Adam Cohen of NorthAssoc.org demonstrates his complete lack of understanding of what life without a trust fund might be like with his new and lovingly illustrated compare and contrast:

http://northassoc.org/2008/06/14/gazette-urban-home-gardens-booming.aspx

What else can you take away from this post, other than "Adam Cohen hates poor people"? Adam, don't you think the people in those condos would *like* to have gardens? Why do you think they can't? Might it be that the house you pictured on top is over twice the cost of the condos pictured below? Again and again, Cohen demonstrates distain and disgust -- if not outright hatred -- for those unable to afford the type of Victorian mansion he spends most of his aggressively deep and abiding unemployment puttering around in.

Here, on December 15, 2007 Adam tells people who are "less than eager" to see the porn shop open that they should express their less-than-eagerness to the owners of the 135 King St. property. They then provide a link to their address. But although the linked phrase has to do with their planning board application, the link itself takes you to a google map showing the location of the landlord's house.

But that's not what's shitty about it, as shitty as it is. What's shitty about it is that contacting the landlords at this point can't possibly have any effect -- the contracts have been signed, the permits have been secured, the store is about to open, and they cannot now back out of the agreement. It's too late. Contacting the landlords now -- now that it's too late to do anything -- is just harassment.

Knock it off, Adam. It's over. You lost.

"Smart Growth" is a philosophy of urban planning. According to the Wikipedia (so this may or may not be bullshit), "Smart Growth values long-range, regional considerations of sustainability over a short-term focus. Its goals are to achieve a unique sense of community and place; expand the range of transportation, employment, and housing choices; equitably distribute the costs and benefits of development; preserve and enhance natural and cultural resources; and promote public health."

Sounds awesome, right? Unfortunately, there's trouble in paradise. According to one local blogger, "it must be acknowledged that some proponents may have less noble motivations. Among them are some who already live in the suburbs and are eager to restrict development around them. "Smart Growth" is a handy and politically-correct way to raise the drawbridge."

So, some people are disingenuously making use of "Smart Growth" ideas and plattitudes in a cynical attempt to further their own financial and personal interests. That's not what's making my head explode, though.

What's making my head explode is the fact that Adam Cohen--the most cynically and disingenuously self-serving fake-advocate for the little guy in Hampshire county--is that local blogger, bemoaning the misappropriation of Smart Growth philosophy. It's crazy for him to bemoan Smart Growth proponents with less than noble motivations because he's the one who's doing it. Read this sentence, quoted (from here) in the same blog entry, and try not to think about Adam Cohen:

[S]mart growth is often nothing more than a thinly-disguised attempt by well-heeled suburbanites to keep undesirable newcomers from their neighborhoods..."

You couldn't do it, could you?

Now, to be fair, I don't have a clear, precise idea of what Smart Growth is supposed to be, or whether what Adam Cohen and his North Street Association advocates really counts as "Smart Growth." And I don't really see Northampton as a suburb; it's more of an artsy, rural college town not closely affiliated with or dependent on any one urban area. But that doesn't matter. The larger point remains: what Adam Cohen is doing is nothing more than a thinly-disguised attempt by a well-heeled Northampton resident to keep undesirable newcomers from his neighborhood. Fuck that.

We all remember when this happened, right?

NoPornNorthampton Defeats Capital Video

By Steve Javors
Monday, Nov 13, 2006 Adjust font size:
NORTHAMPTON, Mass. — An organized group that waged a local war against Capital Video from opening a large adult store in the middle of town was victorious.

Between July 10 and November 2, NoPornNorthampton collected 1,551 signatures on petitions urging city officials to implement adult-use zoning and viewing booth health regulations.

As a result of the Northampton city council passing new adult-use zoning regulations, Cranston, R.I.-based Capital Video, helmed by Kenny Guarino, is not permitted to open at its intended location.

...except the opposite. Also fun: refresh the page a couple times to see the porn ads on Adam's press release.

What I love about this is that in one smooth motion, Adam:

1. Berates this poor, random guy out in Los Angeles for not mentioning on his "Linkedin" profile that he used to work in the porn industry
2. Then suggests the man quit his job and get another job not in the porn industry. Which the guy is clearly trying to do if he's not mentioning his porny past on his resume... and I imagine dumbass posts like this one Adam unfurls will only make that harder.

Of course, Adam doesn't have to worry about jobs — he doesn't even have one! What a jerk!

