alarmed I
became. What is going on is extremely
appalling and sinister. It has created
an atmosphere of fear and intimidation among parents and teachers, dividing
children from their caregivers with very heavy handed threats and interventions
from outside agencies. Some teachers and
child care workers are actually leaving their professions because of it. (Levine, 2002, pp. 180-83) Families are being
broken up on the most trivial grounds without due process, without judicial
review. The so-called treatment programs
or rehabilitation plans that people are coerced to participate in are sadistic
and cruel. The
"rehabilitation" is being farmed out to private companies who have a
financial incentive to keep people in the program as long as possible, and they
are the ones who judge the inmate's progress.
Aviv reports:
In Minnesota, which has one of
the largest commitment programs, six hundred and seventy inmates work on
correcting distorted thoughts about sex (at a cost of a hundred and twenty
thousand dollars per person annually), but in eighteen years only one man has
been discharged from the program. (p.
41)
This is why I call it the "Sex Abuse
Industry." Huge amounts of public
money are being squandered to private, self-serving companies, who have no clue
what they are doing, for sadistic "treatment" programs of indefinite
duration that amount to torture. They
have no oversight and are set up to run parallel to the criminal justice
system. They are continuous with the
practices at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.
Americans do not realize how fast we are moving toward a Stasi-like
police state. The avenue of its growth
is this persecution of pedophilia, precisely because it is so commonplace, so
broadly defined to be applicable in almost any situation involving a child, and
most of it occurs within families or close communities. It could indeed appear on your doorstep or on
your street.
Aviv calls the article "The Science of Sex
Abuse." I think she intends this ironically. There is nothing of science in any of
this. This is the documentation of a
legal system run amok pursuing imaginary demons of our own creation. It is a craziness that is becoming
increasingly grotesque and out of control.
It is really necessary to curb this madness and I am glad she has put
this forward in such an effective, well organized, well thought out
discussion.
It all comes down to the idea that sex is this great monster
and children need to be protected from it at all costs. Any untimely exposure will damage the fragile
little darlings beyond repair. I'm going
to try to approach this in a way that will do some good.
Ford and Beach (1951) categorized 191 societies around the
world according to the restrictions they impose on the access of sexual
activity to children. They placed the
United States among the most restrictive, with restrictive societies being decidedly
in the minority. Despite considerable
relaxation since the time of their writing in 1951, this highly restrictive,
ultraconservative mindset is still institutionalized in our legal system as
well as in educational and social institutions.
However, the vast majority of human societies, and I believe this can be
projected back to prehistoric time, have allowed and encouraged their children
to engage in sexual activity from a very early age (Chapter 10). If this were harmful to the physiological,
emotional, and mental health of these children then it would be evident and
observable. But no such evidence exists. In fact, there is plenty of evidence that the
restrictions we place on access to sexual activity in our children is doing
them very great harm, and the policing efforts that are being marshaled to
punish and prevent sexual activity in children is causing incalculable harm to
many thousands of families and individuals.
Levine (2002) has extensive documentation of this. We are a very unhealthy society emotionally
and psychologically as evidenced by our drug use, obesity, violence, divorce
rate, incarceration rate, drop-out rates, homelessness, and there is a
relationship between these social ills and the oppressive restrictions on our sexual
culture, and in particular on the sexual development of children. Preventing children from early access to
sexual experience stunts their emotional and social development, and we pay a
heavy price for it as a society.
Judith Levine(2002) has done an excellent study on all
aspects of this issue making the case that the imagined harm of sex and its
application in law and governing institutions is doing untold damage to
children and families all across America.
The trauma of youngsters sex,
with anyone, often comes not from the sex itself but from adults going bananas
over it. As for "sexual behavior
problems" the trauma inflicted by the "cure" may be far worse
than the "disease" itself. (p. 60)
Every lawmaker,
judge, prosecutor, police officer, social worker, counselor, and school
principal should read her excellent work.
We have to start from the beginning to understand a child's
psychological development and the role that sex plays in that development. In describing the development of the human
sense of self from earliest infancy Jeffrey Seinfeld (1991) suggests that
biological needs engender a
sense of lack that becomes the empty core.
The physiological state of emptiness resulting from hunger is translated
into a psychic state of emptiness that becomes the core of psychic
structure. The empty core is felt as a
lack disrupting the sense of boundedness or wholeness. The empty core is not a static space. It is the hunger for objects internal and
external. It is a state of insufficiency
and activity through suction and pulsion.
