Analyst Warns of Cultural Trend Toward Pedophilia

Oh come on, a little rigor before we descend into pure emotion: Murder and child pornography severly affect the victims. Making child pornography is tantamount to child rape.

Making virtual child pronogrphy is like making a picture of rape. As ugly as it is, should that be illegal?

It's funny that anyone can make such a distinction between "simulated" and "real" child pornography. However, based on the arguments that have already taken place in this thread I can tell that we're going to have to agree to disagree. It has been argued in this thread and demonstrated over and over again in real life experience that what people injest into their minds they WILL act upon.

I know we hate the idea of "thought police" but there are things, in a moral society, that go beyond freedom of expression and fall into the realm of the detestable. When people fall into amorality they begin to have discussions about protecting practises that a moral person would only discuss in context of controlling and eliminating. Tolerance is more than an objective standpoint - it's passive acceptance.

You may see a distinction between "simulated" and "real" child porn but I, on the other hand, have seen over and over again how they are not seperate and their impact is real. Child porn and porn in general go hand in hand with child molestation. Child porn of any kind is indefensible and the harder you argue for its protection the more I realize how depraved our society has become.

As for the accusation of lack of rigor and emotional outbursts on my part... I think you'll find that I can be passionate about my convications, even blunt about them. For that I make no apologies. As for a lack of rigor... *laughs*... think what you will.

No constitutional or natural right is too sacred to save it from being sacrificed on the alter of What Kevin Curry Thinks We All Ought To Do....

I assume you can find some statement of the founding fathers or a phrase in the Constitution indicating that we have a constitutional or natural right to view pornography? Let's hear it!

While you're at it, perhaps you can explain these pre-1960s Supreme Court decisions:

Chaplinsky vs. New Hampshire (1942):

"There are certain well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech, the prevention and punishment of which have never been thought to raise any Constitutional problem. These include the lewd and obscene, the profane, the libelous, and the insulting or 'fighting' words....It has been well observed that such utterances are no essential part of any exposition of ideas, and are of such slight social value as a step to truth that any benefit that may be derived from them is clearly outweighed by the social interest in order and morality."

And...

Roth vs. The United States (1957)

"Obscenity is not within the area of constitutionally protected freedom of speech or press--either (1) under the First Amendment, as to the Federal Government, or (2) under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, as to the States.... In the light of history, it is apparent that the unconditional phrasing of the First Amendment was not intended to protect every utterance.... The protection given speech and press was fashioned to assure unfettered interchange of ideas for the bringing about of political and social changes desired by the people.... All ideas having even the slightest redeeming social importance--unorthodox ideas, controversial ideas, even ideas hateful to the prevailing climate of opinion--have the full protection of the guaranties, unless excludable because they encroach upon the limited area of more important interests; but implicit in the history of the First Amendment is the rejection of obscenity as utterly without redeeming social importance.

To repeat: "Implicit in the history of the First Amendment is the rejection of obscenity as utterly without redeeming social importance."

"You may see a distinction between "simulated" and "real" child porn but I, on the other hand, have seen over and over again how they are not seperate and their impact is real. Child porn and porn in general go hand in hand with child molestation."

The above is counterfactual in a very real sense: If you photograph children having sex, you have coerced or enticed them into this, an act which ranks alongside rape (and often enough it is rape) and murder for real impact on a victim. But if you open a picture editor and paste a child'd head on a naked woman's body, where is the rape victim?

Again - people will act upon what they feed their mind. They will become the very thing they hate if they embibe upon it to the point of addiction, obsession... whatever you want to call it. It's human behavior. The only thing counterfactual in this discussion is that 'pretend child sex' has no victim.