What I love about this is the absolute no-win situation Adam Cohen casually slips the Castaway Lounge into. Note that the Castaway Lounge turns the drunk guys away, as any responsible business should, but in the Alternate Cohenverse, drunks that wander by are still somehow the Castaway Lounge's fault, so Adam soldiers on to insinuate at the end of his post that Castaway Lounge should have their liquor license revoked - or be "shut down as a public nuisance."

What a jerk!

Recent Hampshire College graduate Murial Barkley-Aylmer did her senior thesis on the porn debate in Northampton. Although she did not publish it or attack NoPornNorthampton publicly (a recent appearance on WHMP focused on a previous Northampton porn war), Adam Cohen of NoPorn has decided to publicly respond to "her" claims. (I put 'her' in quotation marks to distance myself from the suggestion that all of the claims Mr. Cohen criticizes are actually hers. Some of them are claims which she reports but does not clearly endorse; some are distortions of claims she appears to endorse; some are claims she does not mention at all.) In what follows, I present a point-by-point rebutal to Mr. Cohen's responses. I apologize for the length of this post.

"Secondary effects are a real and contemporary phenomenon." Remains to be seen. This is, of course, the most controversial part of NoPorn's platform. The experts disagree; the evidence isn't as strong as Mr. Cohen says it is; the courts permit cities to rely on flimsy, possibly irrelevant evidence. Saying that Andrew Shelffo and Bill Dwight are "breezy" when they disagree with NoPorn on this point is a dishonest, dodgy way of refusing to acknowledge the fact that there are experts in the field who find NPN's assertions to be without merit, derived from shoddy research. These experts include Daniel Linz, and Fulton County, Georgia. And since Mr Cohen is no more an expert in the fields of criminology, psychology, or urban planning than Bill Dwight, Andrew Shelffo, or I, I see no reason to trust his analysis over those of his competitors.

Also, Mr. Cohen does not cite a passage where Ms. Barkley-Aylmer denies that secondary effects are a real and contemporary problem, and I couldn't find a passage where she explicitly endorses this claim. Of course, other people have said this, or that secondary effects are not as severe as Mr. Cohen makes them out to be, and she reports that this has happened. But that's not the same thing. And Mr. Cohen's response reads in a way that strongly suggests that Ms. Barkley-Aylmer does deny the doctrine of secondary effects. That's dishonest.

"Dispersal zoning protects rich and poor alike." This is kind of a lie. Ok, it's totally a lie. Whatever may be going on in Dallas or Oklahoma City, as far as the City of Northampton is concerned, a porn store on the Highway Business district can be indefinitely large. If the doctrine of secondary effects is true, a large porn store in the Highway Business district would be extremely dangerous to that area. And contrary to what Mr. Cohen suggests, people do live in that area, though few people who are as wealthy as Mr. Cohen. Shifting large porn stores away from the wealthy neighborhood surrounding North St. and into the poorer neighborhoods near where King St. intersects with I-91 protects the rich and poor unalike. It protects the rich a great deal, and the poor not at all.

"Porn and adult enterprises create spaces where many feel unsafe." True but irrelevant. No one, especially not Ms. Barkley-Aylmer, says it doesn't. The relevant claim made by Ms. Barkley-Aylmer has to do with the so-called "porn wars" of the 1980s. Such leading feminists as Andrea Dworkin and Katharine MacKinnon teamed up with leading right-wing wackos to try to outlaw pornography. Testimony before various legislative bodies is collected in In Harm's Way, familiar to any regular reader of NoPornNorthampton. But these laws, when passed, backfired. They tended to be selectively enforced in a way that targeted the homosexual community and destroyed so-called "queer places," places where people whose sexual preferences placed them outside the heterosexual "norm" felt safe to be themselves.* This was a terrible tragedy, and should have taught us a lesson.

Mr. Cohen is confident that such a thing could never happen here. Northampton is a very liberal, very queer-friendly place. We have Smith College, we have Oh My! and Pride & Joy, we have an openly gay Mayor. But it wasn't always that way, and unless Mr. Cohen can see the future, he cannot guarantee that it will always be that way. We should therefore be very, very careful about the laws we make. We must be very careful that the laws we make cannot backfire or be used against us. To simply say, 'well yeah, but no one here would ever use this law that way,' is irresponsible and dangerous, as Dworkin and MacKinnon discovered. Mr. Cohen's linkdump doesn't address Ms. Barkley-Aylmer's actual point at all.