The empty core is the dynamic that generates activity in self and object
components. It is the transcription of
biological need into psychic desire. It
is the libidinal desire for the object.
The erotogenic zones serve as signifiers of the empty core. It is the driving force of human personality
and of self and object relations. The
experience of emptiness also generates ego interests, ambitions, and ideals.
(p. 9-10)
Let me try to make this a little more accessible. In the earliest phase of human development
the psychic experience of the infant is generated by physiological needs: hunger, elimination, warmth, cold, tactile
sensations creating comfort or discomfort, sounds that are soothing or
disturbing. The response of the mother
(or lack thereof) to these basic physiological urges creates a sense of self
and other. The infant develops an awareness of the mother as the external
source of comfort and nurturing and satisfaction of these basic biological
needs. A conceptual distinction between
internal and external becomes established and forms the core of the infant's
sense of self. I disagree with Seinfeld
that the "psychic state of emptiness becomes the core of psychic
structure." This is seeing the
glass half empty. It is a negative,
pessimistic view of human development.
The other side of emptiness is fulfillment. When the infant's needs are responded to
timely and appropriately, the infant establishes an expectation that the empty
longings can be alleviated and that his efforts (crying, physical movement,
gesture) can bring a satisfying response.
This lays the foundation for a self that is self-confident, positive,
and optimistic, with favorable expectations of human relations -- as opposed to
the schizoid development, based on an expectation of disappointment, that is
the subject of Seinfeld's book.
Daniel Stern (1985) modified psychoanalytic conceptions of
human development prevailing at the time of his writing arguing that the self
begins to form very early.
The infant's first order of
business, in creating an interpersonal world, is to form the sense of a core
self and core others. The evidence also
supports the notion that this task is largely accomplished during the period
between two and seven months. Further,
it suggests that the capacity to have merger or fusion-like experiences as
described in psychoanalysis is secondary to and dependent upon an already
existing sense of self and other. The
newly suggested timetable pushes the emergence of the self earlier in time
dramatically and reverses the sequencing of developmental tasks. First comes the formation of self and other,
and only then is the sense of merger-like experiences possible. (p. 70)
Stern does not take this up, but his conclusions seem to
imply that the "empty core" which Seinfeld takes as an inevitable
outcome of the infant's biological needs, is actually a particular construction
of the self that is forged in response to external nurturing environment in
which the infant finds itself. The
schizoid outcome [isolated, disengaged, shut-out, unconnected, apathetic, and
emotionally withdrawn, (p. 3)] is not the only possibility for human
development, although I think it can be argued that it is prevalent in American
society today. It is what fuels the drug
culture, alcohol abuse, pathological ambition, workaholism, political and
social apathy, the obsession with guns and security, much of the disturbance in
relations between the sexes, the high divorce rate, much of the violence
against women, and the current hysterical persecution of pedophiles. These are all related phenomena. What ties them together is a profound sense
of disconnectedness Americans feel from society and from each other. We withdraw into our own private worlds. We shun deep involvement with other people. We substitute things for human
relations. We see the world as dangerous
and full of enemies. We externalize our
enemies and comfort our inner emptiness with drugs and entertainment. The superficiality that many Europeans and
foreigners notice about American society is a further manifestation of this
fundamental psychological structure that gets set up very early in life. What I want to get to is: what does it have
to do with sex?
We know, and it has been long documented, that sexual
feeling and experience go back to birth.
Human beings are born sexual and are hard wired for erotic feeling from
the very beginning.
According to Kinsey's (1948) data
Orgasm has been observed in
boys of every age from 5 months to adolescence.
Orgasm is in our records for a female babe of 4 months. The orgasm in an infant or other young male is,
except for the lack of an ejaculation, a striking duplicate of orgasm in an
older adult. (p. 177)
In preadolescent and early
adolescent boys, erection and orgasm are easily induced. They are more easily induced than in older
males. Erection may occur immediately
after birth and, as many observant mothers (and few scientists) know, it is
practically a daily matter for all small boys, from earliest infancy and up in
age. Slight physical stimulation of the
genitalia, general body tensions, and generalized emotional situations bring
immediate erection, even when there is no specifically sexual stimulation
involved. (p. 164)
Originally the pre-adolescent
boy erects indiscriminately to the whole array of emotional situations, whether
they be sexual or non-sexual in nature.
