Posted on 07/07/2008 4:43:04 AM PDT by Schnucki
A photograph of a nude six-year-old girl on the front cover of an Australian art magazine has re-ignited a row over the depiction of children.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said children could not choose for themselves if they wanted to be portrayed naked, adding: "I can't stand this stuff."
The photo is on the cover of the July issue of Art Monthly Australia.
Its editor said the cover was to protest against the closing of a recent photo exhibition of naked children.
Mr Rudd said: "A little child cannot answer for themselves about whether they wish to be depicted in this way."
Government officials have said they will review the magazine's public funding.
Censorship debate
Editor Maurice O'Riordan wrote in the magazine that he knew the photograph would be controversial, but that he hoped to "restore some dignity to the debate... and validate nudity and childhood as subjects for art".
An exhibition of pictures of naked children by photographer Bill Henson was closed in May before it opened.
Police seized the photographs and launched an obscenity investigation which was later dropped.
The case provoked a nationwide debate over censorship.
Mr Rudd had condemned the exhibit as "revolting".
The subject of the Art Monthly Australia cover said the picture is her favourite image.
The cover shows her sitting naked in front of a painted landscape. The photograph was taken in 2003 when she was six years old.
I’m with the PM.
“....children could not choose for themselves if they wanted to be portrayed naked...”
Well, guess what? They can’t chose the clothes they wear, or what they’d like to eat, or whether they should go to school or not. Parents tell them what to do, and they have to do it.
And if they do think posing nude is great, it’s not really relevant to the discussion either, since at they do not understand the implications of what is going on and would be too mentally immature to reason properly even if they did.
The PM needs a different line of argument.
Australia PM in new nude art row
They could have worded that headline differently; Rudd doesn't seem to be part of the controversy, just commenting on it.
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It seems to me that laws against censorship are intended to allow people to go to the public square, stand on a soapbox, and tell people why they disagree with the King, or the president, or their senator. Forcibly shutting them up is censotship, and it's wrong. We need free political discourse.
Snapping nudie shots of children for fun and profit seems to be a radical departure from the above. I think it should be illegal, and I don't consider that censorship.
I don’t understand your reasoning; it seems to me that Rudd is indeed arguing that minors do not have the capacity to fully judge the consequences of their actions, and thus agreeing with you.
But his conclusion does not follow.
This is a frequent issue in society. Do parent have the right to raise their children however they want, provided they do not physically abuse them? Or should the government intervene if they do no approve of the views and activities being transmitted, even if there is no physical harm.
This would cover a wide range of issues: homeschooling, nudist camps, firearms training, strange religions, etc, etc. Where is it proper or improper to draw the line, and use the physical force of the government?
These questions are never easy. I think parents should have a great deal of leeway. As you say, physical abuse is a definite red flag that a line is being crossed. But let's not stop just at physical abuse. I think that pimping your six-year-old out for nude photos is abusive. Maybe not physically abusive, but a lot of psychological damage can be done. The government has an interest in acting against the normalization of pedophilia. Parents who try to profit from child pornography have crossed the line.
Not allowing a person to speak their mind is censorship. Not allowing a person to exploit a child for their own purposes, whatever that purpose is, is not censorship. That is responsibility.
I don’t care if they don’t get public funding, why would a child porn magazine not be allowed to, but an “art” magazine can? Wrong is wrong.
I don’t want to see nude pictures of the Australian prime minister, thanks.
I guess it’s because not all nude pictures of children are child porn... while I definitely think child porn is wrong wrong wrong, I don’t think all nude photos are - what parent doesn’t have a couple bathtub snapshots of their small children? However, I think even putting ‘artistic nudes’ of children into an art magazine crosses a line into exploitation.
I agree not all nude shots are porn. The baby on the bear rug style, and I have to admit to some bathtub cutery. (Although that one mother got charged with child porn when she got her three year old daughter bathtub photos developed) But to take pictures to sell a magazine seems far out of that reach of parents being proud of their kids. And if we were to go and sell those cute pictures of our kids, we would be in big trouble. So that is the boundary, in my opinion.
It’s porn and disgusting plain and simple but...what else does one expect when we have allowed trashy photos of trashy hollywood on newsstands right as you check out of the grocery store? Makes me laugh. They put covers over the cover of Playboy but continue to show half naked women on reg magazines. There IS no common decency anymore. Naked is whomever is naked and in your face about it. So, while I totally disagree with the premise of any kind of nudity on public display...everything we have allowed for the sake of the right of someone else is coming home to roost in more ways than one and now it is time to pay the piper.
Everything the Left stands for and everything the Left does is for that end. And they will slaughter Christians along the way because we “made them angry.”
The first principle in this debate is that parents are their children's primary educators/guardians by right --a right that is given to them by Nature and Nature's God.
Considered absolutely, this right is not absolute. God does not give parents the right to commit evils against their children. God has given us the freedom to do evil, but not the right to do evil.
In developing laws regarding parental child abuse then, two fundamental questions must be considered. What does or does not constitute evil action against children, and whether, and to what extent, should such evils be prevented or punished?
The general principle that should be applied in designing civil laws regarding child abuse is the natural law, since it is knowable to everyone through reason. In this case, the portrayal of naked children in art does not in and of itself represent an intrinsic evil. But it does represent a source of present and future embarrasment for children who are unable to fully judge the consequences of their actions. These kinds of photographs could also incite or attract child-molestors.
On the other hand, I don't see much (if any) societal benefit to the public viewing of these photographs. Since the danger far outweighs any potential benefit, these photographs should be banned.
(So in the case of homeschooling, for example, the State would be violating the natural right of parents as their children's primary educators, should the State attempt to outlaw homeschooling altogether).
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