You state that VCP could be harmful to children. The only reason I might care about that is if I'm concerned about children. There is an emotional component to that concern. It's generically called fear.
RandFan...wouldn't it be equally reasonable to say that the only reason some might care about banning VCP is because they're concerned about free speech, meaning there is also an emotional component (the fear of losing it), and isn't that also generically called "fear"?
If a person cares not a whit about VCP one way or another, but enters a debate for one side or the other (assuming one is having to choose sides, which is where this seems to have gone...to absolutes), then there is the emotional element of fear, on BOTH sides.
JFrankA talked earlier about paranoia, which, loosely, is fear. Fear of what? Losing the right to have adult pornography through banning child pornography (of all kinds). That is just as much fear, which leads to being just as irrational, as wanting something only because of fear for children.
There is, although it was mocked earlier, truth in there being many issues that our government prohibits us from exercising free speech within the context of. I used discrimination earlier, and was told that it didn't involve thought. But it does. As much as pornography involves thought. There has to be a thought before there can be an action, or no one is really defending anything to begin with. A business owner can discriminate against a woman, as an example, without actually harming a woman. He just refuses her a job. It doesn't harm her physically, it doesn't prohibit her from seeking employment elsewhere, it does nothing to hurt HER, an individual...but we have laws in place giving her the recourse to sue if she believes (more thought) that someone has discriminated against her based on gender. The burden of proof there falls on the employer who has harmed no one, for "real". Just in theory, and not in theory in a way that everyone agrees with.
Perhaps a better example: hostile work environments and sexual harassment. Group of guys in an auto mechanic shop (so cliche, I know) have a pinup calendar on the wall. Gal gets a job there, the calendar doesn't hurt her, it doesn't depict her, it doesn't threaten her directly...but she "feels" like it does...and can sue, therefore. She has recourse if she feels offended (thought, no real harm), and most people would agree that, because historically women have had to fight to gain access to traditionally male employment, the pinup calendar creates a hostile work environment.
I simply don't feel that this is a fear on one side issue. Is it rational, for example, to fear losing freedom of speech simply because we ban one entire genre (child pornography) of pornography? Is that really rational? And aren't those arguments (we start here, then they go after you, then they go after me, blah blah blah) ALSO fear based???
), ..you mean? Mainly because I was raised in western culture, where arty farty pinstripe suits and useless, constricting, inconvenient neck ties, for example, are more the cultural norm.
KABOOM!!!