Posted on 04/16/2002 7:32:20 AM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
Edited on 04/13/2004 2:40:08 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court struck down a congressional ban on virtual child pornography Tuesday, ruling that the First Amendment protects pornography or other sexual images that only appear to depict real children engaged in sex.
The 6-3 ruling is a victory for both pornographers and legitimate 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 ...
No, Scalia dissented.
general_re: "You really seriously believe that to be the case?"
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I do. Did a tobacco company market its product to Sir Walter Raleigh or to all those Indians who had already been smoking it long before we arrived on these shores?
I think freedoms need to be kept in balance and not simply reduced to the lowest form possible. I've heard the argument plenty of times that "we must tolerate that because otherwise the government will take ALL freedom away." Hogwash. When it comes to the freedom of the Boy Scouts, they nearly lost with a closer vote than the one referenced above. The more moral the freedom choice the less our current political definition of "freedom" supports you. The more outrageous, the better chance you have.
Freedom does not mean we must act like animals without the ability to reason and think. A little moral common sense and judgement does not mean totalitarianism. Freedom works both ways and I'm tired of it always protecting the criminal first, or the immoral scum bag.
Not anymore; those days are long gone.
No, Scalia dissented.
Only Rehnquist voted to uphold the statute in its entirety. (Even he agreed that it would be unconstitutional to ban American Beauty or Traffic, but he thought the law could be read narrowly to exclude those kind of "serious" films.) Scalia and O'Connor found the law unconstitutionally vague in part, but would have upheld some (not all) of the parts thrown out by the majority.
So you support laws that protect people from themselves? Are you in favor of mandatory seatbelt laws? How about outlawing cigarettes? How about junk food?
The purpose of government is to protect people from being harmed by others, not to protect us from ourselves.
On what planet?
You ought to be.
The floodgates of kiddie porn have been opened wide.
'Course the liberfoolians will simply cheer, ride the wave of filth, lift their eyes piously to the sky, and declare they are personally opposed to kiddie porn.
Yeah, what a wonderful, wonderful world.
Know what they all have in common? They are legally established limits to what is called "free speech."
Very well said, RAT Patrol!!!
On what planet?
Then how do you explain the existence of perfectly legal pronography in the U.S. (which is on this planet)? Why are all of these people not being fined and in prison?
You may think it's obscene. But much pornogrpahy does not meet the legal definition of "obscenity".
And, by the way, there are plenty of women out there who enjoy porn too.
In this country, "obscenity" is a technical legal term, and lots of what is "pornography" in everyday speech is not legally "obscene." For one thing, to be "obscene" a work must be "patently offensive to local community standards." In some "local communities" (most large cities, in fact), it's hard to find 12 jurors who think anything violates their "local standards."
Perhaps the pornographers will digitize your child's face, graft it onto a virtual body to be sexually abused by teams of sado-masochistic homo-pedophiles.
You could give videos to all your friends to prove how open-minded and progressive you are.
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