The data on sex crimes and offending shows this hypothesis to be false.
Canada’s child sex abuse rates have actually gone up since criminalizing the possession and distribution of fictionalized pornography depicting non-existent minors. Could this correlation have any meaning? Probably not. But it is consistent with trends cited in studies, as pointed out by @JustLurking in a different thread.
Do you also want proof the violent video games reduce murder before making them legal?
That’s really kind of pathetic that you can’t handle ineffective child protection initiatives and organisations being criticised. If you want effective child protection then criticism is important, ineffective or outright harmful measures need to be criticised.
Do you also want proof the violent video games reduce murder before making them legal?
Video games which condone or glamorize terrorists should be prohibited! Why is this a question not all killings in game should be banned. Shooting games are entertainment and do not glamorize murder of civilians or children.
Any fantasy entertainment whether it is cartoon drawn or realistic virtual reality which glamorize or condone terrorists or sexual abuse of children and women should be banned no excuses until you demonstrate proof these entertainment options reduce crime! Not enough evidence to so far not yet we must wait.
Also, if you Like Michael Seto so much, I think that must mean you agree, that pedophilia is a sexual orientation.
“He has argued forcefully for pedophilia to be thought of as a sexual orientation — an idea he acknowledges is controversial, but hopes will actually help prevent child abuse.”
That mandatory reporting laws make it incredibly risky for pedophiles to tell therapists about their desires, and should be eliminated because they can be misunderstood by the therapists and prevent pedophiles from seeking help.
“Pedophiles will remain hidden if they continue to be hated and feared, which would impede efforts to better understand this sexual orientation and thereby prevent child sexual exploitation,”
That public sex offender list that he Canadian government announced, is misguided:
" The Harper government recently announced tougher measures against child predators, including a public sex offender registry. Seto says this is misguided,"
And that child sex offenders should be reintegrated into the society:
“One of the worries would be that would further drive individuals underground,” he says. “It could also lead to problems that decrease the likelihood they can successfully be integrated.”
Actually I cited wrong academic I actually meant Michael Salter, he is the REAL academic and one who is trust worthy. Michael Seto is nutter and not reliable. He has bizzare views which will not protect children. Michael Salter is the real deal I believe.
No, if I want to kill this girl “no older than 15” in a game, that’s my right: Dovesi Dran | Elder Scrolls | Fandom Spare me your “guilty until proven innocent” garbage. Oh, Salter. Even worse.
Where do you draw this line? Why there?
Just by observing you, your speech and mannerisms, you clearly do not value the concept of free speech the same way you ought to.
The right to free speech is one that doesn’t insist upon itself. It is justified and bolstered by the benefits it brings to those who trust and adhere to the liberal ideal.
We have compelling arguments backed by empirical evidence for why fiction ought to be preserved and protected from government intrusion. If your decision to plug your ears and avert your gaze is what keeps you sane, that’s on you.
You didn’t cite the wrong academic, you did it multiple times. It’s not a misspelling mistake, it was a completely different surname. You did insult Michael Sato just now, the very crime you accused Protasia of doing.
You don’t even know which people you want to cite. And when you are proof that the sources you do cite don’t really confirm your beliefs, no surprizing, you never researched your position ever in your entire life, you follow only the people’s quotes that conform to your beliefs, like a gullible sheep that you are, trying to convert people into your cult of thinking, instead of convincing them, and you deny any endorsement of them and jump on making excuses, like a typical narcissist.
This was your entire time spent in here. You state your opinion, make demands using “we” instead of I, as grandiose narcissists do. You didn’t provide any evidence that supports your claims. Not even a single scientific paper. You commit argument from authority fallacy and cherrypicking fallacy as your main and only arguments, choosing the “academics” that conform your belief blindly, just because they repeat your opinion, and not because they have a convincing argument, and equally as blindly you dismiss multiple and actual clinical psychologists that do happen to say something that is true, simply because it makes you feel bad for some reason.
You don’t care about children, you don’t care about victims of sexual abuse as myself. You only care about your own personal feelings, that is what your entire reasoning is based on, this is what you all arguments are. That is your only motivation. You have no concern for others, you are not willing to set your personal feelings and biases aside to listen, and not agree, but maybe infer new solutions that haven’t been yet tried. When I showed you sources, you said:
Psychology Today is a website, but that website, allows actual experts, hundreds of them, which you can verify, they use their real names and surnames, that have years of experience, spending their entire lives learning about topics, to explain to people what they research and study, giving references to the research papers they have been using.