"Capital Video stores are unusually popular sites for high-risk sex." True but irrelevant, in two different ways. According to one of Mr. Cohen's favorite websites, Squirt.org, Capital Video viewing booths are unusaually popular sites for high-risk sex. Our store won't have viewing booths. Also, other popular places for high-risk sex in Northampton include the locker room at Universal Health and Fitness, approximately a half mile from Mr. Cohen's home; Child's Park, approximately a mile and a quarter from Mr. Cohen's home, and the Northampton Bike Trail, which was extended this summer and now runs through the woods directly behind his home. One wonders why Mr. Cohen isn't more up-in-arms about these unusually popular sites for high-risk sex. I have a hypothesis: Mr. Cohen doesn't care about high-risk sex except as an excuse to oppose Capital Video's proposed porn store. Instances of high-risk sex that are useless to further this goal are irrelevant to him.

"Like strong medicine, sexual liberation is a good thing that can be taken too far." I'm sorry, I don't know what he's talking about. Ms. Barkley-Aylmer doesn't say that sexual liberation is unlike strong medicine in that it cannot be taken too far. Nor has anyone else. No one (save Jerry Falwell) says that STDs are good, or that infidelity is totally awesome, or that family instability is good for kids. (Mr. Cohen also says that single-parent households are bad for kids, without citing a source. I'm no expert, but I'm not sure about that one.)

Mr. Cohen goes on to say that "Porn's celebration of promiscuity and short-term thinking are especially toxic in this regard." He cites no source, and I have no idea how to assess porn's "toxicity" with respect to infidelity or sexually transmitted infections. I am not aware of any study linking the viewing of pornography with infidelity (other than the viewing of pornography itself, which may be regarded as infidelity), and Mr. Cohen has not cited one. Mr. Cohen also fails to address mainstream films that celebrate promiscuity, such as all teen sex comedies. Teen sex comedies are extremely popular; the current #1 film at the box office is a teen sex comedy which celebrates promiscuity. And teen sex comedies target teens, whose ideas about sex are just forming, and who are especially vulnerable to influence. Where are the cries to zone against teen sex comedies?

And I would be very surprised to find that viewing pornography was related in any direct way to sexually transmitted infections, simply because I would expect that most of the sex directly resulting from pornography is--ahem--unaccompanied. So more evidence is necessary to support this point, Mr. Cohen.

"The fact that we support our positions with a great deal of evidence is not a strike against us." This is a misunderstanding of a point I've made here on MoPorn. I don't claim that Mr. Cohen has too much evidence, I claim that Mr. Cohen is so verbose, long-winded, and fond of providing support for his arguments and assertions with other of his (sometimes completely irrelevant) arguments and assertions, and that his "evidence" is presented in such a haphazard, disorganized, and repetitive manner, that it is often difficult to see just what his argument is supposed to be, or why we should think any of his premises are true. I'm not saying that he's wrong because he's verbose; I'm saying that his verbosity doesn't mean he's right. As he quotes me as saying , "there’s so much information on there that it is impossible to subject it to any level of scrutiny. You can’t read what they’ve written, and you can’t check their sources; there’s too much material. You can’t keep up with it." If that's not a legitimate criticism, I don't know what is.

Mr. Cohen has also fundamentally misunderstood my overall "position." If I am forced to state it, my position is this: that neither correlation nor timing implies causation; that anecdotes do not imply correlation; that arguing in a circle is bad; that well-designed, double-blind studies with control groups are good; that the results of poorly-designed studies that lack double-blind protocols or control groups should be regarded with suspicion; that the number of words you've found the time to write in your blog does not correlate with the correctness of your position; and that the howlings of a man who's scared to death that his new house is going to lose value should be regarded with skepticism. Those convictions, and not any pre-ordained ideas about pornography, its harms and benefits, or its effects on the community, lead me to find NoPornNorthampton wanting. Sorry, Adam. I just don't buy what you're selling.

Finally, a tangental nitpick: Mr. Cohen suggests that Ms. Barkley-Aylmer objects to NoPorn's overall position on the basis of their pants. This is not the case. Ms. Barkley-Aylmer mentions in her report that although Ms. Reiter always attended City Council meetings dressed professionally from the waist up, she was often wearing pajama pants which were out of view of the cameras. Ms. Barkley-Aylmer makes no attempt to connect this behavior to the overal veracity of Ms. Reiter's claims or those of her husband.

In closing, four of Mr. Cohen's "responses" are false or misleading, one is a lie, and two are true but irrelevant, and all were totally unnecessary.

