Posted on 10/30/2001 8:26:37 AM PST by billorites
WASHINGTON (AP) - A Supreme Court debate about Congress' ability to regulate the shadowy world of computer-simulated child pornography became a real-world discussion of the sex scenes in modern movies Tuesday during a lively argument session over free speech, art and kiddie porn.
Does the movie "Traffic" appear to show adolescents having sex? the justices asked. Under a 1996 law challenged by pornographers and free-speech advocates, could someone be prosecuted for buying a video copy of that movie, or the films "Lolita," or "Titanic"?
All three movies include bedroom scenes of teen-agers or young adults, though their private parts are obscured.
The 1996 law at issue in Tuesday's case forbids any visual depiction that "appears to be" children in sexually explicit situations, or that is advertised so that it "conveys the impression" that someone under 18 is involved.
Through high-tech wizardry or simple deception, pornographers can make dirty movies that appear to show kids having sex, but which actually involve no real children.
The Supreme Court must decide if it violates the First Amendment for government to ban something that appears to be one thing but is really another.
"I don't know whether they depict simulated sexual activity or not. I didn't see any of those movies," Justice Antonin Scalia interjected after about 10 minutes of movie discussion.
The court heard arguments in a borrowed courtroom for a second day Tuesday because of anthrax contamination at the Supreme Court building. Chief Justice William Rehnquist said the court will also be displaced Wednesday.
In Tuesday's case, the Justice Department is asking the Supreme Court to uphold the Child Pornography Prevention Act provisions in part to help "stamp out the market for child pornography involving real children."
Constitutional free-speech rights do not fully extend to pornography, and the Supreme Court has ruled that child pornography gets even less protection. The First Amendment does not apply because the "evil to be restricted so overwhelmingly outweighs the expressive interests, if any, at stake," the court ruled in 1982.
Outright use of children to depict sex acts is illegal, as is possession or transmission of illicit child porn.
Savvy pornographers have long fooled the eye with adults who look very young. Their options expanded with the advent of sophisticated computer programs that allow people to alter photos or create entirely fake images.
The Free Speech Coalition, the California-based trade association involved in this case, says it opposes child pornography but worries that the 1996 law would sweep up even law-abiding pornographers.
"The very crux of the matter is that even reasonable people may differ on what 'appears to be' a minor and what 'conveys the impression' that a minor is depicted," the pornographers' group argued in legal filings with the court.
The group did not challenge a section of the law that banned the computer doctoring of pictures of real and sometimes identifiable children to appear sexually explicit.
A federal judge upheld the law, but the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that decision in 1999, ruling that the government did not show a connection between computer-generated child pornography and the exploitation of actual children.
Several other appeals courts have ruled the opposite way, and the government asked the high court to resolve the differences.
The Justice Department argues that fake images could be used to entice real children into sexual activity.
"Congress regarded the material covered by the CPPA as a tool of the crime of child abuse much like burglars' tools are instruments of the crime of burglary," Solicitor General Theodore Olson wrote in legal filings with the court.
The government also argued that unless all child porn is banned it may be impossible for investigators to tell what is real, illegal porn.
Thirty-six states and territories joined the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, 18 members of Congress and conservative groups such as the Family Research Council in filing friend-of-the-court briefs supporting the government in the child pornography case.
The American Civil Liberties Union, other civil liberties groups and criminal defense lawyers joined media groups and publishers in backing the pornographers.
The case is Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, 00-795.
AP-ES-10-30-01 1144EST
Freedom of speech makes for strange bedfellows.
This CPPA is terrible legislation.
“We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”You people who revel in protecting the vilest forms of "speech" imaginable have attempted to divorce sin from consequence but it isn't possible. The very act of permitting unbridled license dooms us all to slavery.--John Adams, address to his former troops in Massachusetts, October 11, 1798.
You will kick and rail against it, but it isn't RELIGION, it is FACT.
The descent into depravity continues, and it will wreak unspeakable damage on us all. It already has, in terms of the mortal wounding of the institution of the family, but we're all ignoring it.
Freedom to pursue all manner of filthiness is not liberty.
Q.E.D.
Child Pornography is not "speech". SCOTUS would have to be under the influence of some serious drugs for them to believe that our founders wanted to promote and protect pornography.
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect perverted Union, establish Justice Lunacy, insure domestic Tranquility Insurrection, provide for the common defence disarmament, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty Terrorism to ourselves and our Posterity Unaborted, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
Yeah, right. </ sarcasm >
Amen. You can't legislate morality OR religion. John Adams said a mouthful.
Its been a white-knuckler ride for the past 30 years. But the more the govt tries to intervene the more faster the ride goes. I feel badly for The Thumpers who desparately want lightning to come down on the Heathens. Its just not going to happen. Video boosted pronaography into the startosphere. The internet launched it around the world. And thats with more porn laws than ever.
Ok easy question - who wants to defend kiddipornographers? No one. Ok - tough question - who is in favor of bad legislation that will allow an ARBITRARY decision on which films get to be released after a group of churchladies do a thumbs-up thumbs down based on their estimation of an actor's age? Tough call all around.
Does that then extend to ANY fictional account of any criminal act? Steven King anyone?
You are spectacularly misinformed. There is voluminous case law which demonstrates an almost absolute right to freedom of speech, religion and expression.
The SC will overturn their law, as I recall the case law that involves "true" child porn (ie, still photos, motion pictures and audio recordings of actual children involved in sexual acts) revolve around the nonconsensual nature of the acts captured by media.
HCI seems to argue that unless all guns are banned it may be impossible for investigators to tell what is an illegal gun.
This is fuzzy - if a simulated (cartoon) child engages in sex, this would be a crime. But a simulated (again as a cartoon) murder is not? Why would the pornographer go to jail but not the..."murderer"??? Why is sex so much more compelling than violence?
That is the slipperly slope that some on this thread seem to advocate zipping down. Fictional depictions of crime, even child rape, murder or terrorist acts, should be considered protected speech. The court will likely do that very thing in this case.
There are lots of ugly thoughts.
The moment we have a preponderant number of people who scorn righteousness and revel in sin and depravity of every kind, you might as well set fire to the Constitution for all the good it will do you.
CASE IN POINT: Democrats who said "character doesn't matter," and then aided and abetted the most criminal President in history. It is NOT coincidental that Bill Clinton is a man of huge lusts and insatiable carnal appetites. Giving power to someone who doesn't know how to bridle his own passions is like giving a loaded pistol to a serial murderer.
Are they ready to realize that they are not the authors of their own morality?
The more people try to defend this stuff and wring their hands over it, the deeper into the muck we will sink.
It doesn't have to entail lightning bolts. Look around you. Look at the wasteland we live in, and figure out for yourself that we are all responsible to a greater or lesser degree to help repair it. I don't know if its too late, but I know it will be if we don't stop worrying about whether we can have unfettered pornography, addiction and self-abusing wickedness in our lives, and start calling upon God for forgiveness.
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