Even if you disagree with hundreds of people more qualified than you to talk about the topic you have no knowledge of, then you can simply ignore it, check the references, and make your own opinion on them. But you instantly denied it, you didn’t even try it. The fear that there are maybe more effective methods of dealing with child predators was too scary for you, so you decided to live in denial.
And let’s talk a little bit about Michael Salter, shall we? He is a Professor of Criminology at the School of Social Sciences at UNSW
Criminology at the school of social sciences, as in Sociology of Crimes and Ethics.
He is not a specialist in Law Enforcement or Criminal Law.
He is not a specialist in Crime Detection, Prevention or Investigation.
He is not a specialist in Correctional Methods.
He is not a specialist in Psychology or Therapy.
He literally talks about sexual exploitation in the context of philosophy.
He applies critical and feminist theory to the study of complex trauma.
Critical theory is is an approach to social philosophy that focuses on reflective assessment and critique of society and culture in order to reveal and challenge power structures.
Feminist theory is an extension of feminism into theoretical, fictional, or philosophical discourse.
Both theories aren’t a reliable proven concepts, but he makes his conclusions about the serious topic of complex trauma, based on such ideological ideas. Which is the opposite of what scientific method is all about.
Those theories have some truth to them, but that don’t automatically validate all the logical glue that has been used to connect facts. And in most instances of those theories applied, the results were highly unreliable in making any solutions.
And it is not to say, that Michael Salter isn’t a reliable or good professor. He clearly can be, I didn’t put enough effort to verify him, and only made a surface level analysis of his history and some of his works. But most of his papers on research gate are about topics of trauma, or abuse in adult relationships, or technological aspects of those topics. He barely had any writings about sexual exploitation of children. And he is only a single person, with thousands more qualified than him in this topic, disagreeing with the opinion that he presents. And he has the right for that opinion. But it’s that, an opinion. It’s not a conclusion to a research, it’s not a suggestion what empirical evidence shows, it’s not a hypothesis he makes based on his experiences. It’s an opinion of a human that studied social sciences, likes feminism, technology and earns some money working with the topic of sexual exploitation of children. He is a human, he can be wrong, he can have his own unconfirmed beliefs, he can have political opinions and take sides. He certainly has no scientific history that would show he is a reliable source on information about effects of media or sex toys on people, definitely more than an actual psychologist or therapist. So in this regard, he isn’t trustworthy, but if he were to ever make any research about the topic, I would still read it with curiosity, checking the methodology, verifying the statistical analysis (although the folks in soft sciences rarely do that), and trying to make a judgement about his conclusions. Because that is what I do, I care about knowing the truth, and not about feeling that I’m right. I want to be effective in protecting minors from abuse, and not have a feeling that I helped them, by not doing anything to actually achieve that. There is no easy answer to the problem of abuse, of any kind, so stop believing you know the real answer to it when it’s as simplistic as just “ban things”.
You are literally dismissing trained clinicians with years of helping child sexual abuse victims who have studied actual pedophiles, and conducted a lot of research about them. Over a person who had no contact with either of these groups and makes an unconfirmed hypothesis, driving his entire scientific career on an unreliable theory that has so far failed to help in anything related to social sciences.
But moreover, he is an advisor to the Australian Office of the eSafety Commissioner, the Canadian Centre for Child Protection and White Ribbon Australia. He literally has a hand in fighting an effort of sexual exploitation of children in Australia. So let’s see how his efforts, and all people in Australia, has helped them to reduce sexual crimes against children?
Australia rate of rapes as of 2010: 28.60 per 100000 citizens
Japan rate of rapes as of 2010: 1.00 per 100000 citizens
Japan, in contrast to Australia, allows video games that glorify terrorists, they allow child sex toys, they allow ageplay pornography, they allow drawings of childlike characters being even brutally raped. They allow pretend incest porn, pretend rape porn, and much more.
Australia and Michael Salter do oppose such things. They are so preoccupied with banning those things, that they seem to have no concern for real children getting groomed and sexually exploited every single day in their own country. All they do is they complain and try to ban porn and games, and movies and sex toys, without having any proofs of them causing any harm. They decisions are purely ideological, not scientific.