*Ms. Barkley-Aylmer makes this claim and cites Duggan, Lisa and Nan Hunter. Sex Wars. New York: Routledge, 1995. pp. 70-71.

Someone mentioned this in a comment a while ago, but I think it bears emphasizing. Adam Cohen recently started a new website, the North Street Neighborhood Association. Although he doesn't sign his name (in typical Adam Cohen form), it bears numerous hallmarks of his style: clunky writing; an unweildy, overcrowded sidebar; all and only self-referential links; comments are not permitted; and a disingenuous, overbroad, good-versus-evil description of his goals.

This time, he's interested in saving the wetlands. All wetlands? No. Just some of them. All wetlands in Hampshire County, then? No, think smaller. (After all, small things matter.) All wetlands in Northampton? Nope. Just the wetlands right near his house. He's opposing the efforts of a developer who wants to put condos up on View Avenue, a block or so from his Victorian mansion. Which is located at 134 North Street.

I'm not saying that we shouldn't be preserving our wetlands. We should. I'm just saying that Adam Cohen doesn't care about wetlands; he cares about enhancing the value of his house, and he considers wetlands to be a useful tool to that end. As with porn stores, he seems to care about things only when they come within a half-mile radius of his home.

Also, according to this post, there are numerous reasons why it is incredibly stupid to build near wetlands. But your house is near wetlands, Adam, and you want to keep it that way. So which is it? Are wetlands so awful that it's stupid to build near them, or are wetlands so valuable to the communities that surround them that it is essential to preserve them?

Adam's latest opus de cut-and-paste is all about marriage. And unsurprisingly, he'd like us to believe that sinful and hedonistic behavior such as cohabitation can ruin your marriage before it even starts. Unfortunately his major evidence is from the guy behind the "National Marriage Project." Here's an excerpt from a dissenting opinion.

"Trying to push everyone into the marriage box is an old tactic. For much of history, patriarchal social structures didn't give women much choice about it: if you couldn't work to support yourself, you needed marriage in order to survive. Some religions added their voice to the cause by labeling unmarried relationships sinful. More recently, misrepresented social science research has been put to the same use by organizations like the National Marriage Project in an attempt to convince people that being unmarried is scientifically inadvisable."

If was Mr. Cohen, then I'd just copy 90% of the article for you, but I thought a link might be just as good.

http://www.unmarried.org/marriage-project-sojourner.html

According to NoPornNorthampton, Ricky Martin has a foundation that works to prevent sex trafficking in the Dominican Republic, especially the trafficking of children. Good for him. It's a worthy cause, deserving of devotion of time and money.

NoPornNorthampton has a blog. Sometimes they send out stuff in the mail. But for all their hornblowing, they don't actually get off their butts and do anything. I think it's important to maintain a sharp distinction between people who do stuff and people who just blog about people who do stuff. I'm just saying.

From The Onion, America's Finest News Source, November 12, 2003, "I Think I'll Drive The Kids Up To The State Park To See This 'Glory Hole'." It's a joke, Adam.

Thanks to Adam Cohen's latest article, The Glory Hole FAQ,, now we know all the potential risks and benefits of unprotected sex with anonymous strangers through a hole carved into the wall of a porn-store viewing booth. Which is good, in case the risks weren't obvious to you already. Thanks Adam; knowing is half the battle.

Of course, our porn store won't have viewing booths.

And Adam, can I ask you a question? Do you actively seek this information out, or do other people bring it to your attention? Because it would be pretty weird if you spent time searching the internet for websites that candidly explain glory-hole-related sexual phenomena. Pretty weird, indeed.

After spending some time perusing the NoPornNorthhampton.com website, I have come to the conclusion that NPN’s goal is a bit more insidious than “increasing awareness about the impact of porn on people and communities.” NPN announces that they are “against mindless sex, abusive sex, sex without regard for issues like love, fidelity, commitment, pregnancy, disease and children.” If that is the case, NPN should also expand its mission to curbing the transmission of cable television and satellite broadcasts, eradicating movie rental establishments, and shutting down singles-bars. But, if you are attempting to impose your restrictive morality on society, you have to start with the weakest link in the cultural-filth food-chain.

