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Well this is kind of weird. Ampersand of Alas, a blog passes along one of those classic gotcha stories that combine double standards, overzealous prosecutors, and young people exchanging nude photography…

Reading, Pennsylvania: Where you get three years in prison for taking consensual nude pictures of your girlfriend, but cops who expose their penises in the office aren’t penalized at all.

From a pretty good link-roundup post here.

... that for some reason I foolishly started following links back through the story. And discovered that, as they say on Facebook, “it’s complicated.” There’s more to it than will fit in any two-sentence summary.

Let’s get the willy-waiving policeman out of the way first: According to The Agitator (the site Ampersand links to) a Pennsylvania police officer was reinstated after an arbitrator determined he was improperly fired because his employers (the police supervisor he exposed himself to?) didn’t follow “progressive disciplinary guidelines, which involve a series of verbal and written warnings.” (That would be “progressive” in the procedural rather than political sense.)

The child-porn conviction business, though, just keeps getting deeper and weirder.

Most surface/gotcha-level view of the story: man convicted earlier for possessing naked photos of his then-17-year-old wife is sent to prison for 3 years for failing to notify a sex-offender registry of a change of address. Extra irony/quirk/outrage/overreach/whatever: his now-adult wife and child they had together are now an impoverished single-mother family and will remain so till the husband gets out of prison around 2012. Ouch, right?

Well, yes, ouch. The next complication, though, from the Reading (Pennsylvania) Eagle after the man was originally convicted: in 2003 a 23-year-old man has a hotel-room party with his 17-year-old girlfriend who takes pictures of the two of them having sex, and of two other girls, 15 and 16, kissing, touching, and showering naked. Girlfriend swears she took the photos and made a photo album of them and then gave it to him.

Ok, that’s more complicated but still way more of a sorrow-than-anger situation. (Update: Making the very big assumption that since court and news reports don’t say otherwise that contact was limited to his fiance and she really did take all the photos. But in current comments Sungold is persuading me to lean towards her interpretation, in which case eww, and throw the book at him.)

Except there’s the next level complication: The man allegedly kept the photo album in his vehicle for a year. It didn’t turn up till he had a traffic accident and a police officer found the album in his car. Oh, and they didn’t just charge him with child porn they also charged him with providing alcohol to minor.

Yeah, I’m starting to feel a little sympathy fading too here. Tough, and all that, but still, WTF, right? Well, yeah.

It gets even more complicated though.

The police officer who found the photo album was the man’s brother in law (or possibly his step-brother.)

The brother-in-something held on to the album for a year before someone else on the police force found it in his desk. When police searched his computer they found 120 other photos of naked minors.

That too got complicated. The brother-in-something was charged with possession of child-pornograhy but, since the photo album was evidence against the original man he wasn’t charged for possessing that.

It gets even more complicated: first, it sounds like the man and his erstwhile partner are separated. So it’s not clear what’s going on with her. And comments by a local in one of the articles said the brother-in-something eventually escaped conviction, which sounds like a bit more of a scandal — the photos aren’t characterized but it doesn’t sound like they were of people he was involved with.

But wait! It gets even more complicated! The brother-in-something was actually convicted and sentenced to six months house arrest. For possessing those 120 computer photos. Oh, and peeping in windows. So there you go.

Meanwhile the original man, having served his original sentence, is still back in prison for three years under the state’s Megan’s Law provisions for failing to let authorities know he’d moved.

So end of the story? Yes, it’s scandalous that a different police officer was reinstated after exposing himself to his superior and a bystander.

And yes it’s on-balance unfortunate that the man went to prison a second time after serving what may have been a shorter first sentence for exercising what could only optimistically be called really, really, really bad judgment and somewhat more generously for canoodling with someone still a minor but past the age of consent and… her two minor friends who certainly weren’t. And not-at-all generously, for either getting minor children drunk, having sex with one of them, and taking and keeping naked photos with them, or, nearly as bad, getting drunk and naked with minor children and keeping the resulting photos. No really good way to spin that and… it’s not really clear why one would bother.