And the result is? THEY HAVE 3000% MORE RAPES THAN JAPAN THAT DOES ALLOW SUCH THINGS.
It’s not proof that those things reduce sexual crimes. It’s proof that the Australian government doesn’t try to implement solutions that work and doesn’t care about being effective in protecting people, all they care about is feeling that they are correct. Because here is the thing, even if those outlets result in more people wanting to commit a sexual crime, if you have actual, effective measures to prevent sexual abuse, then it doesn’t matter, because no abuse will happen thanks to those measures, even if most people would want to commit them, they are prevented from committing them before that happens, that is a system that works and not a blind belief of censorship and banning rampage.
There used to be a time, where there was no porn, no child sex dolls, no sex toys at all. AND THE AMOUNTS OF RAPE HAVE BEEN MILLIONS OF TIMES HIGHER THAN TODAY. Going back to that time, won’t magically change things this time. Unless you want to argue that “It wasn’t real medieval times”.
You are literally like that, you could see a child being raped right in front of your eyes. And the first impulse you would have is to go back to your home and start complaining that “pornography normalizes pedophilia”, a concept that you can’t even define. Instead of putting an effort to help that child.
You are a disgrace as an adult and an excuse of a human being. If this is the approach you want to use protect children, then I, as a person who has been sexually abused among multiple other types of abuse my whole life, have only this to say:
I don’t want your help. You will cause more harm, and will not improve anything even a bit. You aren’t a shiny knight who will rescue children from devils. You are a looser that argues on the internet doing nothing of value with a child sexual prevention organization, because the idea of being effective in protecting children has made him feel angry and scared, for some reason.
What’s funny is that the incidences of rape and sexual assault actually went down since the explosion in availability of hardcore, degenerate pornography. This wasn’t just an isolated incident, either.
The reason why prosecutors and the government were so hell-bent on eradicating porn was because they were ashamed. The “moral high ground” simply refused to appreciate the value of smut because it reminded them of their primal, baser instincts which their religious and socio-political upbringing forced them to repress and hate. This was also during the height of the Cold War, and with the recent overturning of Segregation, cultural and ideological authoritarianism were welcome by the people.
Yes, and there is a left-right nexus here re: sentencing, obscenity, etc
See my article
Re: Miller I find it’s lack of specificity around jurisdictions also alarming as with https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Extreme_Associates,_Inc.
This is a terrific article. Thank you for writing and sharing!
At the risk of sounding like I have confirmation bias…
The fact that there is no national standard only proves my point that the obscenity doctrine is bad precedent. This is no accident, mind you. They deliberately crafted it with this in mind.
The concept of “community standards” and “value judgements” are so at-odds with overall First, Fourth, and Fourteenth Amendment jurisprudence that it can only ever exist in a realm of its own, something wholly unique and quantifiably unjustified for something so arbitrary and objectively vague. The way it shirks aside individual rights and privacy while imposing upon the sexually inclined minority a set of majoritarian viewpoints and tastes completely and totally trivializes our First Amendment from the get-go.
It needs to be reviewed and overturned. You can’t justify a crime where a mere preference is violated.
Moral politics aside, the incarceration of a man for when the most vile and offensive pornography, so long as no actual, real minors are involved, is unreasonable and unjustified.
There is no reason why the obscenity doctrine should exist when indecent material could be constitutionally regulated by limiting the time and place it may be displayed, distributed, or consumed.
There is no objective difference between a lolicon/shotacon hentai manga and a Playboy.
Exactly, the jurisdictional and “average man” standards are both irrelevant apropos the Constitution as Federal law supersedes any state or municipal morality. As for majoritarian outrage, one need look no further than the SCOTUS decision that desecrating, burning, etc the 
is protected speech — something liberal justices AND Scalia agreed on.
I am very offended by the notion of stepping on free speech, privacy, and due process. These are my three gods. Except, for the loli goddess, who I always rank first.
On the end of days, the loli goddess will come to take me to the loli world for my faithfulness, and I’ll spit on this disgusting loathsome world. Or a truck will do it for me sooner. Trucks are my best friends.
I don’t even remember the Bible being that anti-sex, although God certainly hated homosexuals. He rained fire and brimstone on Sodom and Gomorrah, for those transgressions. Simply looking upon it would turn you to stone.
