Amaranth

It's interesting, if mildly disappointing, to see at least a couple folks who hold very strongly onto the idea of pure logic in religous debate debasing themselves when presented with something *they* hold strong moral opinions on. Ad hominem, poisoning the well, a few good doses of non causa pro causa, and my personal favorites - threats of violence and condemning others to hel...er, jail. Classic irony...

Anyone care to present a logical argument, or is the thread doomed to continue downhill until some impartial mod finds their way around and sends it ~Elsewhere~?

Amaranth

Clarice

I understand your emotional response, but those advocating government intervention must support their assertions that such intervention is necessary, and not overly intrusive.

I hear Singapore is a beautiful, clean, safe city. You can also be hanged for possession of 500 grams of pot there. Personally, I don't think that's a reasonable tradeoff.

I also fear that an emotional and draconian response to the issue of child pornography results in ridiculous and harmful actions like removing a child from his parents because he was photographed in the bathtub, or nursing at his mother's breast. Unfortunately, taking extreme action with the best intentions can actually victimize children as well.

Loren Pechtel

The law is nuts. You can hit it by accident, especially if you are poking around on websites whose language you don't understand.

Yet one image can make you a criminal.

It's also nuts that the age that you can appear in even non-commerical shots is greater than the age that you can engage in the depicted activities. Thus you get the crazy situation that can be legal to have sex with someone but illegal to commemorate it with pictures even just for the people involved.

There's also the issue that fakes are illegal. How can the government justify this?

There's also things like the Traci Lords case. When it was discovered that she had used a fake ID and was underage all her earlier movies suddenly became child porn and had to be pulled. Hey--she was still a porno actress after she was 18. Where's the harm?

While true child pornography is despiciable the law uses too broad a brush.

Loren Pechtel

Don't trust our government in this. They make the problem into a far bigger issue than it is. Until the advent of the internet who was by far the #1 purveyor of child porn in the US? The US government.

Loren Pechtel

Since with adult porn there is a very definite negative correlation between exposure to porn and sex crimes the likely result of permitting such things would be a decrease in sex crimes against children.

Loren Pechtel

Yeah, are such women prohibited from porn? My wife had arguments about age into her 40's. The casinos here wouldn't believe she was of legal age--they didn't even *ASK* for ID, just assumed she was too young--and they bend over backwards on the age issue normally.
Last time I saw one of her neices I thought she looked 12-13. She's in college, I don't know her exact age.

yguy

Why is the burden of proof on me to show "intervention" is necessary, rather than on you to show that pornographic materials are benign?

This isn't gonna play too well around here, but I wouldn't have a problem with that. I don't see getting high as an inalienable, constitutionally protected right; likewise the possession of child porn.

If we don't have people with common sense enforcing the law, we have a choice between ending up as a pervert's paradise like Holland or an Islamic Thugocracy, which Holland may be on the brink of - and nothing in between. Which laws we pass or don't pass will be of no moment.

diana

What are you on about?

WHAT email?

Oh...I see. Please pay attention.

Scroll up to your post that was censored. (Go ahead. I'll wait.) Now...squint at the tiny print at the bottom. Fetch your glasses if you have to. What does it say? Sound it out if you don't recognize the words. Got it? Good.

Now. Pop back to MF&P's main page and check the list of MF&P moderators at the top. They're the ones that are in bold print. Do you see "diana" on there anywhere? That would be because I mod EoG.

I don't have the power to do anything with your post here except reply to it.

However, were I a moderator of MF&P, I'd delete your inappropriate response to moderator action in this thread whole cloth, and invite you to meet me in Bugs, Probs and Complaints if you want to throw down, then pray to my nonexistent goddesses that you choose to do it because so far, not only have you behaved very poorly, but you have the gall to be indignant (with the wrong person, no less) that anyone would presume to censor your rude comments.

But that's just me.

d

diana

On to the discussion...

Yes, that's pretty much what I had in mind.

And concerning my "assertion that child porn equals abuse," this is what I said, for the record:

I covered more bases in that comment than the stereotypical "horrible images of a small child being forced into sex by an old, dirty and ugly man."

If the film is made without the child's knowledge, it's an outright violation of his privacy. If it is made with his knowledge, I question if children can understand enough to give qualified consent to such activity. The only other options I can imagine are coercion and force. So the child pornographer is either using the child--and for what?--or he's abusing the child.

You seem to be taking the position that because cameramen are traditionally intrusive, we should therefore permit the camera to go ahead and record everything. I'm one of those who objects to much of the intrusion of cameras, such as the filming of the grieving father you described earlier. Such footage infuriates me because it is intrusive. That argument that we "allow" such intrusion into every other aspect of our lives so we should allow this as well carries no weight with me. There are some things that don't need to be recorded with sight and sound, as the violation of privacy and disrespect it entails isn't worth the tradeoff to have a "record."

Considering that your post is clearly directed at me, I wonder how you "know" what my view of sex is, what images enter my head, and what assumptions I make. You have perhaps decided that anyone who doesn't agree with your position that filming children having sex is okay MUST be a bigoted prude.

Mr. Kelly, when you were a child, were you forced, coerced or convinced to have sex with another child or god forbid an adult? What do you know about what such children go through? Unless you have personal experience and have no scars from it, how is it you assume children will not have enduring emotional and psychological scars from it? (On the other hand, even if you have, it doesn't establish the rule. It's possible for a woman to be raped and not bear any scars; this doesn't mean it's the rule for all women.)

How many stories have you heard from people who were talked into having sex when they were children who grew to adulthood with poor self-esteem and feeling "dirty" for having allowed themselves--as undiscerning children--to be talked into such acts? How many people do you know who were seduced as children and enjoyed the experience, then spend their lives blaming themselves for what happened because they weren't strong enough--as children--to stop it?

You seem to think that such acts--nay...filming such acts--won't harm children at all. How do you figure? Have you asked child psychologists about this? Talked to adults who were sexually abused as children? How about the parents of the filming subjects you have your eye on? What do they think about it?

I don't fit into your neat categorization.

If it is legal to show a child's raped and murdered nude body on TV, I didn't know it. It's invasive, unnecessary, and in very poor taste. I don't want to see that child "smiling and enjoying her sexuality," either. What purpose would such a thing serve?

Yes. That's me. Sexually repressed.

How is it you figure your views don't harm them?

Good advice. You'll note I am, indeed, asking questions.

d

Pyrrho

First, I strongly advise you to seek legal advice from a qualified lawyer, not from an Internet site such as this. So you may regard everything I say on this subject as "entertainment" rather than legal advice.

Second, I suspect that satisfying your curiosity would be illegal. Whether you will ever be prosecuted for it or not is another matter, and I do not care to speculate on your odds of getting caught. Suffice it to say that the odds will be no comfort if you are caught and prosecuted.

Besides, if you have any imagination at all, you should be able to think up all kinds of possibilities without ever seeing a child porn site at all. I imagine they vary, and cater to different kinds of tastes, as I understand is the case with adult porn sites. So you would have to visit a lot of sites to see all of the possibilities. That, of course, would greatly increase your chances of being caught and prosecuted. Ever hear the saying that 'curiosity killed the cat'? This case is perfect for that saying.