By his late teens the male has been so conditioned that he rarely
responds to anything except a direct physical stimulation of the genitalia, or
to psychic situations that are specifically sexual. (p. 165)
I'm only going to talk about boys here. Girls are different, and in my eyes, more
complicated, but the argument would proceed along the same line. This physiological readiness to respond
sexually to a whole range of stimuli means that human children are prepared
from birth to respond erotically to all manner of situations. The idea that sexual stimulation of children
is "premature" or "damaging" is utterly ludicrous in the
face of such overwhelming experience. As
I mentioned earlier, the survey Ford and Beach (1951) made of societies around
the world found the vast majority to be permissive and encouraging of early
sexual experience in their children. Sexual
response is part of the daily experience of young children, and in most times
and places that response has been accepted and welcomed as a natural part of
daily life. But it follows a learning
curve. It is shaped by experience and
events. What kind of experience and
events? The same kind of experience that
shapes everything in a child's development: his or her interaction with the
adult environment.
Sex is relatedness.
Sex is connection. Erotic desire
engages one with the self of another. One's
inner world of emotion and arousal makes contact and merges with the inner
experience of another. This is what we
call intimacy. It is inherently ambivalent
and conflicted. But it enriches our
experience of one another as human beings; it promotes our emotional growth and
maturity; it creates emotional bonds between people; and it is
pleasurable. It is opposed to schizoid
detachment and withdrawal. The schizoid
self, having been traumatized and weakened by repeated conditions of
disappointment and deprivation, withdraws from emotional involvement with
others, renounces or avoids as much as possible the desires and sentiments that
bring people into close contact. Sexual
feelings and experiences tend to be minimized, marginalized, devalued, and
avoided. Our laws, and perhaps also our
economic system, promote this peculiar form of psychological detachment and
isolation. It has taken a long time to establish
such prevalence in our society. The
detachment, loneliness, isolation, superficiality, antagonism and addictive
obsessions that characterize American culture are the result of more than a
century of government and mass media intrusion into the sphere of personal
relations and sexual conduct. It is this
sustained attack on our private, personal desires that has played a large role
in creating our present culture of social, emotional, and sexual
disengagement.
There will always be deficiencies in family circumstances
and personal failings in mothers and fathers that can lead to a schizoid
outcome. But the social milieu that
isolates the family and prevents people from reaching out to one another
sexually and emotionally effectively closes off alternative routes of
compensation or supplementation for the limitations in family
relationships. This tends to fix the
schizoid pattern and allows it to gel into a permanent aspect of character, or existential position, let us say. Seinfeld, Fairbairn, Winnicott, Guntrip,
Kohut and others of psychoanalytic approach look at the problem narrowly in
terms of the internal dynamics of the family.
They fail to see the social context in which that family has been
created and how social factors define the emotional struggles within the
family, stresses they impose upon personal relationships, and how they limit
alternative solutions to individuals within that family.
Imagining children as delicate, fragile beings who are
damaged beyond repair by sexual stimulation represents the projection by adults
of their own anxiety and fragility.
Children are actually much more resilient and emotionally capable than
many adults imagine and are much more damaged by the efforts of adults to
protect them from things they enjoy and are inclined to explore. Protecting children from sex and disrupting
their families and relationships by punishing a sexual relationship involving a
child causes much more permanent harm than the sexual relationship ever
could. There are many examples of this
and Rachel Aviv has carefully documented one.
Judith Levine (2002) offers many others.
There are three crucial legal pillars upholding this whole
institutional structure. The most
fundamental is New York v. Ferber 458
U.S. 747 (1982), a 1982 Supreme Court decision, authored by Byron
White, which gives the government broad powers to prohibit "child
pornography." The decision's
reasoning is the following:
(a) The States are entitled to
greater leeway in the regulation of pornographic depictions of children for the
following reasons: (1) the legislative judgment that the use of children as
subjects of pornographic materials is harmful to the physiological, emotional,
and mental health of the child, easily passes muster under the First Amendment;
(2) the standard of Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15, for
determining what is legally obscene is not a satisfactory solution to the child
pornography problem; (3) the advertising and selling of child pornography
provide an economic motive for and are thus an integral part of the production
of such materials, an activity illegal throughout the Nation; (4) the value of
permitting live performances and photographic reproductions of children engaged
in lewd exhibitions is exceedingly modest, if not de minimis; and (5)
recognizing and classifying child pornography as a category of material outside
the First Amendment's protection is not incompatible with this Court's
decisions dealing with what speech is unprotected. When a definable class of
material, such as that covered by [458 U.S. 747, 748] the New York statute,
bears so heavily and pervasively on the welfare of children engaged in its
production, the balance of competing interests is clearly struck, and it is
permissible to consider these materials as without the First Amendment's
protection. Pp. 756-764.
