Texas' top legal court has decided that upskirt photos are legal, protecting the practice with the First Amendment defending "free expression".
In the case that started the controversial decision, the defendant, Ronald Thompson, was charged with 26 counts of violating Texas law, snapped pictures of many “unknown female[s] with various colors of bathing suits or bikinis ‘in’ or ‘at’ a water park"m, some of which included children. The original Texas law prohibits improper photography or visual recording “with intent to arouse or gratify the sexual desire of the defendant,” but that changed a few days ago. Thompson's defense was that he was allowed to take the pics as part of the rights granted by the First Amendment. The Court's ruling was 8 to 1. “The camera is essentially the photographer's pen and paintbrush,” Presiding Judge Sharon Keller wrote in the majority opinion. “A person's purposeful creation of photographs and visual recordings is entitled to the same 1st Amendment protection as the photographs and visual recordings themselves.”
I see this as less of a "freedom of expression" act, and more as sexual harassment. Unfortunately, this state's government is so misogynist and backwards. I'm going to Sweden ASAP.
http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-texas-upskirt-law-overturned-20140919-story.html
No matter what the amendments says, an individual state has its own laws that could bypass or interperate that amendment in its own way. Upskirt photography is seen to the public as an abomination and disgraceful to women inposed by pervers. Now that it is seen in the eyes of texan as ok and self expression, the ominous door to a rough future for women has been opened on the matter that theor own bodies and personal privacy cannot be protected by the state law.
ReplyDeleteThis state baffles me. I understand "artistic expression" and all of the forms it can take, but this one is one that exposes women in a disgusting manner. I mean the man was even caught taking pictures of children, so why wasn't he cited with a child pornography charge?
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