The cut off age is pretty arbitrary, and an argument can be made that, in the US, we’ve set it too high. But it’s pretty much an indisputable fact that in the vast majority of cases, an adult having sex with a child causes measurable, long-term harm to the child, lasting well into adulthood. There have been countless studies illustrating this. So we’ve made sex with children illegal, and by extension, pornography involving children.
There is no such data to support the idea that two adults having sex causes long-term damage for the majority of the participants. That’s why we haven’t criminalized sex between adults, and while we have at time criminalized pornography, we have not done so because we think that sex between two adults is inherently harmful. So the comparison between adult and child pornography does not hold in this context.
If I get busted for driving 120 MPH through a residential neighborhood, I can’t get out of the charge by finding a kid who lives there to testify that I didn’t run him over. Engaging in sexual activity with a child places the child at an extraordinarily high risk of long-term harm. It is criminally irresponsible to put a minor in that position of risk, even if the criminal in question thinks what he’s doing isn’t dangerous.
No, of course it wouldn’t be hypocritical. What are you even thinking? Are we being hypocritical because we don’t let toddlers drive cars? Are we being hypocritical when we don’t let them vote? Or drink? Or enter into legal contracts? Or make them go to bed when they don’t want to? Or force them to eat their vegetables?
There are thousands of ways that we treat children, that we would not tolerate if applied to ourselves. That’s because children are not adults, and things that are safe for adults to indulge in are often not safe for children to indulge in.
Okay, fine. The government can legislate morality. I don’t see anything immoral about pornography, so the government has no reason to legislate against it.
How much internet pornography is an acceptably moderate amount?
Again, as devil’s counsel, they don’t “have” to pick anything. They could leave the responsibility of underage alcohol consumption on parents, the community, or even the sellers. They could decide that consumption itself isn’t the problem, but the resulting bad behavior and beef up public intoxication or DUI penalties. Many European countries do this.
I feel that my point still stands. I (hypothetically) have a criminal record when the government admits that I did nothing to harm society anymore than had I done the same thing a day later. To get really ridiculous, what if I got a citation at 11:59pm the day before, and the government admits that at midnight I would have been fine. ONE MINUTE!
This gets even more absurd with statutory rape laws (back to the thread) as the arbitrary nature is more pronounced as the penalty increases. Sure, arbitrary numbers make for easier enforcement, but does it comply with substantive due process?
Many of the posters here are sure that of course pornography is covered by freedom of speech.
But…in a country where prostitution is (basically) illegal it’s ok to effectively do prostitution, as long as you broadcast it, because it’s implicit in a law that talks about religion and petitioning government…
It doesn’t make a lot of sense.
My own personal view is that pornography and prostitution should both be legal, and that neither has much to do with freedom of speech.
First Amendment jurisprudence says, among other things:
You can’t be liable for defamation if the allegedly defamatory statement is true.
You can’t be liable for defaming a public figure unless there is a showing that you acted with actual malice.
You can’t be subject to strict liability for defamation; in other words, there has to be a showing of intent.
You can’t be subject to liability for defamation when the allegedly defamatory statement is so transparently ridiculous that no reasonable person would believe it.
But I can’t recall any principles of defamation or free speech law that says either of the things I quoted.
I share this view as well. They should both be legal, but if neither are, there is no constitutional right being violated for anyone. It’s a matter for legislatures to decide.
That is also a stupid law. In Australia, selling alcohol to a minor gets you in trouble, but buying it - or allowing your child to try it in a safe environment - does not.
I care, to the extent that such laws are used to persecute teenagers who are not doing anything wrong. The reason I am in favour of child pornography being illegal is because it requires the commission of a crime to produce. If no crime is involved in its manufacture - because it’s just a 16 year old sending a photo to their boyfriend or girlfriend - it should not be a crime.
A million murders by age ten? Meaning, on average, 100,000 per year?
Let’s think about that number for a second. How often does that mean the average child sees a murder on TV? How many minutes are there in a year? Okay, now that we’ve all got that song from Rent in our heads, we can remember that there are 525,600 minutes in a year. That means the average child sees a murder on TV every five-and-a-quarter minutes, day or night. Or, assuming they don’t watch TV for 24 hours a day but a more typical four hours a day, that’s a murder more than once per minute of TV viewing. I don’t think the death count was that high even on 24 or The Sopranos. Unless Sesame Street has gotten a hell of a lot darker, I’m finding this statistic slightly improbable.
“Elmo wants to taste your blood! Elmo wants to see your insides!”
I suppose it’s possible if you for example count the destruction of a city as a depiction of the murder of everyone in it. Star Wars episode IV would then count as the depiction of billions of murders with the destruction of Alderaan.
Maybe I am wrong. Maybe it’s only 100,000 murders for an average 10 year old.
I wish I could remember where I had seen the number.
It was years ago.
Fine! Make it 100,000. Actually, you could just make it 10,000 or even 1,000.
I think my argument still stands
Slow day on the Dope, so here I find myself not only reading but posting in a porn thread. Anyhoo, as it happens, the Supreme Court has addressed this very question, specifically in the context of regulating porn on the internet, and decided no.
From Reno v. ACLU (1997) (link to Wiki, which summarizes and gives the context of the case; the full opinion can be found here).
If you intend to enforce the porn ban, you would need to create a massive bureaucracy. An American Taliban. Not only would it be expensive, we would have to demolish all privacy in our electronic communications. Every website world-wide would have to be monitored. Every single image and video file shared on the internet would have to be inspected. And what about encrypted files? There would have to be a shared key for the government for each one. What about private networks? They couldn’t exist, or corporations would have to allow government monitoring of all inernal communications as well.
Existing law-enforcement couldn’t handle the load. A new division would have to be created and funded. The Bureau of Titties, Cocks and Butts would have a daunting task. After hiring a couple hundred thousand blue-nosed snitches to control the internet, you would need a vast army of BTCB agents to combat conventional distribution of domestic and imported (uh oh, we’re gonna need more border agents) depictions of people illegally engaging in sucky-fucky. The very technology the OP cites as making pornography accesible will make it simple to contraband. USB thumb drives and DVDs would be available for purchase pretty much everywhere.
So we’ve created an insanely expensive Federal bureaucracy (hello higher taxes) and we’ve destroyed any notion of a right to privacy, but now we’ve also created a massive criminal enterprise. People want porn, so there will be suppliers, and since it is now illegal, kiddie-porn will proliferate. Why? Because currently pornographers are required to keep records proving that the participants are over 18 years of age. Now the actors will be anonymous and the producers won’t be as concerned about age. They’re criminals now, after all.
Organized crime will be ecstatic. This will be the best thing since prohibition. The ban on pornography will create a new class of thug millionaires.
What will we do with all the “sex-offenders” that refuse to repent? Build yet more privately run prisons? Stone and/or behead them in sports stadiums before terrified crowds?
If you really think that pornography is unhealthy, do the saner yet more difficult thing: try to educate people about your point of view and convince them to change their ways. Organize and recruit. Create media that espouses your philosophy. Don’t ask the government to do it for you.