Posted: May 22, 2016 11:15 pm
crank wrote:igorfrankensteen wrote:
And since with pedophilia, we DO outlaw more than just direct attacks on real children, I would suggest that if we ever reach the point where we can detect pedophilia in the mind directly, that we will outlaw that as well.
Are you 'suggesting' meaning you think this will happen, or are you advocating we should do this? Such a thing would be thought control. A society allowing though control would be seriously ugly. Dissent would disappear, not because there wouldn't be any, they'll just disappear the offenders.
You're right in that we do outlaw more than direct attacks on children, Texas law on child porn outlaws 'simulation' of sex involving minors. I am not familiar with how this is used, but as written, there are shitloads of teen movies that would fall under this. The guy cutting out the catalog pictures would fall under this. There was a story, in another state, about a guy getting arrested for child porn because he had those Japanese anime or manga cartoons, hentai is a term for the more erotic variety, I think, there a mess of terms I can't keep straight, many have very young looking characters with hyper-sized genitals, all very stylized, but cartoons. It's very hard to imagine who is harmed in the drawing of these cartoons, even harder for mere possession.
I was suggesting that I would expect it to happen, not taking sides about it myself. Since there's no hint now that we will be able to do anything like this any time soon, I'm also confident we don't need to worry right now about making decisions about it.
I usually don't like to go anywhere near "what if" kinds of things, but this particular area, and the post that I was responding to, seemed to warrant it.
Personally, because of my own life experience, I don't think that people who were NOT pedophiles, or any other sort of dangerous criminal, would be turned into one by coming in contact with such materials. That's not the reason to ban them.
The reason to ban them, is to keep a significant distance between children, and what people are allowed to do with them/to them.
If materials depicting abuse of children are permitted, I fear that those who need to defend children, might lose track of how early to draw the line.
Like the application of violence as a "training" tool. People have died, or been permanently damaged in situations which were allowed to occur, because violence was allowed, up to a certain point, and that point became too murky for authorities to step in in time.
Stalking has become a crime only recently, and it is still being parsed out, exactly where a person's freedom of expression ends, and their target's freedom from having to worry about or deal with them begins.
I will continue to favor erring on the side AGAINST child abuse.