Some time back I started a thread on this very issue: is there any evidence that exposure to particular kinds of pornography will make people who already prefer the sort of thing depicted in that pornography less likely to seek it out in real life? No one could come up with any, and I personally doubt that there ever will be such evidence because the claim seems ridiculous. You might as well argue that we could end rape by providing rapists and potential rapists with a steady diet of (simulated) violent rape porn, or even that we could keep teens from having sex by giving them free access to all the porn they wanted.
It may be that pornography has no effect on sex crime either way, but I just can’t buy the idea that showing people predisposed to commit sex crimes pictures or videos depicting those sex crimes is actually going to help matters.
If the government cannot determine whether a law has been broken, then it needs to use its massive powers of investigation to actually determine whether a law has been broken. That’s the whole point of having a court system, the 4th and 5th amendments, and other protections - you seem to be ignoring the need to protect the innocent and concentrating entirely on catching the guilty.
And the opposite ruling would undermine the people’s ability not to be falsely prosecuted for being child pornographers. We could make it really easy for the government to stop child pornographers by passing a law allowing the police to summarily execute anyone who they think is a child pornographer, but I don’t think you’d agree with that. Unless you want to go the summary execution route, you need to come up with a better argument than ‘this law inconveniences the government’.
You’ve just contradicted yourself. If the link ‘probably’ isn’t tenuous (especially just based on your guess), then your first statement says you should be in favor of this ruling. Why not get a study done which shows there is actual harm before going off half-cocked and implementing vague laws that can cover a frightening amount of obviously-not-porn material?
And Lamia, I remember that thread. Dunno if I had made any comments in it, but from where I stand now I think I do agree with you that the “venting” theory probably wouldn’t be supported in a statistically significant way.
Apart from that, this sort of research seems to be very prone to the sort of results which allow everyone to see whatever they want to see in the results, much like (IMO) gun ownership/crime results seem to be able to be skewed to whomever is spouting the rhetoric. I mean, do we only count explicit pornography? Several friends I know have achieved much sexual gratification though television shows, for instance. Depending on how we phrase the question we could lose a significant portion of valuable answers or include much more than we are really looking for.
Of course, any good survey technique would attempt to compensate for that, but still, it does seem like more of a concern for me than, say, polling on whether having medical insurance had an effect on the number of doctor visits one makes (which, to me, seems rather cut-and-dried).
Though, personally, I can say porn has gotten me through some very rough spells
I didn’t contradict myself and I AM in favor of the ruling. I’m making arguments for the other side because I believe that there are valid arguments to be made.
There is no link that can be established. That doesn’t mean that there is no link. I cannot prove that there is a link, I can merely assert that it seems reasonable to me that one does exist. If that’s not good enough for you, so be it. It’s the best I have to offer.
But really…summary executions for suspected child pornographers? What am I supposed to do with that statement?
Enderw24, I apologize for picking on your statement without contributing anything pertinent to this thread myself. I was out of line. My only defense is to point to the time that I posted it.
Apology accepted, but unnecessary.
I was just looking to take a stab at Ashcroft, not GWB, Clinton or the administration. I knew that he has no choice in what he gets assigned. That doesn’t change my personal feelings towards him.
Anyway, your post wasn’t irrelevant and I certainly didn’t take offense to it.
Despite your protestations, you’re still contradicting yourself. You said that we shouldn’t give up our rights based on what might happen, but still claim that the fact that there might be a link between fake child porn and actual harm to kids is a good reason for the restriction.
Also, in general, what seems reasonable to some random guy is not ‘good enough’ for me. It seems reasonable to me that simulated child porn would let potential molesters satisfy their sickness without involving an actual child, thus reducing the actual risk of harm.
The exact same argument that you used for justifying a law against fake child porn was the one I used to justify the summary executions example. Unless you think that summary executions based on suspicion of child molestation would be a good thing to start, you have to either conceede that your argument is lacking or show that it doesn’t apply to the example I used.
What I think needs to be said here is that, pedophilia is a sickness, and we cannot write laws based upon what some sick individual might or might not do. You can’t predict what they will do, some people it may help, others it may exacerbate the problem, just like some schizophrenics might beat up a crossing guard lady because she’s in a government uniform. You don’t know what will or will not set off a sick individual and we cannot write legislation with that in mind.
What I think needs to be said here is that, pedophilia is a sickness, and we cannot write laws based upon what some sick individual might or might not do. You can’t predict what they will do, some people it may help, others it may exacerbate the problem, just like some schizophrenics might beat up a crossing guard lady because she’s in a government uniform. You don’t know what will or will not set off a sick individual and we cannot write legislation with that in mind.
Lamia, I fear you have missed my point entirely. I am not advancing the “venting” argument as being valid. Please read carefully - I said “One could just as easily argue…” I did not say that I was arguing that. The point being that IN THE ABSENCE OF ANY EVIDENCE, you can make any claim you want, but that does not make you correct. Just because you “guess” or “have a feeling” that porn leads to sex crimes does not make it true.
Lamia, I fear you have missed my point entirely. I am not advancing the “venting” argument as being valid. Please read carefully - I said “One could just as easily argue…” I did not say that I was arguing that. The point being that IN THE ABSENCE OF ANY EVIDENCE, you can make any claim you want, but that does not make you correct. Just because you “guess” or “have a feeling” that porn leads to sex crimes does not make it true.
But that’s not a contradiction at all! I’m not even sure how to go about responding to you here. If something might happen, it also might not happen. We shouldn’t give up our right to free speech because of it.