NPN portrays the typical sexual-merchandise consumer as the poor misguided automaton with little control over his animal-impulses. By referring to the addictive qualities of pornography, NPN asserts that “consumers lose the ability to make wise choices.” Thus, NPN invokes the desperate need for paternalistic intervention. Based on their belief that “many people consume porn because they are misguided as to what will make them happy”, NPN promotes itself as an enlightened advocate for the morally superior social-construct. Luckily the citizens of Northampton have a diligent advocate fighting to ameliorate their imprudent attempts in finding personal fulfillment.

NPN assails those who “fail to appreciate the amount of suffering involved in the making and selling of porn.” The underlying assumption is that adults who contract their labor for the production of adult-content lack the ability to give meaningful consent. In their view, the desperate souls forced into the depraved world of pornography do not have the capacity to make informed decisions involving their employment or the use of their bodies. NPN largely ignores the legal avenues available to victims of duress, rape, battery, and unconscionable contracts through criminal prosecutions and civil suits. Based on NPN’s position, demagoguery is a more convenient tactic than acknowledging the critical role of individual responsibility necessary for a democratic society.

NPN disapproves of the free-market function of allocating property to the one willing to pay the most for it. NPN appealed to the property-owner not to lease or sell his property to the adult business. The property owner’s economic return on investment is secondary to NPN’s vaguely defined collective societal-interest. According to NPN, “elevating money to be the only important value doesn't seem very "Northampton", does it?” perhaps NPN would prefer the central-planning theory prevalent in socialistic countries where property usage is determined by a faceless bureaucracy, subject to the government’s arbitrary whims, instead of the law of supply and demand.

Unsatisfied with the lack of response from the letter mailed to the property owner in negotiations with the adult business, NPN then sent a copy of the letter to 29,000 registered voters in Northampton and Longmeadow, MA. The letters were sent in an attempt to “let businesspeople know they should balance profit with compassion.” The recipients of the letters were also requested to “please ask the Goldberg’s to find a more suitable tenant for their King Street property.” This tactic demonstrates that NPN’s true intent is not to “increase awareness about the impact of porn”, but rather to intimidate, coerce, and shame property owners into bowing to their dictatorial views.

NPN announces that is “interested to hear sincere arguments for opposing views”, but they reserve the right to “reject a comment if we feel it doesn't meaningfully contribute to the debate”. The extensive volume of selectively-quoted articles from psychologists, ex-porn stars, and feminist authors denouncing the evils of pornography is seemingly unchallenged by opposing points of view. Their bias is further evidenced through posts authored by journalism professors, t-shirt marketers, and therapists peddling porn-addiction cures for $80 a pop. See http://www.mopornnorthampton.com/node/84.
This militates against NPN’s supposed purpose of promoting “informed choice” on the issue. On the contrary, NPN operates more like a recruiting website for like-minded zealots than as a forum for promoting education and dialogue.

John M. Gorrie

This post was moved from the "About This Site" page to the main page --ed.

Oh, The Entitlement! of the idle rich: every neighborhood is theirs to micro-manage as they see fit. And -- even if you consider it "your" neighborhood and not particularly their business, sorry, you're wrong -- it's "their" neighborhood. Or, no, even better! it's "our" neighborhood. Example cited, from this page, but emphasis added:

Brian wrote to NPNAdmin:

I know this will be deleted because I have a different opinion but come onnnnn! This website is so pointless. Use your time for something useful. The fact a porn store is going into Northampton means nothing to me. But because of this website it makes me want to fight to help it open. Go feed homeless people and stop fighting for something so silly.

NPNAdmin wrote back:

I don't expect you to care for our neighborhood, but I wouldn't criticize you for caring for yours.

Brian wrote to NPNAdmin:

It is my neighborhood.

NPNAdmin wrote back, because he simply must have the last word on everything:

It is our neighborhood, then, yours and mine together. I encourage you to visit with the residents of Apremont Triangle, as I did yesterday, to see how they feel about the Amazing.net shop there. The subject was nearly the first thing Mayor Charlie Ryan discussed in his speech last evening to the Armoury-Quadrangle Civic Association. You may not think this is important. I ask you to respect the many people who do.

Nopornnorthampton's latest foray into Springfield politics is tragically, woefully misguided. It's like they're trying to play "Risk" wearing mittens. They display no insight at all into the genuinely serious problems that Springfield has been and continues to be blighted with -- poverty, gangs, violence and shootings -- and instead conveniently blame the conditions on, you guessed it, a porn store. And, suspiciously, just the particular porn store financially aligned with the porn store near their house.

