Georgia Rep. Earnest G. Smith is stepping up efforts to criminalize photoshops after someone pasted his face onto a porn star’s body and posted it on the internet.
Earnest G. Smith was none too happy when he discovered that one of his online detractors had slapped an image of his face onto the reclining, and very naked, body of porn star and unleashed it on his blog. But unlike most people, Earnest G. Smith is a member of the Georgia House of Representatives, so he has a course of action at his fingertips beyond just getting mad: He wants to make it illegal.
“Everyone has a right to privacy,” Smith told FoxNews.com. “No one has a right to make fun of anyone. It’s not a First Amendment right.”
Smith is behind a bill that would make causing “an unknowing person wrongfully to be identified as a person in an obscene depiction” a misdemeanor offense punishable by fines of $1000, although he refused to discuss the actual details of his proposed law. “If and when this bill passes we can revisit the issue and if I choose to give you details at that time I will, but until then I don’t have to tell you anything,” he said. Smith actually introduced the bill last year but stepped up his efforts to have it made into law after this picture was released.
He also dismissed concerns that his law would infringe upon First Amendment protection of parody, stating, “They are vulgar. This is vulgar. We’re becoming a nation of vulgar people.”
The pictures were actually created by blogger Andre Walker, who said he did it to demonstrate that Smith’s bill would in fact trample all over the Constitution. “The First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States protects all forms of speech, not just spoken word,” he wrote at Georgia Politics Unfiltered. “[The bill] attempts to regulate speech and I doubt it would stand up in a court of law.”
An unnamed legislator agreed with Walker, telling Fox that Smith is “the conductor of his own crazy train.”
Source: FoxNews.com