My argument was that this ruling could hinder government officials from doing their job. You seem to think that summary executions means that officials aren’t being hindered in their job at all. Far from it. If police officers went around killing people they suspected of committing a crime, they would NOT be doing their job. Hinderance or no, when they kill people at random, they cease to be doing their job. So your example fails.
I think we have a problem here in identifying at least part of the issue. Pedophilia is not the only issue the CPPA attempted to combat. In fact, I submit that Section 2256(8)(D), which prohibited:
is indeed not directed towards pedophilia at all, but instead ephebophilia. (I base this on the (IMO reasonable) assumption that you can dress up an 18-y.o to look like a 14 or 15 y.o., but you really can’t make such a person look pre-pubescent.)
So what’s my point? Well, I did some web research earlier, and it appears that ephebophilia is not recognized as a mental disorder - it is not listed in the DSM-IV,* and pedophilia is clinically defined as attraction to a “sexually immature child (usually age 13 or under).” So this is a social and legal issue, not a psychological one - whether it is “healthy” or not to be attracted to a post-pubescent minor or not, we generally forbid sexual relations (and pornography) about such kids because of issues of consent and harm to the kid.
So the whole “whetting the appetite” argument, as well as other arguments based in psychology (at least that of they watcher of such porn) probably is irrelevant to the kind of porn covered by Section 2256(8)(D).
*on-line versions of the DSM-IV only list diagnoses. It is possible that ephebophilia is addressed in a note as a potential condition for future listing, but I wasn’t able to ascertain that.
WAG here, but is there any reason to beleive that ephebophilia could realistically be classified as a psychological disorder? Pre-pubescent is one thing, but people were (AFAIK) marrying that young in the middle ages, and I imagine back far enough for any evolved cues of “proper ages” to take effect.
I mean, there are certainly issues of power there, but I certainly don’t buy that it could be a disorder.
Demo, I’m reasonably certain it could fall into other categories if it becomes an unhealthy obsession, but I, too, doubt that those who desire someone who is more or less sexually mature are somehow psychologically abnormal as a rule. Sometimes, though, the mention of ephebophilia as a bad thing is such that there is an exclusivity to it.
For intance, I am sttracted to females ranging between ~14-~40. I would probably not be an ephebophile. As I am 26, if I were exclusively (more or less) attracted to girls from 13-17 then I think the label is fair use.
I think the exclusivity is something to take note of, though, as such a limited level of attraction (IMO) seems somewhat, well, unhealthy in its own way. What distinguishes this behavior from other fetishes seems more or less to be that we consider the recipients to be unable to meaningfully participate in the behavior in question.
Something I continue to disagree with, as does a close friend of mine who majored in phychology, but there you have it.
So, yeah, I think it could be reasonably considered a disorder, but the conditions it operates under would make that sort of obvious. Did this make any sense?
Some support for my previous post. A darned good read, though in fact it pretty much focuses on pedophiles exclusively, with only some passing remarks regarding ephebophiles. I should mention that they pretty much make the distinction I make in the following manner:
What interests me the most is the comment (not in the above) made in the paper that pedophiles (and, presumably, ephebophiles, though it is not made clear) have such assorted backgrounds as to make them pretty much indistinguishable from the rest of “us”.
I also didn’t know that in apparently many cases pedohpilia is linked to organic brain problems. This is certainly very interesting.
I don’t think exclusivity is sufficient to push it into a disorder. Is a 50 y.o who exclusively dates 20-30 y.o’s suffering from a disorder (besides ickiness)? What about a guy who exclusively dates redheads?
I think this is an important point, because I note a tendency towards defensiveness in these discussions - those people aren’t like me; they’re sick. But these people are like you and me, at least to some extent.
So laws that purport to target the “sickos” and those pandering to the “sickos” are bad ones. Laws that instead say in our society we will protect teenagers from actual harm, because we believe they are not old enough to make these decisions about sexuality and sexual exploitation, are good ones.
Well, the discussion of what is healthy has never really been uncontroversial, and the exclusivity I mentioned is what makes many things a disorder. An preference for dating isn’t the same thing as being exclusively attracted to a group, but you can see very clearly the fine line we are walking when discussing this. Do the 14 year olds that have sex or engage in sexual activity consent to their actions? In a legal sense, no, but ask those of us who did engage in sexual activity at that age and the best we might be able to come up with is that we didn’t “really” know what we were doing, but never felt coerced or unwilling.
An abnormal fixation needn’t be harmful, either. I mean, foot fetishists? I don’t think we can resonably call this normal as a foot isn’t a part of the sexual process, but on the other hand, who cares if a foot turns someone on? Or even if they need to have feet involved in order to achieve sexual satisfaction? I certainly don’t.
But in the case of ephebophilia an abnormal fixation on youth sexuality may be harmful. If it is widely accepted that people in this age group cannot knowingly enter into sexual contact then such a fixation is a disorder and the actors don’t know that they are hurting these kids, or worse yet, they know they are hurting them and do it anyway.
I am terribly sympathetic towards ephebophilia, and have never been ashamed about it on these boards (and have engaged in some amazingly controversial debates on it), but these grey areas of classification are very difficult to traverse without making statements that fail to grasp all the nuances of what, exactly, a disorder is. If society suddenly deemed that 15 year olds could consent knowingly to sexual intimacy would ephebophilia even be a useful word to keep in the language?
And yes, these people are like you and me to a very great extent. But just because I see a head turn at the high school girls as they pass by doesn’t mean that anyone should consider these people sick. Though they may well be, I think such behavior is pretty much paranoid, and why I am so glad that this SCOTUS ruling went the way it did.