America’s “greatest virtue”, or the one America markets to the world, is freedom of speech and freedom of expression. They seem to be destroying this. Who is destroying America’s greatest virtues here?
Prohibition never went away. It took new forms.
This man might want to consider using parental controls for his little children. Or better yet, to just parent them properly.
Much of the material makes it look horrific and terrible. I cannot possibly fathom how someone arrives at the conclusion that it is “good” from that. If anything, it would appall someone, and make it less likely they would act out.
If someone mimicks anything they see, they have more serious problems to worry about, than this.
A news article said he had drawings of children’s genitals on his website. What makes you think it was text specifically?
What about sexting?
Clamping down on any material tends to push it underground where the Sun doesn’t shine, and people get tempted to just “look the other way” at worse things going on. Honestly, if AI can eliminate the child from child porn, perhaps it can salvage extreme porn too.
I like to point out that they care more about making the problem invisible, than actually making it go away.
In the case of Pornhub, they’re throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Their obsession with child pornography means everything else will effectively become illegal too.
Dolls are hot.
Some studies suggest pedophiles are even more overly protective and irrational, when it comes to children.
"The laws of mathematics are very commendable, but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia.” Australian Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull.
They will just find some quack like Mike Salter who nods to anything they want.
Replace them with an algorithm…? That’s a bit scary. Please be gentle, Skynet.
They want to set a precedent and scare people.
They want to set the idea in people’s heads that getting prosecuted for this is normal, and slowly step it up. When someone is sentenced for something rid, they “should have known” what they were in for, they went out of their way to break the law.
What about Isis beheading videos?
Japan is a very interesting case. If you watch anime, little kids have a distress call button they press. And they’re very jumpy when they think someone might be up to no good in public. But, they’re not that interested in someone’s porn films, unless it happens to have pubic hair in it, in which case it is the devil, and must not be distributed without censors. It is obscene.
This is likely the same sort of person who would refuse to acknowledge that any form of rape other than the worst forms is rape, and that she is “lying” about her experiences.
The ones who think bestiality videos turn people into pedophiles? The slippery slope of degeneracy? Lucy Faithful recently had a bizarre theory like that. Did the Tories put them up to it?
There are anime which do that in Japan.
Michael Seto allows too many quacks run around on his journal and even co-authors some of them, but Salter is a complete quack. He isn’t a real scientist. He is a prime example of a rubber-stamping PhD.
While there are certainly experts on there, you may want to be wary of Psychology Today without confirming precisely who is speaking. Psychology Today is where the Supreme Court got it’s source that 80% of sex offenders will re-offend.
Possession of child pornography was legal in Japan five years ago. Somehow, that didn’t make crime up either. In fact, when it was banned, crime increased by 20% IIRC. It’s almost like the whole idea of porn doing spooky things is full of shit. But, Japan is a far more authoritarian country (they have an absurdly high conviction rate for all criminals charged) than America, so a country to country comparison may not entirely fit.
Despite this, Japan largely showed the same crime rate trends as pornography became more proliferant, and crime subsequently dropped. Other countries showed similar trends. If the trends in Canada are to be believed, it may be indicative of the fact that fictional materials may not be fully effective, and only serve as a partial mitigation for crime due to a lack of realism.
Crime has been reducing for other reasons too, like an increase in enforcement, and possibly an increase in understanding of the issue there. Pedophiles depicted in Japanese media have recently started to look more and more realistic, while previously they resembled the typical stereotype far more frequently.
New technologies have also recently come out like sex dolls, although they’re only available to a tiny portion of individuals, so it is unlikely they alone have made a huge material impact in the overall crime rates.
Western governments are usually most disappointing as they don’t even try to investigate solutions, or whether something really does x or y. They just don’t bother doing the research, unless it agrees with their political agenda. It is much like the studies done into drugs, which were really just done for the sole purpose of justifying Nixon’s War on Drugs.
Both psychologists and the media are useless here. Psychologists push their quackery about someone being inherently dangerous, as if they’re being controlled by a fucking brain parasite out of Plague Inc, as does the media in a different way. In reality, life is shit, and someone probably thinks, why not? It sounds like the most realistic explanation, does it not?
People always make a special exception for sex.
If you record a porn movie using a sex doll, how effective would this be?
