The Edges Of Child Pornography: What Should Be Legal, What Shouldn't?

[pgwenthold]

That really sums the whole debate up.

Instead of asking why we don't allow those types of porn as discussed, why don't those proposing their availability produce a single reason for having that kind of porn.

Well put.

Not in the US, it isn't. I have been waiting for this argument to come up.

In a free society, you do not have to provide a reason why something should be legal. The burden is the other direction.

There are an infinite number of things that I cannot provide a single reason for doing, yet are still legal. For example, there is no reason for me to go out to stand in my driveway and hop up and down on one leg, other than I want to do it. Moreover, this is not something that everyone wants to do, and I would venture that I am the only adult in my neighborhood that wants to do this. Yet, it is perfectly legal, despite being unpopular and not serving any purpose but to satisfy my desire.

Thus, the argument that child pornography should be legal because someone wants to view it is more than a sufficient justification. Consequently, if it is to be illegal, there has to be a more compelling argument that it should not be allowed. Generally society looks to the question of harm, and does the harm it causes outweigh the benefits it provides and the concept of liberty that needs to be protected. For something like child pornography, there is a pretty low threshold for how much harm is allowed, such that the demonstration that a single child is even involved in any way (for example, underage participants in its creation) is considered to be too far. Now, as far where the line is drawn above that, I will allow the thread to continue on its own.

 

[dann]

Sorry, but facts and reality are not on your side Dann. Well designed and controlled studies show no statistically significant harm coming to people who had consensual, non-distressing sex while underage regardless of the age of their partner.

An awful lot of harm comes from people who claim that they had consensual, non-distressing sex with underage children.

What do you conclude from this?

That paedophiles either don't care or can't tell the difference - if your claim is true!

Look, I'll highlight the relevant bit in the post you are replying to. "...Child pornography that depicts such acts but does not involve actual underage people having actual sex in its creation".

My mistake. I corrected myself before you posted this. See edit line!

 

[AWPrime]

Couldn't images of sexualized preteens, help people to develop into paedophiles ?

 

[Gurdur]

An awful lot of harm comes from people who claim that they had consensual, non-distressing sex with underage children.

Bingo.
Because this is one of the clichéd stock claims of pedos running around everywhere --- that it's all nonharmful or could be. IOW, they willfully evade the point for the sake of their agitprop.

Just to get a few points here over:

The age of consent was originally designed to stop the prostitution of children. That was the reason the age of consent was raised from 12 in the late 19th century UK, after a series of scandals revealing children being used as prostitutes. The age of consent is a damned good idea. Naturally exceptions are made for roughly same-age consensual partners, but the fact that some form of age of consent is there on the books in a meaningful way is a damned good idea.

There is no valid reason at all for child porno displaying in any way children under the age of 13. Prohibition of that is a damned good idea. If anyone wants to try chanting that really tired old cliché of "nanny state" in relation to the criminalization of kiddie porn, bite me. Blow me. Kiss my arse. Put away the dumb strawmen and the self-congratulatory garbage about watching the watchers, and deal with the point.

And lastly; children are children. They need to be protected against adult exploitation. And if anyone doesn't like that and wants to whine how brave they personally are by demanding children be treated like adults, kiss my arse again.

 

[Dave1001]

Bingo.
Because this is one of the clichéd stock claims of pedos running around everywhere --- that it's all nonharmful or could be. IOW, they willfully evade the point for the sake of their agitprop.

Just to get a few points here over:

The age of consent was originally designed to stop the prostitution of children. That was the reason the age of consent was raised from 12 in the late 19th century UK, after a series of scandals revealing children being used as prostitutes. The age of consent is a damned good idea. Naturally exceptions are made for roughly same-age consensual partners, but the fact that some form of age of consent is there on the books in a meaningful way is a damned good idea.

There is no valid reason at all for child porno displaying in any way children under the age of 13. Prohibition of that is a damned good idea. If anyone wants to try chanting that really tired old cliché of "nanny state" in relation to the criminalization of kiddie porn, bite me. Blow me. Kiss my arse. Put away the dumb strawmen and the self-congratulatory garbage about watching the watchers, and deal with the point.

And lastly; children are children. They need to be protected against adult exploitation. And if anyone doesn't like that and wants to whine how brave they personally are by demanding children be treated like adults, kiss my arse again.