The crux of it are the first and the fourth points that
children as subjects of pornographic materials is harmful to the physiological,
emotional, and mental health of the child, and that the value of permitting
depictions of children engaged in lewd exhibitions is exceedingly modest, if
not de minimis. To deal with the fourth point first, it is
not up to the state to decide what depictions are valuable and which ones are
not. The First Amendment does not
stipulate that speech has to meet some threshold of value in order to be
protected. For the state to appoint
itself the arbiter of what kinds of materials are valuable and worthy of protection
is totally contrary to the spirit of the First Amendment. But the more pertinent point is whether
depicting children engaged in "lewd conduct" or sexual activity harms
their physiological, emotional, and mental health. There is no evidence that this is true and
plenty of evidence that it is false.
When you think about it in the context of human evolution
and the way human societies have lived for millennia, the idea that sex harms
children is so ridiculous it is hard to believe that anyone but the most
conservative, bigoted ascetic could take it seriously. Yet, America has been taken prisoner by this
notion and is willing to set aside its most basic liberties and civil
protections to shield itself from this delusional demon. If sex is a worthy, positive, life-enhancing
human activity, then children should certainly be groomed for it and encouraged
to engage in it. Why wouldn't we want
our children to participate in something that is a rich and satisfying part of
our own lives? It would seem perfectly
straightforward. On the other hand, if
sex were a part of life that was an inevitable source of disappointment, pain,
tragedy, and turmoil for which we had inordinate fear, then we would naturally
teach our children to be afraid and avoid something so threatening and
perilous. American society has adopted
the schizoid position that emotional closeness and sexual intensity is of the
utmost peril and attempted to create a whole society built around that anxious,
fragile structure. America now has more
single people than married. That is the
first time in history that that has ever happened in a society. One quarter of all Americans live alone. (New
York Times, January 16, 2007; Associated Press, May 28, 2011, reporting on
U.S. Census figures) We are becoming
increasingly separated and estranged from one another. Persecution of sexual relationships in many
forms is a large part of the reason for it.
The idea that the state has an interest in protecting
children from "sexual exploitation" is a baseless notion. 'Sexual exploitation' is a vacuous
concept. It is so broad and nonspecific
that it becomes meaningless.
Exploitation in the negative sense means taking something from someone
or making use of the resources or abilities of someone without returning
adequate compensation. In the case of
sexual relationships, which are so complex, and layered with so many tributary
aspects, this defies specificity and definition. "Commercial exploitation," or
"financial exploitation" make sense because they can be quantified
and made very specific. Where sex is
related to commercial gain, this is a perfectly intelligible notion. But in that case the exploitation would refer
to the commercial or monetary aspects of the relationship rather than to sex
itself. For an abstraction like
"sexual exploitation" to be meaningful, sexuality itself must be
exploitative. Any sexual conduct or interaction on its face must be ipso facto
exploitative. And, in fact, that is
exactly how the laws have been drawn.
This concept means that there is something wrong with sex itself and
that for children to be involved with it in any way is inherently
exploitative. It is clearly untenable
and an outright falsehood. This nonsense
idea is the basis for the entire edifice of the sex abuse industry. Once this concept is exposed for the fraud
that it is and becomes purged from legal understanding, the sex abuse industry can
begin to be dismantled.
