Posted on 07/19/2002 1:00:30 PM PDT by ru4liberty
Edited on 04/13/2004 2:40:36 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
The Supreme Court struck down a law banning virtual child pornography Tuesday, ruling that the First Amendment protects pornography or other images that only appear to depict real children engaged in sex.
The 6-3 ruling is a victory for both pornographers and artists such as moviemakers, who argued that a broad ban on simulated child sex could make it a crime to depict a sex scene like those in the recent movies "Traffic" or "Lolita."
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
That pornography is so powerful that no man can resist?
That it is not for the murder we should hang a man, but for the pornography?
Save us oh Supreme Court, save us oh Senate, more laws we need, to save us from ourselves? Is that what you are saying?
This is exactly the wrong time to attempt rational thought on that particular issue.
Please don't attribute anything to me that I have not said. I didn't state a contention. I posted the article for discussion purposes only. Thank you.
Did you write the headline? If so, how
do you link the SC ruling on virtual crime
to what happened in Fresno?
If I correctly understand the Supremes, "simulated child sex" is covered by freedom of speech, but to mention the word "Jeasus" in schools would be unconstitutional.
You don't understand correctly.
But yes, this run on about porno is victimology. And a whole lot of otherwise sane and responsible folks are running around begging for yet more laws and regulations.
Just check where that blood of tyrants is, has some tyrant vampire bit you? I know you are no fan of diminished liberty, and want responsible freedom. But it is irresponsible to allow in every damn thing that the government be our protector. Some things have to be dealt with at a personal level.
Making porn using live actors -- fine ban that. Ban the mere posession of porn -- that is a death to Liberty, a small cut that doesn't stop bleeding, but that will get bigger and bigger. Ban the sale of porn -- fine and reasonable. No one should profit from it. But ban someone from drawing a pornographic version of a kiddie cartoon -- sorry, that is a private liberty cut off, a pinky tip, the next chop is the whole of the hand ... and then the whole arm.
Liberty is all about choice. We use laws to protect the weak, the small, the innocent, to remedy wrongs, to set fences. But careful! Fence us in too small, and we don't fully develop.
What does the "Blessings of Liberty" mean to you? Every blessing has it's curse side -- like a coin. You don't rise to the blessing without also accepting the curse.
Many seem to be saying, we can't take the coin. We are not men enough. It is beyond us.
Well it aint't. Liberty is our due, our inheritance, our duty to hand to our grandchildren.
The Supreme Court has decreed that simulated child pornography is covered by free speech.
The courts have also outlawed God in the schools.
I’m not saying it’s right, but that is what has happened.
The Supreme Court is mocking the constitution and all the principles that this country was founded on.
Perversions of the worse sort are being declared good. The right ways are being declared evil.
Jesse Sharpless ... John Haines . .. George Haines ... John Steel . . . Ephraim Martin . . . and --- Mayo . . . designing, contriving, and intending the morals, as well of youth as of divers other citizens of this commonwealth, to debauch and corrupt, and to raise and create in their minds inordinate and lustful desires . . . in a certain house there . . . scandalously did exhibit and show for money ... a certain lewd ... obscene painting, representing a man in an obscene ... and indecent posture with a woman, to the manifest corruption and subversion of youth, and other] citizens of this commonwealth . . . offending . . . [the] dignity of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
The defendants have been convicted, upon their own confession, of conduct indicative of great moral depravity. . . . This court is ... invested with power to punish not only open violations of decency and morality, but also whatever secretly tends to undermine the principles of society. . .. Whatever tends to the destruction of morality, in general, may be punished criminally.
Crimes are public offenses, not because they are perpetrated publicly, but because their effect is to injure the public. Burglary, though done in secret, is a public offense; and secretly destroying fences is indictable. Hence, it follows, that an offense may be punishable, if in its nature and by its example, it tends to the corruption of morals; although it be not committed in public.
The defendants are charged with exhibiting and showing . .. for money, a lewd . . . and obscene painting. A picture tends to excite lust, as strongly as a writing; and the showing of picture is as much a publication as the selling of a book. . . . If the privacy of the room was a protection, all the youth of the city might be corrupted, by taking them, one by one, into a chamber, and there inflaming their passions by the exhibition of lascivious pictures. In the eye of the law, this would be a publication, and a most pernicious one.
Although every immoral act, such as lying, etc., is not indict able, yet where the offense charged is destructive of morality in general ... it is punishable at common law. The destruction of morality renders the power of the government invalid. . . . The corruption of the public mind, in general, and debauching the manners of youth, in particular, by lewd and obscene pictures exhibited to view, must necessarily be attended with the most injurious consequences.. . . No man is permitted to corrupt the morals of the people; secret poison cannot be thus disseminated.
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