What's you're opinion on pseudo-child porn. Fictional stories, cartoons, adult actors portraying children under 13 having sex with adults?

 

[Gurdur]

What's you're opinion on pseudo-child porn. Fictional stories, cartoons, adult actors portraying children under 13 having sex with adults?

First off. let's make a distinction between porn and ordinary fiction or nonfictional description. It's necessary and valid. Might be too complex a matter for some to ever want to try thinking about, but it's necessary and valid.

Genuine ordinary fiction or nonfictional description = OK.
Kiddie porn = NOT OK.

Or to put it IOW, "Lolita" or a "Death In Venice" is OK, real kiddie porn (designed to titillate etc.) is not --- in any form whatsoever.

There are BTW practical reasons for say "in any form whatsoever"; in an age where technology can make an extremely good visual simulcrum, then a very obvious attempted legal defence is to try claiming the porn was simulated in some way and not real, or IOW to try making law enforcement impossible by whatever tricks. Thus "in any form whatsoever". There are also other reasons for that; the usual pedo claim is that such porn can act as a substitute, more likely it acts like an amplificational encouragement.

The message is that pedo is not OK; if anyone is plagued by pedo feelings, they need therapy, not porn.

 

[EGarrett]

Got it. So you think that possession of a written fictional story where a child has sex, written purely for erotic stimuation of the reader, shoud be illegal?

Yes. It actively appeals to those who would participate in the criminal activity, and glorifies and actively encourages that activity. Like a children's book describing how great it would be to take your first hit of cocaine.

 

[Piscivore]

Then I'm pissing in the wind. What is your point? My point was what I wrote in post 65 in this thread.

My point is that your post 65 is a poorly thought out, emotionally generated rant.

I never claimed that it did!

Upon careful re-reading, you did not. You got close, but you stopped short. My apologies.

But your argument is becoming clearer.
Now at least it has become rather clear what your implied idea is.

If my ideas are not clear, I'm sorry. I'm not implying anything, I'm intending to be forthright. If there is something you are not clear on, please ask, I will be more than happy to explicate.

Let me use an analogy: The scent of freshly baked bread may not exactly generate hunger, but it certainly stimulates it. Your body may crave food, you might be hungry even without the scent, but the scent is what makes you act on it

Wrong. It is the HUNGER which makes you act on it. Plenty of people can smell fresh bread and not go into a feeding frenzy. People can even smell fresh bread and not eat it even if they are "hungry"- maybe the bread doesn't belong to them.

- which is why you wouldn’t expose somebody who’s trying to lose weight to the scent of donuts fresh from the oven.

Wrong. The onus is on the dieter to control his own behavior. We don't outlaw donuts because some people have a problem controlling themselves.

In the case of paedophilia the sexual urge as such is physical, that children are the object of your desire, however, isn’t,

It isn't? please explain in what dimension or ether it resides, then.

it’s a perversion of the sexual instincts.

Prove it. In any case, I'm not championing pedophilia. I'm arguing for freedom of expression.

(Some socio-biologists might claim that it is genetic, I don’t know, but I don’t think so. Nor do I think that the gene for girdle fetishism or sniffing bicycle seats will ever be discovered! But unlike paedophilia those perversions are fairly victimless and thus uninteresting in th context of this discussion.)

Ask a girdle salesperson sometime about fetishism being "victimless". But that aside, this whole discussion of the "roots of pedophilia" is completely irrelevant to this discussion.

Your argument seems to be that since the desire of paedophiles does not depend on kiddie porn as a stimulant, the stimulant does not matter: sexual desire as such does not depend on porn.

That's part of it, yes.

We (normal, heterosexual men)

I'm going to mention in passing that I don't agree with your equating "heterosexual" with "normal".

may desire the women we meet in our everyday lives, and if we are excluded from or cannot think of a way of approaching them, we may dream up fantasies about them instead. We may also use porn to release the sexual tension. Porn stimulates the imagination, ‘facilitates the fantasy’ needed to get off, to release sexual tension without a partner, without having real sex.

That's what I said. Do you think that people only use "porn" in their sexual fantasies? Do you think that material that is not intended in anyway to stimulate sexual desire cannot nevertheless do so?

If you look at ordinary pornography,

Why don't you explain what you consider "ordinary pornography".

its purpose is clear: Heterosexual men (if they are not rapists) desire to have sex with a consenting woman, and pornography presents them with women posing as if they want to have sex, naked and available … and imaginary:

The only "purpose" of pornography is to make money. That is why it is produced and made available. What the end user does with it is completely inconsequential to the creator.

photos of a woman pretending, simulating that she wants to have sex (or actually having it … with somebody else).

