Posted on 04/24/2002 3:56:03 PM PDT by TLBSHOW
Whenever a Supreme Court opinion is bristling with references to Renaissance paintings, classical mythology, and "art and literature throughout the ages," you know the court is about to invoke the First Amendment to protect "Bisexual Schoolgirls' Porn Pictures."
Writing for the court, Justice Anthony Kennedy struck down a perfectly sensible federal child porn law last week. Though you might think the attorney general was preparing to rip "War and Peace" off the shelves, the law simply extended the reach of the federal child pornography laws to computer-generated "virtual" images of minors engaging in sexually explicit conduct. Without this law, it will be impossible, in practice, to prosecute any child pornography cases.
In order to prohibit, say, "Youngest Teen Sluts in the World!" while leaving the Federalist Papers unmolested, the law carefully defined "sexually explicit" conduct as: "actual or simulated ... sexual intercourse ... bestiality ... masturbation ... sadistic or masochistic abuse ... or lascivious exhibition of the genitals or pubic area of any person."
In response to this law, Justice Kennedy expounded on William Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" – "the most famous pair of teen-age lovers." He continued: "The right to think is the beginning of freedom, and ... speech is the beginning of thought."
Oh, cut it out.
The last smut prosecutions for works with any redeeming value whatsoever took place almost four decades ago. Since then, pornographers have been running amok, producing the most degrading pornography imaginable – and then running to the Supreme Court to whine about threats to Shakespeare and "Lady Chatterley's Lover."
Some of the more respectable titles taken off the Internet include: "Preteen Pedophilia XXX," "Kiddie Pix," "Mary's Pictures of Young Nude Girls," "Lolita Angels," "Preteen Nudist Camp," "Naked Little School Girls," "Kiddie Porn Lolitas," "Rape Lolita," "Preteen Incest Rape."
Remember: I'm not the one who says "Preteen Sluts" is protected by the Constitution. Pornography defenders always insist on describing this particular constitutional right in vague euphemisms, such as "material dealing frankly with sex" and "sexually themed material." If I have to endure Justice Kennedy's pompous platitudes when we're talking about "Lolita Angels," then I'm not politely avoiding the topic.
The nation is swimming in pornography. You can't turn on TV without seeing simulated sex scenes. And Kennedy is worried that a law banning computer-generated photos of children engaging in sexually explicit acts will put Shakespeare at risk?
If judges pretended to be this confused when interpreting other laws, there could be no laws about anything. Indeed, Depends undergarments would be a necessity on the high court, as justices struggled with whether that feeling in their bellies meant they had to go to the bathroom or needed to burp. Is it "Othello" or is it "Kiddie Pix"?
In addition to Shakespeare, Kennedy claims that if Congress were permitted to outlaw virtual images of children in explicit sex scenes, movies like "Traffic" and "American Beauty" might be made differently. "[L]egitimate movie producers," Kennedy anxiously warns, might not "risk distributing images in or near the uncertain reach of this law."
Justice William Rehnquist points out in his dissent that both "American Beauty" and "Traffic" were made (and given awards) while this precise child porno law was on the books. Not only that, but during that time, four of five federal appeals courts were upholding the law. As Rehnquist says: "The chill felt by the court ... has apparently never been felt by those who actually make movies."
Moreover, the actress who played a teen-age girl in the crucially important simulated sex scene in "Traffic" was not, in fact, a minor. (Why does no one ever say, "'Casablanca' was a good movie – but what it really needed was simulated sex scenes with kids"?) Even high-priced lawyers for the porno industry couldn't come up with more than one "legitimate" Hollywood movie that might possibly – theoretically – fall under the virtual child porn law.
Here is a description, courtesy of an Internet rating service, of just some of the sex scenes from "American Beauty": "a couple has sex with thrusting, her legs up in the air ... a man is seen from behind masturbating in the shower ... a man masturbates next to his sleeping wife in bed ... a girl stands in front of boy, then takes her bra off and we see her breasts ... a man thinks a male couple is performing fellatio (they are not) ... a father kisses his daughter's teen-age friend, caresses her clothed breasts and pulls off her jeans until she's down to her underwear, and opens her shirt, exposing her bare breasts ... a man has several daydreams of a girl in a bathtub with rose petals covering her; he reaches his hand under the water at her crotch level as she puts her head back and moans."
So Congress can't ban virtual kiddie porn because the law might make producers think twice before making movies with scenes like that? This is the doomsday scenario? A little chilling might lead to "virtual" watchable movies.
