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Again, you yourself beg the question: are images the same thing as speech? Yes.

I'm fascinated. Tell how this can be.

And don't drag kids into this. The subject is adults.

Oh please ... children can be the subject of "Free Speech" too (as long as they're faked). Supreme Court said so. Why can't kids be a part of the discussion?

They listen to radio, watch TV, read billboards, go through their parents' stuff. Given the push in Britain and elsewhere to lower the age of consent, I think minors -- especially including those 13 year old boys of whom you spoke -- initially certainly should be part of any porn discussion.

My own introduction to skin magazines came in first grade. I was what, 7, 8? The 4th (or was it 5th) grader next door would share her brothers' Playboys and we'd play at modeling.

Granted, we're talking '69-'70 Playboys. Pretty tame (and almost classy) stuff on which to imprint. But kids are in, baby. Nowadays, there's no need for sussing out Dad or your brother's secret stash. Girls can get far more explicit notions of sex and being sexy than I did just by watching MTV or going to the movies.

In fact ... if I may be so bold as to get the ball rolling on your compare/contrast of Images and Word where "Free Speech" is concerned ... I'd say one difference between images and speech is that even children can "get the message" from an image well before they are first-grade literate.

Stories of Anais Nin would have been totally lost on me until at least 7th grade, if then. But images of the same story might have had their effect on sight.

Your talking points aren't anything new. Here's an excerpt that sums them up pretty well, except note here the author specifies porno images as not being speech, not all images.

This latest court decision is part of the increasingly hard-to-digest fiction that pornographic images are speech. It is also a direct affirmation of the increasingly naked proposition driving our society: that the sexual interests of adults are more important than children and their needs. Such an utter reversal of moral priorities ought to (and in most places does) provoke disgust on the part of decent adults.

True, however the 'for the children' infantilization of society is something up with which I no longer put. If not outright Hillarity itself, it's social conservatives doing to us in one sphere what socialists attempt in others. As to the matter at hand, I'll leave you an excerpt resplendent in the flowery language of the aggrieved.

On May 31, 2002, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Philadelphia "legalized the ‘right’ of library patrons to assault children and other non-consenting folks by viewing, and then leaving on the computer screen, pathological acts of bestiality and sexual torture of adults and children-paid for with our tax dollars." That is the conclusion of Dr. Judith Reisman, a strong opponent of pornography. The judges in the case decided that pornographic pictures are "speech" and, therefore, entitled to protection under the law.