It sounds like your exposure to porn has been pretty limited and your ideas about it are frankly quaint.

For the same reason I do not think that mothers need to worry if they find this kind of porn under their sons’ beds.

It depends on what they are doing with it.

Like all fiction it is a lie. (The woman in the photo does not desire to have sex with you.)

You don't know that- she's not met me yet.

But it stimulates a very realistic fantasy (probably): that there are women out there who are not only willing to consent to having sex with you, they will probably even enjoy having it too! This makes it fairly harmless to encourage this particular fantasy.

Thanks for the trip to the "Leave it to Beaver" set. You've failed to make any sort of point with it.

Who, in your estimation, gets to decide what sort of fantasies an adult may be "encouraged" to have"? Who is the arbiter of which fantasies are "fairly harmless"?

Unlike kiddie porn: Children not only don’t generally want to have sex with adults, if they do, it is probably because their behaviour has become sexualised by previous abuse.

Prove it.

Therefore the fantasy of having sex with children should be discouraged.

That's as may be, but you CAN'T! Even if all forms of explicit material involving sex with children were to vanish overnight, people who want to f[rule 8] children will still fantasize about it. The only think you will accomplish is that a whole bunch of civil rights will be trodden on.

It may not only ”facilitate the fantasy” and help the unfortunate paedophile get off, it may also persuade him that this is the way children are and should be treated.

You see that word "may"? That's not enough to trade a basic civil right for. Like our donut-crazed dieter, it is incumbent on the person to rein in that desire, not on society to remove all temptaion.

Some people want to commit murder, do we outlaw murder mysteries?
Some people want to rob a casino, do we ban "Ocean's 11"?
Some people want to f[rule 8] animals, do we burn all our copies of "Babe, Pig in the City"?

And paedophiles not only want to, they actually need to believe this! (to paraphrase what James Randi says about woowoos.)

So? Do you think if we outlawed Sylvia's books people would stop beliving in psychics?

And apparently people who crave sex with children are often people with a history of abuse. They themselves may have been victimized by paedophiles when they were children.

Not really relevant to the issue at hand, as I said above.

And this is why counselling should be encouraged instead of (very wrong) fantasies.

If someone feels they are at the point of crossing a line from fantasy into action, yes, they should.

Up to and until the point where he stops fantasising and acts, though, no one on this planet should have the right to control how he thinks.

 

[Piscivore]

First off. let's make a distinction between porn and ordinary fiction or nonfictional description. It's necessary and valid. Might be too complex a matter for some to ever want to try thinking about, but it's necessary and valid.

Genuine ordinary fiction or nonfictional description = OK.
Kiddie porn = NOT OK.

Or to put it IOW, "Lolita" or a "Death In Venice" is OK, real kiddie porn (designed to titillate etc.) is not --- in any form whatsoever.

Who gets to decide which is which?

 

[Gurdur]

My point is that your post 65 is a poorly thought out, emotionally generated rant.

You know, in your posts here you consistantly confuse your own values with rational logic, so mebbe it would be a wise idea for you not to be denigratory about others. You're pushing your own values, and as we all know, values cannot be truth statements.

Wrong. The onus is on the dieter to control his own behavior. We don't outlaw donuts because some people have a problem controlling themselves.

Bollocks. The point you are evading here is that many laws in society are in fact there to protect people (seatbelt laws, laws against suicide, laws on hard drugs etc.), and the next point you evade is that children need more protection than adults, against adult exploitation.

Prove it. In any case, I'm not championing pedophilia. I'm arguing for freedom of expression.

Uh huh. How about dealing with the point? We are just so not going to live in an anarchy, so how about dealing with the actual topic, rather than hiding behind "freedom of expression"?

Or are you saying that nothing is more sacred to you than your overstretched idea of freedom of expression, so that you are completely willing to sacrifice anything to it, including the protection of children? Do be clear.

 

[Gurdur]

Who gets to decide which is which?

The usual way; the informed electorate vote in a government, which itself forms statutory regulatory bodies, who together with the law courts decide what the law is and how it is applied.

You know, the usual realworld way.

 

[Gurdur]

I'll do this as well.