A much more ominous Supreme Court
decision, and one that is operative in the case reported by Rachel Aviv, is the
1997 ruling in Kansas v. Hendricks
521 U.S. 346 (1996) that upheld by a 5-4 margin Kansas' Sexually Violent
Predator Act. This law "establishes procedures for the
civil commitment of persons who, due to a 'mental abnormality' or a
'personality disorder,' are likely to engage in 'predatory acts of sexual
violence.'" If you look at the
cases cited in support of this decision, it is astonishing how poorly reasoned
the decision is and how irrelevant the supporting cases are to the
decision. The first case cited Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197
U. S. 11, (1905), deals with a challenge to a Massachusetts law compelling
vaccination for smallpox. It imposed a
fine for noncompliance. This is far
removed from the issue of preventive incarceration in Kansas v. Hendricks. Kansas v. Hendricks goes on,
This Court has consistently
upheld involuntary commitment statutes that detain people who are unable to
control their behavior and thereby pose a danger to the public health and
safety, provided the confinement takes place pursuant to proper procedures and
evidentiary standards. Foucha v.
Louisiana, 504 U. S. 71, 80.
But Foucha v.
Louisiana - 504 U.S. 71 (1992) was a reversal by the Supreme Court that
contradicts the claim it is being cited to support.
Held: The judgment is
reversed. 563 So. 2d 1138, reversed.
JUSTICE WHITE delivered the opinion of the Court with
respect to Parts I and II, concluding that the Louisiana statute violates the
Due Process Clause because it allows an insanity acquittee to be committed to a
mental institution until he is able to demonstrate that he is not dangerous to
himself and others, even though he does not suffer from any mental illness.
Although Jones, supra, acknowledged that an insanity acquittee could be
committed, the Court also held that, as a matter of due process, he is entitled
to release when he has recovered his sanity or is no longer dangerous, id., at
368, i. e., he may be held as long as he is both mentally ill and
dangerous, but no longer. Here, since the State does not contend that Foucha
was mentally ill at the time of the trial court's hearing, the basis for
holding him in a psychiatric facility as an insanity acquittee has disappeared,
and the State is no longer entitled to hold him on that basis.
What Kansas v.
Hendricks does is create a legal construction whereby a person's right to
due process is completely subverted and voided.
A person can be held potentially indefinitely on the basis of a
determination that he has a "mental abnormality" or a
"personality disorder," and is judged to pose a danger to himself or
others. There are no constraints on the
definition of "mental abnormality" or "personality
disorder." No process is
established for making this determination, and no review process is
required. It further declares that this
confinement is "not punitive."
Although the commitment scheme here
involves an affirmative restraint, such restraint of the dangerously mentally
ill has been historically regarded as a legitimate nonpunitive objective. Cf. United States v. Salerno, 481 U. S.
739, 747.
Again
the case citation to support the reasoning is disingenuous. Salerno
applied to individuals who were already under arrest awaiting trial for violent
crimes. There were procedures
established where the defendant was able to present evidence and argue his
side. The detention was limited by the
right to a speedy trial and the defendant had to be held separately from
convicts. Salerno showed great respect and consideration for the basic rights
and civil liberties guaranteed in the Constitution. Salerno
was careful and limited in its scope. In
contrast, Hendricks is careless,
vague, poorly thought out, poorly reasoned, and I would say, contemptuous of
basic constitutional rights. This
decision is a subversion of the Constitution and is a real threat, not only to
pedophiles, but now anyone the government doesn't like or disagrees with can be
deemed "mentally abnormal" and a threat, and thus held indefinitely
without charge and without judicial review.
This decision places no limitations on what the government can do in
terms of preventive detention. It is an
extremely dangerous move in the direction of authoritarian government and
people need to be aware of its potential.
The
third legal pillar of the sex abuse industry is the Adam Walsh Child Protection
and Safety Act of 2006. This is a
particularly vicious law that institutes what amounts to lifetime punishment
for sex offenders and attempts to make them social pariahs. It is paranoia run amok. It established the National Sex Offender
Registry with three tiers of severity.
The least severe mandates 15 years on the list, the second tier mandates
25 years, and the most severe requires lifetime registration. No other group of convicts is treated this
way. It intensifies and extends
punishment for offenses that are already crimes under the law. It places much more severe sanctions on child
pornography. It expands the use of
"civil commitment," that is, holding people without criminal charges
on the basis of their alleged "threat" to the community.