Japan’s censorships on pornography to my knowledge is a result of old times when Christian missionaries coming to Japan were shocked and disgusted of the Japanese approach to sexuality, nakedness and human interactions. Things like public saunas for both sexes where everyone was naked, and the widespread artistic works, including pornographic ones, that have shown human genitalia in their full glory were demanded by them to be censored and prohibited. There was perhaps some political incentive for Japanese governments of that time to abide by such demands, and some of such laws were kept till this day. But there is a movement in Japan now, that aims to remove mosaic and all censorship from pornography, that seems to go in the right direction right now, so we will see.
I wouldn’t derive any knowledge about Japan through the fictional mediums of their production, be it anime, movies or dramas. You like lolicon works, so I think it can work as an example, in which you can easily see that loli characters in no way shape or form resemble the behaviours and speech patterns that of a real childish young girl. A lot of things in fictional mediums will be misrepresented for the goal of good and interesting storytelling, so relying on such medium as a source of information is risky.
I don’t know if what you said is really an actual thing in Japan, but the idea for children to have a special button that informs the near authorities about some potential danger isn’t a bad thing in my opinion. Not even just in case of sexual predators, but any danger or situation, in which a child would need the help of the adult. Sure, a lot of kids would misuse it, or press it by mistake, but at the same time, do the police patrols have anything better to do on a daily basis?
I hope this will clarify our miscommunication because we are on the same page in that regard. I was talking however in the context of Adjam completely ignoring a source of information in a blind unconfirmed belief that it’s unreliable. Psychology Today is a website that allows experts to publish their words, they aren’t moderating anything, so naturally, they will allow people with incorrect or wrong informations as well, regardless of whenever they agree with them or not. The website itself has no other agenda than to just publish works of people who have a background in researching topics related to psychology.
Production and distribution were delegalized in 1999. Possession was delegalized somewhere around 2014 if I recall correctly.
Authoritarian - favouring or enforcing strict obedience to authority at the expense of personal freedom.
Japan is far from authoritarian if that is the definition you were using.
That was the point I was making. Japan has a different approach to fighting with sexual offences. One that might have stricter laws than other countries, but also one that don’t censor and restrict peoples access to various types of pornography. They allow such pornography to exist, so even if you assume that such pornography causes people to commit sexual crimes, it doesn’t matter, because Japan has a system that is effectively preventing such abuse to happen in the first place. It’s irrelevant that Japan has more strict laws than other countries because the core of my argument was exactly that fact that Japan has a different approach than other countries when it comes to laws and how they enforce them, and that this approach succeeds at solving the issue. The facts are the facts:
The reasons why this is the case, are many. It’s not an argument that porn reduces rapes because it doesn’t. It’s an argument that different countries have different methods of tackling the issue, and we should be analyzing the approach of Japan to solve it in our countries as well because it works.
Japan example shows, that censoring artistic works, even if they depict a realistic child-like character having sex, and banning dolls that appear like kids or babies, is simply a waste of time. That it isn’t a necessary effort for us to reduce the sexual exploitation of children. That maybe, we should look at things that no one has mentioned, like the stricter laws, to figure out what is actually effective, and worth time, money, peoples attention and other resources.
What do you refer to exactly? It’s the first time me hearing about the topic that you describe.
I don’t think that child sex dolls and artificial artworks are a fix. They aren’t. Just as brutal and violent video games don’t necessarily have to keep all people with sadistic desires from offending. But I think they can be helpful, for the ones that are willing to garner that help, and won’t result in any danger otherwise. If you give me something that will reduce the sexual abuse of children rates by even 1%, I will use it without a question, even if it makes me disgusted.
I used to learn Japanese by using an app that allowed me to read Japanese articles (and translated the kanji and kana for me to verify my understanding). I don’t really know exactly what you mean. I think that Japanese stereotype of a pedophile is that he is an old, fat, disgusting man who gropes little girls on the train. I read one story about such an individual being captured by the police and has been found guilty of groping a lot of women, both young and old. But the rest of the stories I’ve seen of such nature seem to vary in circumstances. I can’t really tell that Japanese media has any pattern when it comes to picking such stories, they just report on what they have and the stories always do differ.
With sex dolls, sure. But aren’t lolicon arts present for more than 50 years now? And the artistic history has millions of paintings with visibly underage individuals being naked, doing something sexual, even having sexual intercourse. They are largely removed from the public, but there are collections of them all over the world.
