Going by that definiton I doubt there’s much “porn” out there.
The OP’s ideas are repulsive to me and I wish to draw boobs all over his newsletter.
Should we force Christian photographers to film gay porn?
So you’re only wanting to ban the moving image? How about sex stories? Should the current book 50 Shades of Grey be banned and who decides?
I happen to think The Passion of the Christ was pornographic, should I be able to have that movie banned?
Sorry, but I really don’t want to live according to your morals. You’re free to do as you see fit but don’t force it on others.
We should just ban sex outright. After all, sex is icky, and therefore evil. Besides, it’s already illegal to have sex with children, and if sex with children is evil, sex with adults must be too.
Rape and sexual violence rates would go up.
I (as usual) take a different view. I don’t agree that banning pornography would violate anyone’s first amendment rights. There’s no message that is trying to be conveyed that is being stifled. But I also agree with the posters here that it is so widely disseminated to make outlawing it useless, and there’s not a conceivable reason to do so. If you don’t like porn, don’t watch it. Your neighbor isn’t hurting you by watching it.
But I take issue with the very question in your OP. In a free society, when discussing restricting a freedom, any freedom, the question should not be “What negative affects would we have by outlawing it?” The question should what POSITIVE affects would happen which would counterbalance that loss of a freedom. On this issue, I see none.
What would be the legitimate government purpose of telling an adult he can’t stroke it to a Playboy magazine (in private, of course)?
Maybe would-be rapists are too busy playing MMORPG? 
Where we draw the line is arbitrary. The notion that there needs to be a line, somewhere, not so much.
Laws regarding age limits for this or that are not an assertion that at age x+1day, every individual undergoes a fundamental change that enables them to be properly equipped and ready for something that, just one day earlier, would have destroyed them.
They’re a best effort. We collectively determined that kids shouldn’t be able to engage in a certain activity (usually because of some notion that this activity could be harmful to them or difficult for them to properly control), then we have to try to find an adequate definition of who is a kid, and who isn’t - and age happens to be a fairly good measure, in most cases.
To play devil’s advocate, what about the argument from the other side? Say I am aged 20 years 364 days and I get a citation for underage drinking. The government admits that there is zero effect on society from my drinking on that day versus the next day. What is their rational basis for putting a criminal charge on my record and extracting money from me in the way of a fine?
This is fairly obviously a sneak attempt to advocate for legalisation of child pornography.
Perhaps the OP is right that images of 16 year olds fucking are not inherently exploitative or immoral or whatever. But seriously - who cares? It is not as if it is hard to find images of 18 year olds and having a line somewhere is going to be necessary, may as well err on the side of caution when the consequences are so unimportant.
The fact that they have to pick some date. “When you’re mature” won’t work as a legal definition because there’s no such thing as a maturo-meter that can tell when you qualify; so they have to pick a date, and by nature the date will be somewhat arbitrary. And if they don’t enforce the law, the law will have no effect.
How common is that for most people, to be honest? Do you just call up a couple and ask if you can watch them bang if they’re not doing anything else?
I agree, in the case of “pure porn” (but what about sexually explicit works that have genuine educational or artistic value?). For much of U.S. history, porn was illegal or underground, without anyone suggesting that free speech was being denied.
My neighbor isn’t hurting me by watching child porn either. But I wouldn’t argue that it should therefore be legal.
As a hypothetical for discussion and debate (as opposed to a proposal for public policy), the OP’s is a perfectly good question.
Well well, Aristotle has risen from the grave and is doing research on Internet pornography.
Research. Yeah, that’s the ticket.
By this definition, depictions of fictional people having sex, such as erotic cartoons or CGI, would not be pornography. Is that how you want to define it?
Sure, it’s hard to define, but porn as we all understand it is not protected by the first amendment, IMHO. Once we get into gray areas, there will be arguments.
But your neighbor is contributing to the abuse of the child depicted.
Very true, but the OP constructed it as an argument for why laws should prevent pornography. I take issue with his starting point for a law’s enactment.
This is a little bit fallacious; a real, legally-meaningful, complete definition of “porn” would run for so many pages, it wouldn’t be acceptable as a post here! A “sketch” definition is good enough for argument.
If you must demand a full, proper, legally workable definition…you ought to pay the equivalent of a lawyer’s hourly rates for it.
You know 18 is indeed an arbitrary age, but this didn’t come out of pornography. 100 plus years ago, children were abused in the form of cheap labor. Children worked in factories and made peanuts. Laws were put into place to ensure that they were not being taken advantage of. At the time, they made 18 the age of hard transition between child and adult by law. Under 18, anything you do, your parents are responsible, and if you wanted to work, you needed your parent’s official permission. 18 and above you are responsible. You can argue that 18 may be the wrong age, but they had to draw the line somewhere.
Interestingly, the age of consent varies from state to state. In many states, it is legal to have consensual sex at age 15, 16 or 17. Getting paid for it, is illegal and per federal law, you need to be 18. A sexual active 16 year old may want to make money for the sex he or she is having anyway by filming it, but that is illegal. And don’t get me wrong. I am not defending child pornography. I am very much against it. A child would be forced to have sex and that is rape. Rape is wrong, regardless of age. It is violence acted upon another.
Child pornography is wrong because it is rape. It’s even worse than rape because it’s raping a child. But what does that have to do with mainstream pornography between willing adults. If you are into rape videos, you have some problems.
I never quite understood this part.
On average, an American child sees a million murders a year depicted graphically on US mainstream television. I mean heads splitting, blood splattering, bodies exploding…etc. THIS IS ACCEPTABLE! But the natural act of reproduction which just about all human beings engage in is UNACCEPTABLE!
Why is unnatural violence against other human beings acceptable and the natural act of sex unacceptable? I seriously don’t understand.
Why do children need to be protected from how Mommy and Daddy made you, but killing someone in revenge and anger…that’s fine. Show the kids that!
And the strangest thing, reproduction is fact! TV murder is fiction! Why keep fact from children. I seriously do not understand your “morality”.
shrugs So I’ll just download Canadian porn – it’s win-win!