The Act also instructs the Department
of Health and Human Services to create a national registry of persons who have
been found to have abused or neglected a child. The information will be
gathered from state databases of child abuse or neglect. It will be made
available to state child-protective-services and law-enforcement agencies “for
purposes of carrying out their responsibilities under the law to protect
children from abuse and neglect.” The national database will allow states to
track the past history of parents and guardians who are suspected of abusing
their children. When child-abusing parents come to the attention of authorities
(for example, when teachers begin to ask about bruises), these parents often
will move to a different jurisdiction. A national database will give the state
to which these parents move the ability to know the parents’ history. It will
let a child-protective-services worker know, for example, whether he should
prioritize investigation of a particular case because the parent has been found
to have committed substantiated cases
of abuse in the past in other states. Such a database also will allow a state
that is evaluating a prospective foster parent or adoptive parent to learn about
past incidents of child abuse that the person has committed in other states.
This
registry does not even require a criminal conviction. It completely ignores due process. The government wants to take over the role of
raising children and managing families. But
it is a very cold, punitive, sadistic parent.
You can see that a whole army of people has to be employed to carry out this
surveillance, tracking, and intrusive intervention. Huge expensive bureaucracies need to be
created and maintained. If families were
able to care properly for their own children, all of this wouldn't be
needed. This act does nothing to address
the problems confronting families that create the stresses and tensions that
lead to abuse and violence. This act has
absolutely no insight or understanding of the problems in which it is
intervening. It is an example of utterly
irresponsible legislation crafted by shortsighted, self-interested legislators
to respond to magnified fears and manufactured crises. This law needs to be repealed in its
entirety.
One important development that might affect this is a pending
revision of the definition of "mental disorder" in the forthcoming Diagnostic and Statistical Manual -- V,
to be published by the American Psychiatric Association in May of 2013. The proposed revision to the concept of
"mental disorder" is as follows (Stein, 2010):
A. A behavioral or psychological syndrome or pattern that occurs
in an individual
B. The consequences of which are clinically significant distress
(e.g., a painful symptom) or disability (i.e., impairment in one or more
important areas of functioning)
D. That reflects an underlying psychobiological dysfunction
E. That is not primarily a result of social deviance or
conflicts with society
E is a very crucial point.
If this is adopted it would seem to rule out many deviant sexual
behaviors, including pedophilia, from being snagged under the umbrella of
"mental disorder." In the
example Rachel Aviv presents, John is not in distress or impaired in his
functioning. Whether there is an
"underlying psychobiological dysfunction" could be debated, but there
would be no conclusive evidence for it in his case. The problem for most people with
unconventional sexual preferences like pedophilia, is social deviance and
societal conflict. But this is not
sufficient to qualify it as a "mental disorder" under the new
proposed definition. So John could not
be diagnosed with a "mental disorder," under this proposed
conception. This could make a huge
difference in how laws that make use of "civil commitment" to hold
people without criminal charges can be applied.
There is beginning to be some pushback against this
exorbitant retaliatory vengeance as mandated in the Adam Walsh Act. Governor Tom Corbett of Pennsylvania and at
least one Pennsylvania state legislator are suing the NCAA on behalf of Penn
State against the excessive punitive actions by the NCAA against Penn State in
the wake of the Jerry Sandusky case. I
don't think the governor would do this without broader public support, and I
suspect he must be aware of widespread, but unpublicized, dissent from the way
the whole case was disposed of.
This might be the beginning of a counterattack against the
"industrial" aspect of child sex abuse. A lot of people are making lucrative careers
from it, but the money is coming out of someone else's pocket. Once it dawns on people that they are
shelling out enormous sums of money for things that shouldn't even be crimes,
they might begin to push back. The money
trail may be the first line of resistance.
The elements in society opposed to this mindless and extreme
persecution of pedophilia are disorganized at this point and do not have the
ideological muscle to fight back, but it is beginning to coalesce. This piece by Rachel Aviv documents how
extreme and irrational the government can be in pursuing these demonic
phantoms. A man who has never actually
committed a crime or harmed anyone can be held in prison indefinitely because
he has been deemed a threat on the basis of the type of erotic pictures he
likes to look at or what he likes to think about. This is a threat to everyone, because it
implies that anyone who is deemed a threat by a bureaucrat or medical
professional can be detained indefinitely without recourse or review. It undermines the integrity of the justice
system and the very legitimacy of the government. If the administration of justice and the
meting out of punishment is arbitrary and capricious and based not on actions
that one has initiated, but stems rather from entrapment by law enforcement
officers and surmises by unaccountable bureaucrats within the system, then it
is not a system of justice anymore; it is a police state. The United States has been moving ominously
in this direction over at least the last twelve years. The executive branch has been showing
decreasing respect for the law, due process, and the civil rights of
citizens. It is been most heavy handed
in the enforcement of sanctions against pedophilia and child pornography, and
this case highlighted by Rachel Aviv brings the extreme nature of this to the
fore.