....Some people want to commit murder, do we outlaw murder mysteries?
Some people want to rob a casino, do we ban "Ocean's 11"?
Some people want to f[rule 8] animals, do we burn all our copies of "Babe, Pig in the City"?

Ah, the good ol' slippery slope fallacy in full cry.

As you well know, real life is complex. That's why we make complex decisions. Since real life is complex, then it does not allow itself to be reduced to a set of simplistic formalisms.

 

[Dave1001]

First off. let's make a distinction between porn and ordinary fiction or nonfictional description. It's necessary and valid. Might be too complex a matter for some to ever want to try thinking about, but it's necessary and valid.

Genuine ordinary fiction or nonfictional description = OK.
Kiddie porn = NOT OK.

Or to put it IOW, "Lolita" or a "Death In Venice" is OK, real kiddie porn (designed to titillate etc.) is not --- in any form whatsoever.

There are BTW practical reasons for say "in any form whatsoever"; in an age where technology can make an extremely good visual simulcrum, then a very obvious attempted legal defence is to try claiming the porn was simulated in some way and not real, or IOW to try making law enforcement impossible by whatever tricks. Thus "in any form whatsoever". There are also other reasons for that; the usual pedo claim is that such porn can act as a substitute, more likely it acts like an amplificational encouragement.

The message is that pedo is not OK; if anyone is plagued by pedo feelings, they need therapy, not porn.

Well, that's clear. I think there's a perhaps unresolvable chasm between our two views on this topic, which probably is not dissimilar from pro-choice/pro-life or whether or not the right to bear arms is an individual right chasms.

Personally, I don't think there's anything wrong with someone who is sexually attracted to kids, but doesn't act on the impulses with real kids. They could read fictional pornographic stories about sex with kids, watch pornographic cartoons about sex with kids, and have a kid blow up doll and hire prostitutes to pretend to be kids. It's all fine with with me as long as no real kids are involved in their physical gratification (Although it's also fine with me if they get off on pictures of kids in Sears catalogs or children's television shows, to mention examples people brought up earlier). I don't think what goes on in the theatre of the mind harms anyone else, if it makes them happy and doesn't in itself harm others, that's all the justification it needs in my opinion.

But I recognize that (inexplicably to me) many people feel differently. Even if an individual is not and will not harm actual kids, even if the media they used didn't involve actual kids in any stage of its production, many people still oppose allowing such people to legal, private usage of pseudo child porn (pseudo meaning no actual children were involved in its production). I don't pretend to understand why there's such a divide in opinions, but I recognize its existence.

 

[Piscivore]

You know, in your posts here you consistantly confuse your own values with rational logic,

Show me where. I don't belive I've even used the word "logic" in this discussion. In case it was not clear, I'll say so; yes of course, I am arguing my values.

so mebbe it would be a wise idea for you not to be denigratory about others.

I have not been. The quality of a particular post does not imply anything about the poster. If it appears I have made such an implication I apologise to dann.

You're pushing your own values, and as we all know, values cannot be truth statements.

Yes, I am, and did not claim otherwise.

I do argue that values based on facts are better than values based upon raw emotion, though.

Bollocks. The point you are evading here is that many laws in society are in fact there to protect people (seatbelt laws, laws against suicide, laws on hard drugs etc.),

Where and how am I evading that?
I did mention that laws designed to "protect" people- in the case of "hard drugs"- quite often fail to do so. In point of fact each of the laws you mention are flauted by many people on a daily basis. Isn't there an argument to be made that the laws aren't working as well as they should? Or at all?

Also, isn't it the right of a citizen to complain when a law is unjust? Or when a law trades too much freedom for too little security?

and the next point you evade is that children need more protection than adults, against adult exploitation.

Quite the opposite. I just have a different opinion that you on what will "protect" them. I favour identifying and isolating- either in prison or in treatment- those men who take action to harm children rather than trying to control thier minds.

Uh huh. How about dealing with the point?

Which point?

We are just so not going to live in an anarchy,

Of course not. I did not so advocate.

so how about dealing with the actual topic,

You mean, " The Edges Of Child Pornography: What Should Be Legal, What Shouldn't?"

Isn't that what I've been discussing?

rather than hiding behind "freedom of expression"?

"Hiding behind"? That is the basis of my decision making process in this matter.