"Pretend child sex" has no victim in exactly the same way that pretend murder has no victim. I can imagine and pantomime and make pictures of murder all I want. There is no law against it, and for good reason. Books and movies portray crimes rape, murder, battery, torture - including child sex - without legal penalty, and it is good that they are allowed to. Imagining an act is not the same as doing it. Imagining an act and being punished for imagining it is called "thoughtcrime." Do you want laws banning certain thoughts and expressions? On the other hand, if I made a snuff flick of the act of killing you, there would be a very dead body, and I doubt the major Hollywood studios would be more interested in a distribution deal than the authorities would be interested in investigating work conditions on the set. Do you get the differece?

The Nixon administration founded a huge commission to validate your opinion on this subject, and it failed dramatically. There is no demonstrated scientific or demographic causal relationship between any kind of pornography and any kind of associated sexual abuse. If anything, the available data gives a slight advantage to the reverse argument: imagined anti-social sexual behavior in healthy adult males helps keep actual anti-social sexual behavior down by satisfying urges without the need of an actual urgee.

To imagine that the pornography industry invents and imposes sexual urges on men is magical thinking akin to believing that siverfish build the houses they occupy. Men had anti-social sexual urges long before there was pornography--and that is what drives the porn industry, not the other way around.

All markets are consumer-driven: why would you expect anyone to believe that only the male sex drive is so weak and impotent as to reverse this iron law of economics? Men look at porn because male sex drives have an inherent tendency toward the anarchisic, nihilistic, self-absorbed, and just plain rude.

I couldn't disagree more and would further stipulate, not having read your cited "huge commission", that their findings were wrong or have been misinterpreted. I can dig up many more examples of similar studies to the above link. I'm sure you can cite many more examples of commissions and studies that supposedly refute my position. However, reality makes your argument as counterfactual as eno's.

I did not assert that the porn industry invents or imposes sexual urges - they simply reinforce the behavior. The porn industry simply exploits the sexual urges of people for profit. Unfortunately their product demonstrably contributes to behavior that is destructive to society at all levels. Now that I think about it - I can't get in my car and drive without wearing a seatbelt and yet the effects of pornography are just as measurable and costly as traffic deaths from the lack of seatbelts.

"Pretend child sex" has no victim in exactly the same way that pretend murder has no victim.

We're really going to have to agree to disagree. I guess I should not be surprised that we're arguing about the finer points of first amendment rights in regards to simulated child pornography. After all - if we can throw out graphic depictions of simulated murder and violence of all kind to prove our point then I'll just quietly bow out of the argument. The last thing I have to say on this is just because society accepts graphic depictions of violence as "good" or "acceptable" doesn't mean that we are truly edified or somehow better off. Yes, I prefer to be wrong at this point.

Peace.

I wouldn't be "defending" simulated kiddie porn if there were not effects on areas outside of the sort of slimy people who like that stuff. The problem with laws against making pictures is that opressors use such laws to get at people they don't like: If you make a violent movie, you might get arrested and imprisoned for inciting violence; if you make a movie about how the Drug War causes police corruption, you might get arrested for inspiring people to vote for decriminalization. Actions against victims should be punished. Thoughts and expressions about those crimes, especially about things that are controversial, should be outside the reach of the law. Here is a very concrete example: It's insane that we criminalize beer consumption by 18 year-olds. They can fight and die in our military. They can go whoring in third world hell holes while on leave. But they can't buy a beer when they come home? But let's say there is a law against advocating criminality and immorality among the underage. Should I be arrested for "advocating underage drinking?"

But let's say there is a law against advocating criminality and immorality among the underage. Should I be arrested for "advocating underage drinking?"

There have been times in world history when such laws existed. They were meant to shape thought as well as behavior. Even today we have laws on the books that are meant to shape thought as well as behavior. If I were a racist I cannot voice my prejudices because of hate crime laws and the litigious society in which we live. Is that a bad thing? No - is it hard to enforce. Absolutely. Don't get me wrong - I'm not for token laws (although we have plenty). But I am for our government taking as stand on what is RIGHT as opposed to what is WRONG and working to shape our lives in such a direction.

