JAKARTA, Indonesia – If you’ve ever attended a legal seminar at an adult trade event during which U.S. obscenity law was discussed, you’ve likely heard more than a mouthful about the vagueness and sweeping breadth of the law, be it at the local, state or federal level.

While it’s easy to find the text of the Miller Test — the three-part legal standard that informs obscenity prosecutions in the U.S. — the test’s reliance on mushy, ill-defined concepts like “contemporary community standards” and “patently offensive” depictions and descriptions render it difficult even for highly experienced attorneys to advise their clients with any real specificity when it comes to where the bright-red line is drawn.

If you think U.S. law is vague when it comes to the lines between erotica and obscenity, you’ll lose your damn mind trying to make sense of Indonesia’s “Law No. 44 of 2008 on Pornography.”

To begin with, as someone who can’t read Indonesian, Balinese, Javanese, Sundanese or any of the other languages commonly used in the country, I can’t even relate to you a translation of the statute itself. What I have been able to find, however, is a lot of feedback from people who can speak those languages and have reviewed the law, and who have come away from doing so with great concern.

Take the testimony of psychologist Dr. Saparinah Sadli given during a July 2009 session of the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Indonesia, for instance. Sadli provided a specific example of how the (at that point very new) law could interfere with the work of professionals like himself.

In describing a “Peer Educator training program on male and female reproductive organs for mothers in villages” he helped organize, Sadli noted part of the demonstration “involved applying a real condom to a wooden penis.”

“Each participant was then given a wooden penis so that they could transfer their learning to their peers in the village, educating them on women’s health, including preventing the transmission of HIV, many victims of which are housewives who rarely leave the house,” Sadli said. “So, when reading the chapter of the pornography act on prohibitions and restrictions, I asked my fellow organizers of the program how far we could be accused of distributing representations of male genitalia. None of them could give me a definite answer.”

While the uncertainty didn’t stop Sadli and his colleagues from conducting their demonstrations, the group “did not discuss any further the pornography act, which is creating such a fuss.”

The fuss is not limited to concerned physicians and academics, of course, and is seen by many of the country’s residents as a tool of social control aimed squarely at traditions and practices of citizens whose own culture isn’t reflective of the Islamic values of their country’s government.

“The law is wide open to interpretation and could even apply to voice, sound, poetry, works of art or literature,” Kadek Krishna Adidharma told Time in 2008, when debate over the recently-passed law was at a fever pitch. “Anything that supposedly raises the libido could be prosecutable.”

For potential defendants, an accusation of violating Law No. 44/2008 carries very high stakes. Under the law, anyone “displaying nudity” is potentially subject to fines of up to $500,000 and a jail term as long 10 years. Public performances that might “incite sexual desire” are banned — no small matter for those whose traditional dances might be considered arousing by the socially conservative Islamists who championed the legislation.

Critics of the law often argue it is applied very selectively, with a clear political motive. As Kadek put it to Time, “The timing is very political. The parties (who support the law) want to use it to take the moral high ground as they enter the campaign season.”

Naturally, the politicians who supported the law did not see things the same way.

“We are only giving voice to our constituents who are concerned with what they see on television and a sense of moral degradation,” said Zulkiflimansyah a representative of the Prosperous Justice Party who goes by a single-name moniker.

Ironically, the reason the Indonesian law is back on my radar now is its potential to be used against one of its staunch supporters, Rizieq Shihab, the leader of the Islamic Defenders Front (“FPI”) party.

“Investigators still need to find some witnesses for further investigation,” Jakarta Police spokesman Raden Prabowo Argo Yuwono said of the possibility of charges being entered against Rizieq.

According to reports in the Indonesian media, Rizieq engaged in “steamy” WhatsApp chats with Firza Husein, the former coordinator of a group called the Solidaritas Sahabat Cendana foundation, which is connected to the family of Muhammad Suharto, the former President of Indonesia.

The best part? Rizieq and his representatives, who have often denied political motivations behind passing the law, are now decrying its application in his case as being completely motivated by politics.

“The case is not a judicial matter, it’s political,” said Sugito Atmo Pawirodi, the legal aid chairman to the FPI, adding Rizieq, who is currently out of the country, has not returned to Indonesia for fear of being prosecuted.

“When the law is not applied objectively, he could be arrested immediately,” Sugito said.

Well, fancy that. If only thousands of Indonesian citizens had expressed the same concern before the law was passed in the first place, maybe Rizieq wouldn’t be in this mess.

What’s that you say? Thousands of Indonesian citizens did express the same concern in 2008?

Hmmm.

Oh well, Rizieq. Sucks to be you, I guess.

Image: Jakarta, Indonesia, skyline. © Yohanes Budiyanto