Therefore, regardless of what you assert, the fact remains free speech is not absolute.
I never claimed otherwise. Now, why not craft for me a standard that criminalizes virtual child pornography, while at the same time not criminalizing Romeo and
Juliet? How, specifically, do you intend for the law to distinguish between the two?
57 posted on 7/16/02 8:01 PM Pacific by general_re
How do you equate the romantic encounter between two consenting individuals of approximate age to that of a grown man violating an infant? Further how do you equate the utilization of pseudo-infants through art in pseudo-sexual snuff films to that of a young woman committing suicide? There is no act of murder or sexual abuse in Romeo and Juliet? Are you even familiar with the story? You don't feel that a law could be written differentiating between the two? Seriously?
What about the Romeo or Juliet story entices an adult to sodemize a child of five, or for that matter have any sexual relations with such a child in any manner? What about the Romeo or Juliet story suggests the murder of the victim of a violent sex crime? Perhaps you can explain all this for us.
Frankly you should try to offer up a better example. And even if this example was valid, you can count me as one individual who would give up all the Lolita, Romeo and Juliet and other stories involving underage women if it saved even one young child or infant from sexual exploitation, violent abuse or death.
While I hate this type of a statement, with regard to this issue I'm dead serious. What that five year old little girl went through I wouldn't wish on any living thing.
Frankly you should try to offer up a better example. And even if this example was valid, you can count me as one individual who would give up all the Lolita, Romeo and Juliet and other stories involving underage women if it saved even one young child or infant from sexual exploitation, violent abuse or death.
How many of your freedoms will you give up to save two lives? Ten? How many lives would be saved if none of us had the freedom to drive a car? 40,000 a year or so? Ready to give up that freedom to save all those lives? I mean, if you're willing to abandon an entire genre of fiction to save one life, surely not driving is not too much of a sacrifice to save 40,000 lives, right? How many lives would be saved by all of us giving up all our freedoms?
People die as a result of your freedom every hour of every day of every week. Your freedom comes with a price that is paid in blood, and frankly, I find it disrespectful to those who pay that price that you are so willing to cast it aside. People die for freedom all the time - that's what makes it so precious, and something to be cherished, and something to be protected, and not something to be cast aside because you think we can have freedom without paying any price for it. Let me assure you, we cannot.
Freedom isn't free, in more ways than one...