From the great grand okay state of Oklahoma comes a story about Riccardo Gino Ferrante.  Mr. Ferrante was arrested in 2006 for sticking a camera beneath the skirt of a girl and taking a photo.  He was charged with a felony under a ”Peeping Tom” law.  Here is what happened to the court case from the original article on FOXNews.com:

In January 2007, Tulsa County District Judge Tom Gillert ordered Ferrante’s felony charge dismissed. That was based upon a determination that “the person photographed was not in a place where she had a reasonable expectation of privacy,” according to the appellate ruling issued last week.

The District Attorney’s Office had appealed Gillert’s ruling to the Court of Criminal Appeals.

“We agree with the district court’s analysis,” stated the opinion written by Appeals Judge Charles Johnson, with Judges Charles Chapel, David Lewis and Arlene Johnson concurring.

In a dissent, Appeals Judge Gary Lumpkin wrote that “what this decision does is state to women who desire to wear dresses that there is no expectation of privacy as to what they have covered with their dress.”

“In other words, it is open season for peeping Toms in public places who want to look under a woman’s dress,” Lumpkin wrote.

He said he found the majority’s finding of no reasonable expectation of privacy “interesting and disturbing.”

Oh Oklahoma!  How could you be so blind?

So 3 men and 1 woman sitting on the Court of Appeals in Oklahoma think that it is okay for a guy to kneel down behind a girl wearing a skirt in Target, stick a camera up her skirt, and snap a photo.  We’re not talking about Britney Spears or Lindsay Lohan doing one of their Sharon Stone impersonations, not in the least.  We aren’t talking about someone walking down the glass staircase at the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue, not in the slightest.  We are talking about a girl standing in a store and having a camera stuck up her skirt for a Kodak moment.

Is this a victory of free speech?  Is this a victory for budding erotic photographers?  Is this a victory for perverts in the state of Oklahoma?  You could in theory answer yes to all those questions.  It makes me want to get a few fellow bloggers together, get a shitload of memory cards, and go on a road trip to the nearest Wal*Mart across the Oklahoma border.

So who loses?  The obvious answer is the women of Oklahoma who are now being forced to practically wear a burqa when leaving their homes.  The not so obvious answer is the state of Oklahoma’s tourism industry because there is absolutely no way in hell I will permit any female (specifically Blinky, Pudding, Poppy, The Steff, Lollipop, The Nick, and my mom) to travel to a state that encourages perverts to violate women openly in department stores.  Let’s face it… with all those women put into one store… Oklahomians could live tax free for decades off the loot from their sales tax! 

They’ve really just shot themselves in the feeties.