Most of these are not cartoons. A sicko could take a picture of your child at a public swimming pool, go home to his computer and change the photo enough that it would be considered computer generated and your child could be depicted in a sexual act with an adult.
With software programs like Electric Image Animation you can create realistic 3-D human bodies with blank faces and take anyone's face and map it to the body. This body could be doing anything.
How do you think tabloids get a three-breasted woman pictured on the front. She certainly did not look like a cartoon!
So imagine finding out your child is on a porn site and there's nothing you can do about under the current ruling because the picture was altered by a computer.
The act, or the image ?
Step-out on the thought: A fictional book that depicts an insurection against the US government.
Should this book be banned ?
Should I or you be put in prison for having a copy of said book ?
The "action" is against the law, not the image.
You're so intent on condescending that you don't recognise your own hypocrisy staring you in the face. :-}
According to Mr Amused, the right to life is not an unalienable right and thus subject to federalism while the right of pedophiles to virtual child pornography is an unalienable right and thus not subject to the tenth amendment.
Up is down, right is left, black is white. Yo comprendo.
PS: You are amusing.
I do but I don't think virtual kiddie porn is one of them. I don't want it near me and I don't want my grandkids anywhere near it. And I will be every bit as militant in keeping it away from them as the libertine militants are wont to be in making it available.
You made an erroneous statement.
I corrected you.
If that makes me a leftist, who gives a crap.
Nope, obscenity laws speak both to images and actions, victim and victimless. And those laws should be made by governements closest to the people not from a central authority.
Obviously you haven't read the ruling, because the part of the act that made such things a crime was never challenged. That was illegal before this ruling, it's still illegal after this ruling, and if you'd bothered to actually read the thing instead of shooting your mouth off, you'd know that. But hey, why let some inconvenient facts get in the way of a nice diatribe?
I think she misses the point, however. Just as the Courts must "sit in their Depends" to ensure Legal Abortion, they are bound to side with the Larry "Free Speech" Flynt pornographers every time.
Sexual liberation is a consummate form of political control. Why, without the Sexual Revolution, we'd probably never have had sufficient "crisis" to compel the need for Legal Abortion.
![](http://communities.msn.com/_Secure/0NAAAAJ8SwOogAyGy05zxucF!BOkGU*mQU2sQ4zMpivzj9vAAys*VT4TUFId!n9LxX6K7p7U0XEnlhAdHdPpABg/britsam.jpg")
So much horsecrap, so few shovels.
You're so intent on condescending that you don't recognise your own hypocrisy staring you in the face. :-}
I like a good sense of humor.
According to Mr Amused, the right to life is not an unalienable right and thus subject to federalism while the right of pedophiles to virtual child pornography is an unalienable right and thus not subject to the tenth amendment.
Ya got me, I don't believe thought should be criminalized by the gov't, state or fed. But that goes for all thoughts the good and the bad. And I believe states should be able to decide whether to ban abortion. If enough states ban it and band together, there's possibility for an amendment. I just don't see getting it done by an act of Congress.
Up is down, right is left, black is white. Yo comprendo.
When you're done again, re read the ruling and then read the dissents. Then take a peak at the 24 states who have enacted legislation banning virtual kiddie porn. This ruling makes those laws unconstitutional in point of fact.
When you're done with all of that try to convince yourself that freedom and liberty come from an omnipotent central government ruling that a pedophiles right to virtual child pornography is protected somewhere in the first amendment. An amendment crafted by the same men who crafted and lived with obsecnity laws in their states.
You know darn well that they don't have "real pictures", but doctored ones. Although the tabloids do get sued from time to time by the stars for altered photos, they still do it.
Virtual child porn is different. No child is harmed to make it. What this law did was to ban those images, but for no good reason. As I've been trying to get you to see over on that other thread, the government must have an interest in a particular matter before it goes passing laws. The government has no interest in protecting cartoon characters from pornographers. The law in question didn't outlaw the images because they are obscene. And it couldn't have been attempting to protect children from harm since no children were involved. It outlawed these images based upon an arbitrary criterion. It went far beyond the existing obscenity laws. As to the state laws, those may still be valid provided that they are based upon standards of what's obscene. If they are carbon copies of what Congress passed, then they'll be struck down as well.
No kiddin? And guys like you will support that because if the law is something you like then you are for a strong central government dictating to the masses.
Obscenity is in the eyes of the beholder, thats why obscenity laws are left to the states. To me, virtual kiddie porn is an obscenity, period. I'm well aware you have a different opinion and if your fellow citizens agree with you then you can have child porn to your hearts content.
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