Or are you saying that nothing is more sacred to you than your overstretched idea of freedom of expression,

How is it "overstretched"?

so that you are completely willing to sacrifice anything to it, including the protection of children?

No. But I don't see how sacrificing freedom of expression is going to protect children. People harm children in the abscence of explicit materials. People harm children when explicit materials are banned. People harm children despite laws against harming children. How is giving up freedom of expression supposed to protect children?

Do be clear.

I always try to.

 

[Piscivore]

The usual way; the informed electorate vote in a government, which itself forms statutory regulatory bodies, who together with the law courts decide what the law is and how it is applied.

You know, the usual realworld way.

Well, that's encouraging, to say the least. What do you do when the "informed electorate" disagrees with you, on some fairly fundamental points?

I'll do this as well.

Ah, the good ol' slippery slope fallacy in full cry.

That's actually not a slippery slope fallacy, but another analogy. It would have been slippery slope if I had said that outlawing child porn would lead to the outlawing of mainstream porn, and the next thing you know all the women are wearing burkhas.

But I didn't say that.

As you well know, real life is complex. That's why we make complex decisions. Since real life is complex, then it does not allow itself to be reduced to a set of simplistic formalisms.

Indeed. Please illustrate a "simplistic formalism" i've used.

 

[Gurdur]

...yes of course, I am arguing my values.
...
I do argue that values based on facts are better than values based upon raw emotion, though.

Again, this is where you commit the same error. Just what is supposed to differentiate "values based on facts" from "values based upon raw emotion"?
Only your opinon?

I'm stressing here that values are only that, they are not truth statements. Appeals to rhetoric like "facts" versus "raw emotion" are a muddling of the actual fact that values cannot be derived from facts.
Cheers.

In point of fact each of the laws you mention are flauted by many people on a daily basis. Isn't there an argument to be made that the laws aren't working as well as they should?

Pardon me? We should abolish laws against murder simply because lots of murders happen?

Can you tell I get impatient with that line of attempted reasoning?

Also, isn't it the right of a citizen to complain when a law is unjust?

Who said it wasn't? Can you tell I get very impatient with red herrings and strawmen?

Quite the opposite. I just have a different opinion that you on what will "protect" them. I favour identifying and isolating- either in prison or in treatment- those men who take action to harm children rather than trying to control thier minds.

Point is here we're discussing preventitive action through the banning of kiddie porno, plus see my point about the coming inability to distinguish between virtual (simulated) kiddie porn and kiddie porn using real children.

Since it can be viably mooted that allowing unrestricted kiddie porno creates an atmosphere of acceptance of kiddie sexual exploitation, as well as amplifying desires to exploit chikldren sexually, then a ban seems damned well in order. Also a point I raised already, which seems to have been ignored; in present-day technology, given the ofttimes problems of distinguishing between virtual (simulated) and reallife kiddie porn, then only a ban on both is practicable.

Since there are no good reasons to be made for allowing kiddie porno, apart from appeals to absolutist totally-unlimited freedom of expression, then IMHO there's not much reason not to ban the garbage.

I do believe that covers everything worth covering.

Various others:

What do you do when the "informed electorate" disagrees with you, on some fairly fundamental points? [etc.]

I dunno, give me a bloody example. Crissakes. I would have thought I was very clear about tackling real-life problems in a real way; if you think I am going to go haring after really wildly vague red herrings, think again.

IOW, use commonsense, and stay concrete.

To repeat the point; the real world cannot be reduced to a small set of simplistic formulations as absolutist principles.

Cheers.

 

[Gurdur]

..That's actually not a slippery slope fallacy, but another analogy.

Wrong, it's both. It's an analogy whose appeal bases itself on the slippery slope fallacy.

 

[dann]

Wrong. It is the HUNGER which makes you act on it. Plenty of people can smell fresh bread and not go into a feeding frenzy. People can even smell fresh bread and not eat it even if they are "hungry"- maybe the bread doesn't belong to them.

That is a law that you seem to respect: If you are hungry, you are not allowed to eat bread that doesn't belong to you!
Well, that's one point where I wouldn't be adamant about obeying the law.

Wrong. The onus is on the dieter to control his own behavior. We don't outlaw donuts because some people have a problem controlling themselves.

Of course it is, but I would still not expose a friend on a diet to the scent of donuts fresh from the oven if I could prevent it. I also would not tempt a recovering alcoholic with a bottle of booze. That still doesn't mean that I don't think that the onus is on the alcoholic.