When I married my wife she thought I was a pretty good catch. Then she got to know me and my bad habits and she had a pretty rough time of it for a while there. She tried to change me and succeeded in some areas but failed miserably in others. At one point it was pretty rough but things got better. We learned to roll with the punches and take the good with the bad.

We have the same issue with government as far as I'm concerned. You take the good with the bad - do your best to fix what you can and do your best to not let what you can't get you down. The biggest thing we learned is that if we stood unwaivering on what is right as individuals the other would eventually come around if our position was truly just and defensible. I think we can do the same for and with our government as long as they are pursuing what is truly right and good.

It may be naieve but I think we can and should expect each other to be moral people even to the point of passing laws that legislate morality. Otherwise anything goes and we just continue to swirl down the drain. And I think the reality is that people are clearly interested in passing laws against thought. It's gonna happen and I think it's naieve to believe we can rise above such stuff. There's no neutral ground when it comes to right and wrong in this world. Those who think there is will end up getting trampled. Is that cynicle?

FYI:
To do italics, Use these carets <> and fill them with an "I" (without the quotes); to end the italics, fill a set of carets with "/I".

As for opinions on this forum, they range from Bush Republican to extreme right and libertarian. No, libs are not welcome. They can pay for their own forum. But that doesn't stop them: they attempt disrupt this forum and spam and waste bandwidth. And every time they think they have an issue (now with the stock market and big business) they attempt to infest. We've killed of several in the past few days, so even if you're not a liberal or on a mission to disrupt this forum, you will still be profiled.

Don't think for a minute though that we all march in lockstep. It's just that this forum isn't a place for attempting to break the programming of mindless leftists.

Believe it or not, we do tolerate one or two actual dyed-in-the-wool liberals here---but they mustn't antagonize anyone and must be on their very best behavior.

We do like a certain comradery on this forum, so it would help for you to show your conservative side, if you have one.

We do like a certain comradery on this forum, so it would help for you to show your conservative side, if you have one. While I appreciate the info, I find the idea of responding to this quite amusing. Hi. My name is GreenEggsHam and I am a conservative. Hi GreenEggsHam! I first became a conservative in college.... You get the idea. Maybe we'll have the good fortune of meeting up again on a thread where we happen to agree. I have had the pleasure of agreeing with people on this list.

Now that I think about it - I can't get in my car and drive without wearing a seatbelt and yet the effects of pornography are just as measurable and costly as traffic deaths from the lack of seatbelts.

Lets try some another theory like yours: Virtually every very violent criminal learned how to drive--therefore, I must conclude that learning to drive is the cause of criminal behavior.

To conclude causuality from statistical evidence, you have to be able to calculate Bayes equation from a total population vs. an affected subset. Have you done that? No. Has your cites source done that? No. This is magical thinking with a reliability index akin to the spectral evidence (children's dreams) adduced in the middle ages to condemn witches.

Who has done that? Well, how about Nixon's Commission on Pornography and Obscenity, or the follow up Meese report intended to contradict the Nixon findings, but which had to conclude on the evidence--real evidence, by the way, not loud self-righteous gruntings and slight-of-hand--that the connection between pornography and violence against woman was "unreliable".

This is miserably obvious cow turds--male sexuality drives the pornography industry--not the other way round. Probably 100,000,000 US male adults view pornography--are there 100,000,000 rapists? I think perhaps not. Do rapists virtually all have pornography. Sure. Who is shocked? Does this mean the pornography drove them to criminal abuse? Of course not--what a comic book view of the world.

If violent, degrading pornography were being spoon fed to our children for an average of 5 hours a day, like the need to buy toys is pounded into them, than sure, you could make an argument for, say, restricting public license of a government granted monopoly of the airwaves, but you could not make an argument in our republic for suppression of expression, because "CONGRESS SHALL MAKE NO LAWS" restricting freedom of speech. Those were bright guys who wrote that--why do you think they wrote only the 1st amendment with such forceful draconian language? Because the first thing you know, wanting to, say worship at the church of your choice could be declared porn.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.