There are two bewildering porn cases making the news these days and both represent what I would consider a creepy slide into Orwellian overreach. The first is the horrifying case of Julie Amero, the Connecticut substitute teacher whose classroom computer’s anti-virus software was so out-of-date that it did not prevent pop-up ads for porn sites (with pornographic images) from appearing in full view of her students. Ms. Amero insists (and the evidence heavily supports her insistence) that she did not intentionally display porn to her students. Nevertheless she faces 40 years in prison. 40 years!

Case number 2 involves a 16-year-old girl and a 17-year-old boy who took digital photos of themselves having sex then emailed them to each other. Guess what that equals in the eyes of Florida courts? Disseminating child pornography. Now here’s the clincher. The “children” in question are the sixteen and seventeen-year old subjects of the photos, which makes them technically both the victims and the perpetrators of the same crime. Plus they’re being tried as adults. So they’re children when it comes to identifying a crime, but they’re adults when it comes to paying for it.

Some questions.

1) Even if Julie Amero is lying (which I do not think she is) does she deserve 40 years for exposing children to porn?

2) Are teachers all across the country going to shut off their classroom computers out of fear of a pop-up-ad-related jail sentence?

3) Do we still believe that 16 and 17-year-olds don’t have sex all the time, every day, everywhere?

4) If the teens voluntarily took pictures of each other who is their victim?

5) Can you be both the victim and the perpetrator of a crime?

Incidentally, if you want to help Julie Amero, go to her blog and donate to her legal fund and/or email the prosecutor (david.smith@po.state.ct.us).