It isn't? please explain in what dimension or ether it resides, then.
(...)
Prove it. In any case, I'm not championing pedophilia. I'm arguing for freedom of expression.

What I said was: "In the case of paedophilia the sexual urge as such is physical, that children are the object of your desire, however, isn’t, it’s a perversion of the sexual instincts."
It, i.e. paedophilia, resides between the ears, not between the legs. The sexual urges are usually aimed at a sexually mature member of the opposite other sex, and of course there's an evolutionary advantage in this: You don't procreate by having sex with bicycle seats or children.
But the sexual urges are very flexible in the sense that they can be directed at objects not 'intended' by nature. A very common variation is homosexuality where you desire members of your own sex, apparently connected to variations in the hormone levels of the amniotic fluid during pregnancy. I don't really know. (And I don't really care.)
Other variations, perversions, appear to be the result of deficient self-confidence, probably due to nurture rather than nature.

Ask a girdle salesperson sometime about fetishism being "victimless". But that aside, this whole discussion of the "roots of pedophilia" is completely irrelevant to this discussion.

Then don't ask. I'll get back to your "freedom of expression" and other freedoms.

I'm going to mention in passing that I don't agree with your equating "heterosexual" with "normal".

And where exactly do I "equate" them? Would "usual" have been a better word? Or "most frequent"?

That's what I said. Do you think that people only use "porn" in their sexual fantasies? Do you think that material that is not intended in anyway to stimulate sexual desire cannot nevertheless do so?

Bicycle seats, for instance? Yes, I do. And sometimes a shoe may come in handy when you need a hammer, but haven't got one. What is your point?

Why don't you explain what you consider "ordinary pornography".

I think I do ...

The only "purpose" of pornography is to make money. That is why it is produced and made available. What the end user does with it is completely inconsequential to the creator.

As long as the end user actually buys whatever the 'creator' wants to sell. That is the reason why the 'creator' is very interested in meeting the demand of the buyer, i.e. his or her (solvent!) needs. This is where you find the purpose of pornography. You seem to confuse the issue with what characterizes any kind of commodity. Utility value as opposed to what you get when you exchange it for other commodities or money. (As if you were not aware of the difference!)

It sounds like your exposure to porn has been pretty limited and your ideas about it are frankly quaint.

Probably. Does it not sound like a fair description of mainstream porn?

Who, in your estimation, gets to decide what sort of fantasies an adult may be "encouraged" to have"?

I don't know. The decider, maybe?

Who is the arbiter of which fantasies are "fairly harmless"?

There actually is one, an arbiter? I didn't even know that.

Prove it.

I'll see if I can come up with a link or two.

That's as may be, but you CAN'T! Even if all forms of explicit material involving sex with children were to vanish overnight, people who want to f[rule 8] children will still fantasize about it. The only think you will accomplish is that a whole bunch of civil rights will be trodden on.

How the hell do you reason when you claim that I'm treading on civil rights, freedom of expression etc.? And where do I claim that anything would "vanish overnight"

You see that word "may"? That's not enough to trade a basic civil right for. Like our donut-crazed dieter, it is incumbent on the person to rein in that desire, not on society to remove all temptaion.

More of my alleged infringements of the catalogue of human rights ... Where do you find them?

Some people want to commit murder, do we outlaw murder mysteries?
Some people want to rob a casino, do we ban "Ocean's 11"?
Some people want to f[rule 8] animals, do we burn all our copies of "Babe, Pig in the City"?

Gurdur already dealt with this one?

So? Do you think if we outlawed Sylvia's books people would stop beliving in psychics?

No. Do you think that her books encourage people to believe in psychics? I wouldn't encourage 'superstitiously challenged' friends of mine to read the crap.

If someone feels they are at the point of crossing a line from fantasy into action, yes, they should.
Up to and until the point where he stops fantasising and acts, though, no one on this planet should have the right to control how he thinks.

And who is trying to control how he thinks? I know that the title of this thread was "The Edges Of Child Pornography: What Should Be Legal, What Shouldn't?" However, my very first words in it were:

I’m not really interested in the question of legality versus illegality. The point is:
Paedophilia hurts children.
Thus it shouldn’t be encouraged.

I.e. if paedophilia was legal, I would still be against it! OK?! I might even try to prevent a paedophile from having sex with children, thus infringing on his inalienable rights. Right!?

