Posted: May 23, 2016 5:07 pm
zoon wrote:Fallible wrote:I'm With Stupid wrote:Fallible wrote:This is a non-sequitur, as far as I can see. What does doing more than outlawing direct attacks on real children have to do with outlawing thoughts? Secondly, I'd be interested to see you come up with anything which is outlawed regarding paedophilia that is not an action/behaviour. I can't, but perhaps I'm missing something.
The only one I can think of specifically would be owning cartoon child pornography, which as far as I can tell, is justified purely as a thought crime. Real child pornography is rightly banned because allowing a market for it encourages its production, and that necessitates children being abused to make it. A drawing eliminates any actual abuse from the process, but they are typically banned because of the unsubstantiated belief that they will encourage genuine child abuse. Whether this is true or not, it's definitely the case that this has been a reason throughout history to implement thought crimes and ban things purely on the grounds that certain people find them distasteful.
In order to own cartoon child pornography, one has to acquire it. Acquiring such stuff is an action. Owning something isn't a thought crime - it is the possession of something, a thing, an image, whatever, which is the crime. We do this for other items such as guns and drugs. I'm not making any comment on whether this is the right way to do things or not.
The trouble here, is that this runs into free speech and banning books. As you say, thoughts are not crimes, largely because they can be concealed, so the historic arguments have been around freedom of speech and writing. Banning comics with child porn may be justifiable, but it would then be one of the exceptions (along with shouting "fire" in a crowded theatre) to the general principle of free speech which is vital to healthy democracies.
No argument here.