On Dan Savage

The article below is from Dan Savage’s column of April 22, 2006. I like him because I think he’s bang on and I have to give him credit for calling people and situations as it is. If you aren't familiar with Mr. Savage, you can find his articles online at The Stranger. Alternatively you can find him at a number of places online, including Amazon as he's a published author.

I’m reading the article and I think holy shit! My first relationship was with a man, and we started young just as the couple in the letter below. I had a different mind set then, and certainly a different body. But over time as we got older, more experienced, less inhibited, and with the advent of video recorders, we shot tons of pics of each other and one or two movies. Oi!!

Now we’re not together anymore thankfully, but this makes me think. I’d be stunned to hear anything from him, and if I did the first thing on his mind wouldn’t be naked pics or videos, it would likely be about money – fucking bastard that he is. I strongly feel the pictures and videos have been destroyed as he is now a prominent figure in his community as part of the religious right and he’s denounced and pretends that a lot of things we were about back then never really happened. Further, I suspect he realizes that I wouldn’t care if anyone saw the pics as no one would recognize me. And he’s thankfully – to a degree – intimidated by me and I’ve not tried to convince him otherwise.

In the letter to Dan the photos bring back apparently fond memories, and I don’t think that either of them view it as ‘child porn’ but a concern I’d certainly have is what if those pics end up in the wrong hands, and are traded, sold, and are out on the net as a promotion of pedophilia? What about blackmail? What if the ex is pissed and has an axe to grind? Some people would be embarrassed, others wouldn’t care.

And in the worst of circumstances, what if one of the two parties is prosecuted? Yeah I realize that the odds of this happening are slim, but what if? I could easily see this falling into the hands of an eager prosecutor.

And no, I’m not so concerned about this that I’d contact the ex – I’d rather put a needle in my eye or have brain surgery with no anesthesia. But Dan Savage’s article brought up a round of discussion at a recent Sunday brunch I hosted.

And yes, I realize that Dan is out of the US. I have no idea what Canada law would say about this and I don’t know any attorneys that I could (who wouldn’t send along a bill that is) just call to get a quick response.

Below is the article and response:

I was in a relationship in high school with a girl from the time we were 14 until we were 16. During that time we made a lot of sex tapes together. Sometimes I'd hold the camera, sometimes she would, sometimes it was on a tripod. We both enjoyed watching these videos together. We've remained friends, and she kept some of the tapes and I kept some, only for our private viewing.

We are in our late 20s now, and she recently asked if I could burn copies of our tapes onto DVDs on my computer. We were both minors when we made these tapes, and we were both willing, so am I breaking the law by making copies for her? Or by possessing copies of my underage self screwing my underage girlfriend?

Dan's response

Before I call in the feds, an observation: Digital cameras, cell-phone cameras, webcams, and film-editing software have placed the means of porn production into the hands of sexually active young people everywhere. When I was a horny 14-year-old, a couple of horny 14-year-olds couldn't get much more hardcore than posing for some crappy Polaroids. Nowadays, a pair of 14-year-olds with a digital camera, a laptop, and a dream can make an epic bukakke/ATM/femdom/ws/ff digital video between lunch and lacrosse practice.

What's more, thanks to Paris Hilton, Colin Farrell, the ugly dude from Limp Bizkit, the even uglier Kid Rock, and the Christian rocker/eager cocksuckee from Creed, young people view making porn tapes as mildly kinky fun and/or a good career move. And why shouldn't they? On the kink-o-meter, a little homemade porn hardly registers, and a public figure hasn't been damaged by the discovery of a porn tape since Rob Lowe proved that a straight guy can get laid at a Democratic National Convention. So long as horny teenagers keep their tapes to themselves and avoid web predators, no harm done. Unfortunately for all those horny 14-year-olds, the FBI doesn't think their homemade porn is harmless. "What it comes down to is this," said Laura Eimiller, spokesperson for the Los Angeles office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, "the production of child porn—and a child is defined as any person under the age of 18—is illegal. The age of the individual filming it is irrelevant. Whether it was consensual is irrelevant. It is still child porn." And if the children in the porn made the porn? And if they weren't sharing it with anyone else? "If a complaint came to our attention about pornography that featured an individual who was a child at the time the pornography was created, it would certainly be investigated," says Eimiller. While I had her on the phone, I asked Eimiller if she had any words of federal wisdom for horny 14-year-olds with the means and, in some instances, the desire to star in their own porn productions. But Eimiller had nothing to say to horny 14-year-olds, directing her comments to a higher authority. "Parents," says Eimiller, "when they're allowing children to have these types of media, should explain to them what the law is, and what's acceptable and what's not acceptable."

Getting back to you, CAM, what does Eimiller think you should do about your ex-girlfriend/unindicted co-conspirator's request for copies?

"Seek advice from an attorney," says Eimiller. "That's the best advice I could give him. He should definitely seek advice from an attorney before copying or providing these tapes to some other individual."

Being a full-service sex-advice columnist, CAM, I went looking for an attorney for you. And I found one. A Jewish one. On Passover. "Although possibly illegal to possess such tapes, I wouldn't think they would prosecute something like that," says Scott Frankel, a criminal-defense attorney in Chicago who has worked on child-porn cases and was kind enough to let me pull him away from the Passover table to discuss child pornography. "But if I were giving advice to someone in this situation, I would be very conservative. I would advise them to refrain from making or sending any copies, and keep these tapes to yourself."

End of article and response

Email me @ Isabelle Channing dear readers and tell me what you think, what did you think of his article? And might there be pictures of you out there somewhere waiting to appear and how would you feel about it if they did suddenly become available? Send along your picture making experiences and I'll compile a few stories and put them into another article and if you want to remain anonymous you can be.

Sincerely yours,
Isabelle Channing