JimC wrote:Warren Dew wrote:JimC wrote:The "sex with children" thing is an interesting example. Most serious paedophiles have bucket-loads of child pornography on their computer, or subscribe to such sites. They may go through life never actually touching a live child, but in being part of the demand for child pornography, they create conditions where others hurt children for profit.
Exactly. rEv will of course bring up the cases where no actual children are involved, but that's exactly cognate to the hate speech cases where no actual violence occurs. If rEv were consistent about the "bigger societal picture", he would allow for banning of child pornography even if it doesn't involve actual children, just as he would allow for banning of hate speech even if it doesn't involve violence.
Me, I'd rather only ban the use of actual children in pornography, and the incitement of actual violence in speech. That way you can dispense with pornography possession and hate speech laws entirely.
Your last two sentences contradict your earlier "exactly".
Fair enough. Replace "incitement of actual violence in" with "actual violence incited by", then.
If child pornography could be manufactured solely via computer generated avatars (which is conceivable in the future), such an argument would no longer be valid, though I'd still regard them as sick fucks...
I'm not so sure about this. In the U.S., child pornography in the European sense of pornography purporting to depict minors is constitutionally protected unless actual minors were used in producing it. That was a solid majority position on the Supreme Court. However, some of the members of the court said something opposite to what you suggest: they said that if computer generated avatars became indistinguishable from pornography made with actual children, it might be legitimate to ban it in order to maintain a ban on pornography made with actual children as well.
rEvolutionist wrote:Warren, looking at cartoon pictures of child porn (presumably) doesn't lead to any harm to anyone.
Neither does posting so called "hate speech" on your Facebook page. At most, some idiots get offended, just as with the cartoon pictures.