It's transparently self-serving, and worse it minimizes the genuine plight of the people of Springfield by suggesting they could rid themselves of their problems if only they would Rise Up! and push the smut peddler out of their neighborhoods. And again, specifically they're talking about the smut peddlers financially aligned with their enemy Capital Video: no mention has been made of that area's strip club, or the other strip club, or the other porn store, or the other other porn store.

What Springfield needs to get better is difficult to say. There's been so many corrupt politicians over the past two decades who have ambled through, grabbed some cash between their fat fingers, and kicked the town in the ribs on the way out south on I-91 that virtually anything reasonable one could suggest seems like a band-aid on a gunshot wound. Certainly a greater police presence will help, and Ed Flynn seems on the road to make that happen. Mayor Ryan seems to be one of the few corruption-free politicians the city has enjoyed, and when he speaks of the city he does so with hope.

Education is a problem. Housing conditions are a problem. Crime is a problem. Jobs are a problem. Drugs are a problem. Prostitution is a problem. Distracting Springfield politicians with far lesser, fake problems -- like, for example, a porn store that a wealthy man four towns north has a personal vendetta against -- is irresponsible and grotesque.

Here's one month's worth of some favorite comments found on the NoPorn site. If this is what gets through, imagine the comments they censor.

by Iamcuriousblue:

Well Mister or Misses NoPornNorthampton administrator drone, I don't know what kind of response you actually expect to get from your critics considering your staggeringly poor communication skills.

Here's a clue – there's a big difference between talking *at* people (and bombing with endless links to writings that don't convince anybody except the already-converted) and actually talking *with* them.

Talking *at* people doesn't change anybody's mind and only serves to make people talk right back *at* you. Sad that you haven't figured this out.

by chbomb:

I totally agree with Candice. You people need to find something more constructive to do with your time.

by Janie:

How can you say that all of her evidence is anecdotal when all of your articles about the harm done by child porn are testimonies? I would call testimonies anecdotal.

by Zos Kia:

the strong come to oppress the weak

here's the clearest statement of A) why you fight (the weak always look for ways to punk out of a fight, often by hiding behind a bigger dog, in this case, the government) and B) why you won't win in the long run.

So glad I moved to a real cities where malcontents can't pass carpet-bagger laws that do nothing but negatively impact local business. Good luck with that. I'm sure you're winning broad respect in the community.

by Paddy O'Waggle:

The first amendment has three carveouts: obscenity, libel, and speech that causes immediate harm. There is no "gradual harm" carveout. There's no "I don't like what this guy is saying" carveout. There's no "my house is expensive" carveout. I don't why you think there are "many, many" carveouts. I don't know why you think that the first amendment is subject to a cost/benefit analysis.

Ours is a Nation of great ideals and principles. Your critics and I think that it is far more important to protect these ideals and principles than it is to protect your delicate sensibilities, or the value of your house. That's what makes me proud to live here. I find the fact that the City council passed your ordinance to be embarrassing, but I'm proud that it didn't work, and that the store is going to open in spite of you.

by ramswrsw:

Very good. Your adept twisting of my words back on me to make me out to be the bad guy confirms my suspicion that you are well-versed in the politics of spin and deception. Someone challenges you for an unjust stand? Simply ask them where they stand on child molestation. Make it appear to the casual reader (and this is, after all, the internet) that it is your critic who has something to hide. In days gone by, the question was, “Have you stopped beating your wife yet?”
Are you even capable of holding a rational discussion with someone who disagrees with your OPINIONS without attempting to smear them? Given our short exchange, it’s highly doubtful.
For the record, I am firmly against sex between adults and children, or between adolescents and children, as is Dr. Klein, as he has stated repeatedly in his writings and workshops. I am not thrown into a moral panic by exploratory sex play between same-aged children, as this is a normal part of development and an opportunity for parental guidance. I am firmly opposed to exploiting that behaviour for the purposes of entertainment, or adult sexual enjoyment, just in case your next twist was to ask where I stood on child pornography.
I am firmly opposed to hurting people for any reason. I am not thrown into a moral panic by CONSENSUAL participation by ADULTS in B&D or S&M. From reading your website it seems that you have adopted an ideology that says that these things must always be wrong in every circumstance. You are entitled to that opinion, ill-informed and ignorant as it may be.
But, then again, this discussion is not about me. No matter how you try to twist and squirm it is about YOUR ill-advised and despicable attempts to discredit a highly respected, licenced, peer-reviewed therapist who has consistently practiced according the highest standards of his profession, and who was helping countless people while you were still wet behind the ears..
You, however, do not have licence to smear anyone for disagreeing with your position. Not Dr. Klein, and not me.
I am repulsed and sickened by your shameless duplicity and underhandedness. Since you are not capable of engaging in an honest discussion, I will no-longer participate in your shell-game.
My sympathies are with people searching for reliable information who will encounter only your self-serving bunk.
Let the reader beware.

