John “Buttman” Stagliano is one of the more famous adult entertainment producers in the United States. He’s also the target of a federal criminal prosecution, charging him with eight counts of obscenity. If convicted on all charges, he faces what amounts to a life sentence — especially since he’s HIV positive, a status currently kept in check by medication, but which could very likely deteriorate in prison.
All of this for producing entertainment for adults and featuring adults, all involved of their own free will.
[Stagliano tracks the progress of his case on the Website, wwwDefendourporn.org ]
In July, Stagliano debated pornography and free speech in the pages of the Los Angeles Times with Pepperdine University’s Barry McDonald, a former clerk for Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist.
Below, Stagliano discusses his prosecution in a video produced by the Las Vegas Weekly.
www.examiner.com/x-536-Civil-Liberties-Examiner~y2008m8d25-Adult-movie-maker-on-his-persecution-by-the-feds
Like or loathe the sort of entertainment that John Stagliano produces, there’s no escaping the fact that it’s production, distribution and enjoyment are all consensual activities among adults. There’s really no justification for government involvement here at all — let alone for threatening a man with years behind bars.
I’ll leave the last word to Stagliano, quoting some of his comments in the LA Times:
The crazy thing that porn has become is the most incredible expression of freedom. If you don’t like this, if you are afraid of this, that is an expression of your approach to life, not ours. We’re just achieving sexual gratification; is that so bad? Religion says it is — to the point of torturing and killing, from the Jewish lesson of Sodom and Gomorrah to the Christians during the Inquisition to the radical Muslims who flew planes into buildings. It’s all the same mentality.
In the nation that imprisons more of its people than any other country in the world (you’re more free from jail in Russia than the United States), how can we say we are “the land of the free and the home of the brave”?