I’ve still got questions, though, about double standards on police vs. civilian conduct. Because one final Reading Eagle story, on the conviction of the brother-in-something adds one final complication. Turns out it wasn’t the brother-in-something who found the photo album in the first man’s truck after an accident. Instead some other officer found it and turned it over to the brother-in-something. Who put it in his desk. Where it was discovered a little more than a year later by someone else. Who, if I’ve got the chronology right, may actually have been investigating allegations of window peeping. But, having finally seen the light of day, resulted in charges against the original man for child porn, the brother for otherwise-unrelated child porn… but not withholding evidence… and… what?... disciplinary charges? Tampering with evidence charges? Nothing at all? ...for the officer who handed the photo album to the brother-in-law.

Point being that yeah, in its bare bones the story fits that two-line gotcha, “Reading, Pennsylvania: Where you get three years in prison for taking consensual nude pictures of your girlfriend, but cops who expose their penises in the office aren’t penalized at all.” But where the rest of the stories (I’m just a regular Paul Harvey, eh?) ought to raise even more eyebrows.

In principle there’s nothing wrong with sex with another person. Or, particularly, about bragging about it. Not even if you’re married, assuming your marriage partner is ok with it. Not even if your sex partner(s) are married, assuming it’s ok with their partners. There’s even nothing wrong with it even if you’re a California State Assemblyman.

Yeah, it gets a little iffier if you’re a California State Assemblyman with a 100% approval rating for “family values” voting from a subsidiary of the right-wing Focus on the Family, although it might not sit well with FoF to learn you’re actually an adulterous braggart.

There is a problem, however, if you’re a California State Assemblyman, and the chair of the Utilities and Commerce committee and your sex partners are paid lobbyists for an energy company your committee regulates! That’s the real story in the following video clip.

The real scandal? “The Assembly Legislative Ethics Committee is looking into the reports about Duvall’s alleged relationship with the lobbyist, a source close to the committee said this morning. “

Now we’re getting somewhere! People have sex. Sex is messy. Some people think messy sex is sexy. Other people think their way of doing sex is great and everyone else’s is gross. That’s not going anywhere.

What does need to go somewhere, though, is that he was doing these things with lobbyists. Because even if Duvall’s marital partner knew and approved, and even if his sex partner’s husbands knew and approved, it would still be a scandal that he was having sex with lobbyists for a company his committee has jurisdiction over.

It wouldn’t just be scandalous in terms of exchange of favors (which is how a lot of people seem to be reading it with their “little more than prostitutes” quips.) It would also be scandalous in terms of sexual-harassment-type power differentials between people seeking changes in legislation and someone in a position to make those changes.

Meanwhile people around the web seem to be focusing on the sex part. And the Focus-on-the-Family hypocrisy part.

But yes, by all means, go all knee-squeezy because someone had sex. Gag and heave all you like about his explicit language. And yes, definitely, absolutely take him to task for being the slimy hypocrite he is. But first put this man out of his chairmanship, off the committee, out of the Assembly, and, if possible, in jail for the real scandal of being that intimate with lobbyists or allowing them to be that intimate with him.

Those of us on the left are even more likely than those on the right to stop at twittery about sex at the expense of substance.

Update: According to the L.A. Times Duvall is resigning (emphasis mine)

“I am deeply saddened that my inappropriate comments have become a major distraction for my colleagues in the Assembly, who are working hard on the very serious problems facing our state,” he said in a statement posted on his website. “I have come to the conclusion that it would not be fair to my family, my constituents or to my friends on both sides of the aisle to remain in office. Therefore, I have decided to resign my office, effective immediately, so that the Assembly can get back to work.”

Read the quote in context here.

No, he’s not deeply saddened about his comments. He’s instead deeply hoping that knee-squeezing twittery about having sex with another decision-capable adult will trump the substance of potential criminal wrongdoing of a decidedly non-sexual nature. It’s not his inappropriate comments, or the specific sexual activities he was describing when he made those comments. It’s that he was literally in bed with lobbyists for an energy company his committee is supposed to be regulating.