Amen,

-MPNAdmin

Wecome to Taking Stock, a multi-installment attempt to take an exhaustive look at the horror that is NoPornNorthampton.

NoPornNorthampton posts a Google map that shows where the owners of the 135 King St. property live (See the sidebar, “What You Can Do”). Then they sent an open letter to their Longmeadow neighbors in an attempt to embarrass them. Adam Cohen and Jendi Reiter, however, do not want people to know where they live.

~Doug Schubert

Wecome to Taking Stock, a multi-installment attempt to take an exhaustive look at the horror that is NoPornNorthampton.

NoPorn contains numerous egregious instances of intellectual (and plain old) dishonesty. There’s their Amazon kickback scheme, first reported at MoPorn. The problem was that they were secretly trying to make money from Amazon.com in exchange for advertising, which came in the form of book recommendations. This would have been fine had they been up front about what they were doing. But they weren’t. They concealed it.

There’s the GazetteNET web traffic lie, rebutted by Don St. Jon, GazetteNET’s online editor, and further exposed by MoPorn. One principle problem with the comparison is that it’s false. Another problem is that GazetteNet is a pay site, available only by subscription, so it's not an honest comparison. It's like comparing free, well-advertised apples to oranges that cost $12 per month.

There’s the way they make hidden use of the Heritage Foundation. On 1/19/07, NPN posted an entry containing titles and abstracts of some journal articles which they say show that porn causes a variety of bad things. But clicking on the links they provide leads not to the articles themselves, nor a library or other resource where you can get them, but to something called “FamilyFacts.org.” What’s Family Facts? I don’t know either. But their copyright is owned by the Heritage Foundation, a well-known and well-funded think tank with a deeply conservative political agenda. Not exactly a neutral, scientific forum. And when you ask NoPorn whether they’ve even read the articles, what do you get? A bunch of stonewalling. Because they haven’t even bothered to read them. (An illuminating discussion of this post can be found here.)

The explanation of their commentary policy (Sidebar, FAQ, near bottom) contains another whopper. They say that “so far we have been approving most comments.” But they’ve banned all of their most frequent commentators, including me, Jeff and Jennifer of MoPorn, Peter Brooks of TalkBackNorthampton, *Paco*, and Paddy O’Waggle. Of their main critics, only Andrew Shelffo is currently permitted to post comments, and he was banned for a while. I think that if you were to go through and count comments, you’d find that between 70% and 80% of the comments were submitted by people who are now banned. So their claim that they approve most comments is false; they supress 80% of them before they’re written.

Here’s a final example, from the FAQ, where they address the suggestion that they are fascists, right- or left-wing whackos, etc. They claim that there is a harmful atmosphere of aggression surrounding the debate, complete with links that seem like they’re supposed to illustrate the point. For example, the link whose text is the word ‘aggression’ is anchored to a story about “aggressive” pro-porn protesters. Which sort of makes sense.

A lot of the links don’t make sense, though. In the sentence “Women who have spoken out against porn have been taunted and harassed,” there is a link from the word ‘taunted,’ and another from the word ‘harassed.’ I expected the ‘taunted’ link to take me to a time when one of them had been taunted. But it didn’t. It links to a story about Linda Lovelace. Granted, it’s an awful story. But it has nothing to do with the quality of this here debate we’re having.

Similarly, I thought that clicking on the ‘harassed’ link would show me a time when one of them had been harassed. It didn’t, though; it links to an unrelated story of someone who was harassed in Minneapolis in 1983. It’s an awful story, but its relevance to anyone's behavior in this debate we’re having here is questionable; the suggestion that it is relevant is dishonest.

They go on to say that “In hostile environments like these, many citizens withdraw themselves from public debates,” with a link from the expression ‘withdraw themselves.’ I thought that following it would take me to a time when someone withdrew him- or herself from the debate. I thought I would see at least one example. No Dice. It leads to a NoPorn entry consisting of a very long quote of a panel discussion about how important it is to be polite (the overratedness of which I discuss here). They do not provide evidence that anyone has withdrawn from the debate for any reason.

