The Protect Fiction Legal Defense Fund is a fund to provide support to those who are persecuted by the law for exercising their right to freedom of thought through fiction or fantasy. There is a large backlog of cases of real child abuse waiting to be investigated by authorities. In this light, prosecuting individuals over fiction or fantasy is more than a waste of resources, it’s tantamount to child abuse. Causes eligible to be supported through the Fund include fighting obscenity prosecutions, challenging seizures, and defending your free speech rights. Funds are applied at the absolute discretion of Prostasia Foundation, a s.501(c)(3) charity.
2020-2021 supported causes
In 2020 and 2021 Prostasia Foundation supported the following legal challenges to protect your right to freedom of thought through fiction and fantasy. Click to read more.
Challenging illegal sex toy seizures by US Customs: success!
Larry from New Jersey is a 64 year old man whose doll ordered from China was seized in transit. Larry told us, “After the thirty wonderful years of marriage, I just can’t see myself getting married to someone else. However, I am not ready to give up sex completely. There are sex toys that can give physical relief, but a doll allows me to pretend I am with a person.” Larry explains his choice of a 40 pound doll by saying, “the smaller size dolls are half the weight of a full size doll and at my age carrying around a 90-100 pound doll did not seem like a good idea.”
Unlike many others in a similar position, Larry is contesting the legality of the seizure of his doll, and Prostasia Foundation is assisting him with this. Larry told us, “I highly resent the government telling me how to live my life. A favorite author of mine, Robert Heinlein, wrote that people don’t say ‘Pass this law to stop me from doing this thing.’ It is always ‘Pass this law to stop him from doing this thing.’ As long as what an adult is doing, in private, is not harming anyone, it should be no business of any government.”
In the case so far, Larry successfully objected to CBP’s determination that his doll was an obscene item. Prostasia Foundation also determined through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) that there is no official policy document that authorizes sex dolls to be treated as obscene items. After backing down from this obscenity claim, the government claimed that it was misdescribed and therefore “smuggled” into the United States, which is untrue. Larry requested that this claim be referred to the courts for determination, and rather than allowing this, finally the government backed down in August 2021. Read the full story here.
Mister Double obscenity prosecution: can publishing fictional short stories be a crime?
Update January 2021: The court refused to allow the expert evidence in Mr Arthur’s trial that could have cleared his name, and he will be appealing. We have suspended fundraising for now, but you can donate towards our other work here.
Imagine your home being fired upon and a heavily armed SWAT team busting through your front door, all so that the government can stop people from reading fiction.
It sounds like a scenario from a dystopian novel, but this really happened on November 7, 2019, when FBI agents raided the home of Thomas Arthur, the administrator of an erotic fiction archive, charging him with obscenity-related crimes.
His trial will be an important test case, which will determine whether the government is entitled to do this. Prostasia Foundation is assisting in the defense, by arranging for an art censorship expert to testify as a witness. But we need your help to cover their costs. Once we reach that goal, any excess raised will go towards research into whether fantasy outlets could be a tool for preventing child abuse.
The prosecution of Mr Arthur for hosting text-only stories is outrageous, and it cannot be allowed to succeed. We must never allow the government to control what people read. Criminalizing fiction is thoughtcrime, and this has no place in a democracy.
Please take a stand, by giving generously to protect freedom of expression and freedom of thought.
You can use the “Order notes” field to specify which current cause you would like your donation to support. While we will do our best to respect your wishes, donations are disbursed at Prostasia Foundation’s discretion and are non-refundable.