The paucity of resistance up to now has a number of
reasons. The main reason, I think, is
because sexual activities between minors and adults occur overwhelmingly
between family members, caregivers, and people close to the child. Most of these incidents and relationships are
not only not harmful, but actually beneficial, and are kept private and never
come to public attention. There are
plenty of people around who know that sex does not harm children, but they are
intimidated, and the law does not permit them to speak publicly about their
experience. There is no incentive to
contradict this prevailing mindset, and every reason not to. There is, however, a lot of money to be made
if you can pass yourself off as a victim of child sexual abuse. Great financial incentives have been built
into perpetuating this mythology that sex harms children. Many people's jobs and livelihoods are built
around it. You stand to receive considerable
financial gain if you come forward with a lawsuit. Entire bureaucracies have been erected to
promote and enforce this misunderstanding.
Rachel Aviv has documented this very powerfully.
This power structure can be eroded when people begin to ask,
"just what is the harm, anyway?"
Many people blame their personal miseries on sex, but his does not mean
it is a universal experience. At one
time people thought masturbation caused all sorts of maladies from blindness to
insanity.
By the nineteenth century the
campaign against masturbation reached an unbelievable frenzy. Doctors and parents sometimes appeared before
the child armed with knives and scissors, threatening to cut off the child's
genitals; circumcision, clitoridectomy, and infibulation were sometimes used as
punishment; and all sorts of restraint devices, including plastic casts and
cages with spikes, were prescribed.
Graphs assembled by one scholar showed 'a peak in surgical intervention
in 1850-79, and in restraint devices in 1880-1904.' By 1925, these methods had almost completely
died out, after two centuries of brutal and totally unnecessary assault on
children's genitals. [Lloyd De Mause, quoted in Heins (2002) p. 272, 52N]
Within my own lifetime I can recall people seeing all manner
of threat in homosexuality. Now we have
numerous gay representatives in Congress and the first openly gay Senator. Many thought that the military would be
compromised if openly gay soldiers were allowed to serve. That prohibition was lifted and nothing
untoward has happened. Many mindless
fears dissipate once they are challenged and defeated. Pedophilia is the latest object of this mindless
hyperbolic hatred. We need to keep in
mind that pedophilia means "loves children." Pedophiles are everywhere and many pedophiles
occupy prominent positions in society.
They are productive citizens; they have important jobs, families, and
responsibilities. Society cannot afford
to be crucifying all of these people and locking them up in jail.
What has been missing so far is a philosophical critique of
the very idea that sex harms children and that any exposure of a child to
sexual activity constitutes abuse. This is
beginning to be formulated and Rachel Aviv has provided an excellent
illustration of the need for such reform.
I am ever optimistic that we can bring this creeping menace to a halt
and allow American society to begin to heal from its long history of
self-inflicted deprivation in the emotional and sexual lives of its
people.
Notes
Ford, Clellan S.; Beach, Frank A. (1951) Patterns
of Sexual Behavior. New York: Harper Torchbooks.
Foucha
v. Louisiana 504 U.S.
71 (1992)
Heins, Marjorie (2002)
Not In Front of the Children: 'Indecency,' Censorship and the Innocence of
Youth. New York: Hill and Wang/ Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Kansas
v. Hendricks 521 U.S.
346 (1996)
Kinsey, Alfred C.; Pomeroy, Wardell B.; Martin, Clyde E.
(1948) Sexual Behavior in the Human Male.
Philadelphia & London: W.B.
Saunders.
Levine, Judith (2002) Harmful
to Minors: The Perils of Protecting
Children from Sex. Minneapolis &
London: University of Minnesota
Press.
New
York v. Ferber 458 U.S., 747, (1982)
Seinfeld, Jeffrey (1991) The
Empty Core: An Object Relations Approach
to Psychotherapy of the Schizoid Patient.
Northvale, NJ, & London:
Jason Aronson.
Stein, Dan J., et. al. (2010) What is a Mental/Psychiatric
Disorder? From DSM-IV to DSM-V. Psychological
Medicine. 2010 November; 40(11): 1759–1765.
Stern, Daniel N. (1985)
The Interpersonal World of the
Infant. New York: Basic Books.