Oh, and while I was Googling around for a post I’m writing up at my place I found a note at SF Gate that the energy company may have instead hired the lobbyists specifically because of her prior sexual access to him. In which case not only should he face trial and jail, so should the lobbyists and the corporate staff that hired them.

(I first found out about the Duvall story from Pam Spaulding.)

Hexy, guest posting at Feministe, says of the Florida mayor who was recently fired because his wife works in porn,

According to this article, Janke’s wife’s occupation raised concerns about whether he could “remain effective”. This line jumped out at me:

“When you become a public figure you are held to a different level of scrutiny and ethics,” Babcock said.

And, you know, that surprised me, because I don’t see any unusual ethics here. The Madonna/whore dichotomy, the whole idea that certain women are marked as OK to fuck, but not the type you take home? That’s a standard I see everywhere in day to day life.

Read the quote in context here.

In other words what different standards?

Hexy goes on to say the couple seemed to have been together long enough to parent teenage children, which would tend to imply that any alleged character flaws in the couple probably would have been noticeable before and when he was elected in the first place. Although being able to successfully parent teenagers in the first place might have been a clue that maybe she, and by extension he, didn’t have ZOMG TEH MYTHICAL SEX-WORKER DISEASED FEEIND!!! cooties on them in the first place. Because for the most part sex-worker diseased-fiend cooties tend to be, well, mythical.

And not to put too fine a point on it, as of the 2000 census Ft. Meyer’s Beach, Florida, had a population of only 6561. Consider everything mainstream stereotyping “knows” about small-southern-town mayors. When you think about that you might start wondering whether the porn company was exercising poor judgment in not holding the mayor’s wife to higher scrutiny and standards and firing her! Oh but that would be silly right? Because, maybe I guess, what everybody “knows” about porn actors are true but what everybody “knows” about mayors isn’t?

Samhita of Feministing has a great take on the… unfortunate David Letterman joke about one of the women in the Palin family

Letterman apologized last night and while I think Letterman’s jokes were in poor taste, let’s not forget that Palin’s actual stance that has been legislated and made into policy is far worse. Does this make joking about her or her daughters OK? Definitely not. But watching those two women duke it out, I think it is so interesting listening to conservative women use feminist talking points. It is smart and calculated and plays so well into the often rudimentary understanding Americans have about the fight for women’s rights.

She said it here.

Should Letterman lose his job over his women-hating, misogyny-enforcing, insensitive, tin-eared, offensive, intrusive joke? (Not over writing it, which he didn’t, but over not just plain balking when it showed up on his cue-card handler’s queue.)

Well, it seems a little harsh, and he has apologized, and he probably won’t do it again but… yeah, maybe I wouldn’t fire him (not knowing the entire decision-making process or who else has already been disciplined or fired for letting the joke get as far as his cue cards) but I wouldn’t shed tears if someone else did.

But Samhita points out he just made a joke. Gov. Palin and a whole raft of her ilk have not only advocated but signed women-hating, misogyny-enforcing, insensitive, tin-eared, offensive, intrusive legislation into law! And not only are they not embarrassed about it, not only are they not apologizing, and not only are they bragging about it, they’re actively and openly planning more of the same… and in the process appropriating not only the tactics of those they would oppress but the language!

And not to put too fine a point on it but that they know the tactics and language of feminism makes their opposition to it more, not less women-hating, misogyny-enforcing, insensitive, tin-eared, offensive, and intrusive.

Why are they going to be asked to resign or be fired?

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Quick note: ever since Reagan administration spin-meisters architected the “news cycle” there’s been a tendency to imagine that only one thing can be done at once or that attention can be paid to only one initiative, event, or scandal at a time. And so if you were used to that philosophy you might mistake my greater condemnation of Palin et. al as some sort of negative, “bigger fish to fry” defense of Letterman. Au contraire! One of the coolest thing about the Obama era is it turns it’s perfectly possible to do two things at once. Maybe even more! No reason, therefore, to let Palin or Letterman off the hook.