 

[Piscivore]

Again, this is where you commit the same error. Just what is supposed to differentiate "values based on facts" from "values based upon raw emotion"?
Only your opinon?

No.
A value based on fact would be something like "Airbags can be statistically shown to save more lives more often than they hurt people, therefore they are a positive addition to a vehicle"
A value based on emotion would be somethink like "Airbags are EXPLOSIVES planted in your car, and that is SCARY, so airbags are bad."

I'm stressing here that values are only that, they are not truth statements.

I'm not disagreeing.

Appeals to rhetoric like "facts" versus "raw emotion" are a muddling of the actual fact that values cannot be derived from facts.

You are wrong.
People value "psychics" because the notion makes them feel good. Skeptics do not because the facts say they are not legitimate.

Cheers.

Sliante.

Pardon me? We should abolish laws against murder simply because lots of murders happen?

No. I'm just pointing out that laws created to "protect" are not the complete answer to any social problem. Obviously we need to have laws against murder, if for no other reason than to have a legal, just avenue to sanction those that act in violation of accepted social standards. But that shouldn't mean we criminalise artistic or commercial works, regardless of their perceived quality or intent, that depict murder as long as no actual murder is commited to produce them.

Can you tell I get impatient with that line of attempted reasoning?
What line?

Who said it wasn't? Can you tell I get very impatient with red herrings and strawmen?

It isn't a red herring or a straw man. I wanted to know what your feelings were on this matter. Some people see morality and/or legality as an absolute. I can not know if you are one of them unless I ask, can I?

You get impatient a lot. Calm down, it's just a discussion.

Point is here we're discussing preventitive action through the banning of kiddie porno,

Can you prove that banning "kiddie porno" prevents pedophilia?
You have stated you feel there is a difference between "kiddie porno" and "legitimate" artistic works that include explicit depictions of sex with children. Do you think a pedophile is going to be affected by the distinction?

plus see my point about the coming inability to distinguish between virtual (simulated) kiddie porn and kiddie porn using real children.

Why should that matter? If our concern is protecting children, isn't the only consideration whether a child was harmed?

Since it can be viably mooted that allowing unrestricted kiddie porno creates an atmosphere of acceptance of kiddie sexual exploitation,

Almost anything can be "viably mooted". Prove it.

as well as amplifying desires to exploit children sexually,

Prove it. It seems to me the desire exists independantly and regardless of the availability of explicit material.

then a ban seems damned well in order.

If your premises are correct. I do not think they are. Prove them.

Also a point I raised already, which seems to have been ignored; in present-day technology, given the ofttimes problems of distinguishing between virtual (simulated) and reallife kiddie porn, then only a ban on both is practicable.

I would say that as the virtual porn gets better, the relative cost to use real children would go up, and therefore the impetus to use real children would decline. That seems like a good thing to me.

Since there are no good reasons to be made for allowing kiddie porno,

There have been several in this thread, and not just made by me. Did you miss them?

apart from appeals to absolutist totally-unlimited freedom of expression,

I've never so advocated. I think you've misread my position.

then IMHO there's not much reason not to ban the garbage.

I do believe that covers everything worth covering.

If you say so.

I dunno, give me a bloody example. Crissakes. I would have thought I was very clear about tackling real-life problems in a real way; if you think I am going to go haring after really wildly vague red herrings, think again.

Okay. Let's take the recent Michael Richards incident. Al Sharpton said on a cable talk show recently (I apologise, I did not catch the name, I was surfing) that in his opinion the "N" word should be outlawed. So far, no electorates have endorsed this view. What is his recourse?

IOW, use commonsense,

What would that be, exactly? Your point of view?

and stay concrete.

I'm not arguing freedom of expression in the abstract.

To repeat the point; the real world cannot be reduced to a small set of simplistic formulations as absolutist principles.

Like "ban the garbage"?

Please identify where I have reduced anything to a simplistic formulation or espoused an absolutist principle.

Cheers.

Lechaim.

 

[Piscivore]

Wrong, it's both. It's an analogy whose appeal bases itself on the slippery slope fallacy.

No. An analogy is a comparison in kind inteded to illustrate or clarify a point. A "slippery-slope" argument is an assertion that a particular situation will lead to a new, less desirable situation. I did not do this.

If I had said that outlawing "kiddy porn" would lead to those other situations, that might be a slippery slope. But I didn't.