These are just small examples of a larger phenomenon: NoPorn places links throughout their blog, carefully positioned so as to suggest that following the link will lead you to some independent evidence in favor of the relevant claim. But most of the time this suggestion is false. Most of the time, the link is just an exercise in irrelevance. Which is dishonest.

~Doug Schubert

Wecome to Taking Stock, a multi-installment attempt to take an exhaustive look at the horror that is NoPornNorthampton.

NoPornNorthampton advocates a bizarro-world interpretation of the Adult Signage Ordinance. The ordinance (PDF, it’s a little ways down on p. 146, which is actually the 10th page or so) says that signs in Northampton cannot be legally obscene, nor can they depict sexual conduct or excitement. According to NoPorn, the “Victoria’s Secret standard” does not satisfy these criteria. (And here.)

I don’t understand this at all. Unless being sexy counts as sexual conduct, it seems to me that Victoria’s Secret is legally permissible in Northampton. Or, if it isn’t, then I cannot see why the displays at Wee-Ping, on Main St., or Pride & Joy on Old South St (whose window display has, in the recent past, contained a book cover featuring two shirtless men making out like crazy), wouldn’t be illegal, too. So, which is it? Are they all illegal, or are they all legal?

The larger point is that their hysterical need to oppose every little thing Capital Video does causes NoPorn to be willing to do or say anything, no matter how crazy it may cause them to appear. This extends even to opposing their signage and displays, which the City Council seems to think are OK.

~Doug Schubert

Wecome to Taking Stock, a multi-installment attempt to take an exhaustive look at the horror that is NoPornNorthampton.

Although they’ve attempted (and here) to use principles of journalistic ethics as a weapon, NoPorn has utterly failed to understand these principles, or what it is that journalists even do at its most basic level. (Although I participated in this series of comments and am therefore biased, I think that it is one of the most instructive pieces of blatant contempt for their readers that NoPornNorthampton has ever perpetrated. Either that or it’s a terrific example of how stupid they are.)

The gist of it is this: NPN claimed that they are journalists, as well as activists and bloggers. Being a blogger is compatible with being a journalist, but the suggestion that they are activist jouralists is crazy, completely wrong, and absolutely unethical if it’s true. Journalists are ethically prohibited from actively participating in events they report on. This protects objectivity. Your being an activist concerning a topic makes it very unlikely that your reporting of that topic will be fair, neutral, and unbiased. It’s very simple.

Furthermore, being a journalist means that your responsibilities concerning fact-checking are very strict. You can’t just go around reporting whatever you want. You have to check with the person you’re quoting to verify that he actually said what you’re saying he said. What's more, you have to get independent corroboration for everything you report as fact. (So, in order to write, “Karl Rove said “blah blah,” you have to call Karl and ask him if he said, “blah blah.” In order to report blah blah as fact, you need to find two independent sources, who know, to verify it.) You absolutely cannot have a disclaimer at the bottom of your website that says that you don’t verify anything that appears on it.

You should also avoid conflicts of interest. This includes not just refusing gifts and bribes and stuff, but also declining to report on issues in which you have a personal or financial stake. Since NoPorn’s stated goal is to prevent a porn store from opening in their neighborhood, and since they’ve claimed that they’re worried about the impact of the store on the value of their property (See Sidebar, passim), they clearly believe themselves to have personal and financial stakes in the issue. This undermines any shred of journalistic objectivity.

This is not a complicated concept. Journalists have to refrain from activism, particularly in topics they report on. Journalists have to avoid reporting on topics in which they have a personal or financial stake. Journalists have to check their fucking facts, like crazy. No journalistic website can have a disclaimer at the bottom that says they don’t do any fact-checking.

NoPorn, on the other hand, do not refrain from activism in their topic. They report solely on a topic in which they have a personal and financial stake. They does not check facts. Their website has a disclaimer. They don’t do any of the things journalists have to do, and they do a bunch of things no journalist should.

NPN has called this line of reasoning a “maze of logic,” but I think it’s very simple. Journalists have all kinds of heavy-duty ethical responsibilities. NoPorn doesn’t make any effort to live up to them. So either they’re not journalists at all, or they’re very poor journalists. It’s as simple as that.

(After a week of arguing, NPN finally realized this, and admitted, in a sort of backhanded way, that they were not actually journalists. They write, “I am not attached to the label "journalist" if you find it confusing.” I’m not the one who’s confused, Adam.)

~Doug Schubert