Although I must clarify. I don’t think such alternatives should be thought of as: “It will solve the issue”, but much rather: “It will help to solve the issue”. I call them “alternative” because their inclusion into equations while thinking about the topics gives people who would be willing to use them a choice of getting almost the same thing but without harming anyone.
Governments don’t bother researching option since it doesn’t benefit them. What incentive do they have by reducing sexual crimes on children to zero? None, quite the opposite, they would lose the most emotionally convincing card to introduce any laws they desire. So they prefer to play optics, pretending to do something to reduce sexual crimes against children, so the people believe them to be trustworthy.
And see the recent people on this forum, all of them have the pattern of trusting their governments blindly to solve the issue. But why would they when they can use that issue to pass laws that would benefit them financially, politically and so on? We can see that happening all over the world, people have an issue protesting against, for example, governments forbidding end to end encryption, when they are being told, that it’s to protect the children from pedophiles.
It’s true that not everyone in the government is like that, but the good people in the government can be easily manipulated the same way the public is, into following those who have some gain by keeping the rates of sexual abuse against children oscillating, instead of lowering them down at a steady rate.
Moral panic has always been used to manipulate the masses. It’s no different in this case. But what the people in power have learned from the past, is that moral panics tend to fade away, so this time they have to find a way to keep it.
I don’t really see how this line of mine out of the context has any meaning, so I don’t know what you have in mind while responding to it. I made it especially for the purpose of the argument, nothing else.
Psychologists have long gone the way of saying that someone is inherently dangerous, at least in terms of actual textbooks, and instead, they set the criteria of whenever a person can be dangerous. This is why DSM-5 has a distinction between paraphilias and paraphilic disorders. They don’t consider a person with a paraphilia as inherently dangerous. They consider them dangerous and in need of treatment when they cause someone harm or suffer emotional distress due to their unusual sexual interest.
But when it comes to psychologists personal opinions, well, they do have them. They are, after all, humans, and not gods. But it’s important to know that academics don’t only say things they are 100% sure of. Most of the times, they speculate, with their biases, to simply exchange ideas for the discourse. They will propose a lot of stupid and incorrect things during such effort, partially to motivate others to give their opposing views, and partially because they really want to believe them.
Are you sure they’re not sentencing innocent people for the sake of the group? They also have a practice of re-arresting the same person over and over, which the West generally does not. The conviction rate is abnormally high.
As mentioned in that article, Japan is also extremely over-policed, and that isn’t a virtue either when police officers are practically tripping over each other to fight over who can comprehend someone over a minor crime. You don’t really have rights against being searched either IIRC.
Is that really something you want to import into the West?
That is literally everyone, you euphemistic dummy. Don’t you dare pathologize me!
So it seems, that at least in Japan, they could actually provide such help to kids in need. But I was talking about this idea in the context of being implemented in any country.
Are you sure that they are sentencing innocent people for the sake of the group? I don’t think any of us have the answers to both of those questions, so making any judgements about the level of authoritarianism in Japan by looking at this particular element won’t give us any information.
“But under the Japanese law, the police can issue a warrant of arrest only one time for one crime.” - Takeshi Okano, Representative of ATOM legal Professional Corporation, Dealing with criminal cases in Japan
I wouldn’t trust the source of your information about Japan. Overall I seem to see a lot of stereotypes about Japan being spread since forever, so I would be careful with any sources.
You make it seem like I imply to import authoritarianism into the West. Like I want to copy a horrible justice system into the rest of the world. Why would I? My entire argument was that this comparison strongly suggests there exist effective ways of solving the issue of sexual abuse, that ultimately render the effort of censoring art and banning sex toys useless. That we shouldn’t try to look at banning and censorship as something that is worth wasting resources, and that we should instead, try to figure out other ways.
I never said “Copy the entire Japanese legal system with all its flaws into the west”, I said “let’s look at Japan and analyze them to figure out how we can be more effective”.
It might be worrying, and it’s unusual, but there are many factors that aren’t negative that might cause this. See the video I referenced, the Police waited 10 months to arrest this suspected arsonist because they knew they have only one shot at doing it. So that forced them to find a lot of evidence on him before an arrest. Just because some variable is unusually high, doesn’t mean any hypothesis explaining this state of it is automatically true.
This is criteria for a person to be diagnosed with a paraphilic disorder, so they can receive treatment. If you feel emotional distress due to your sexual interest, and you want to receive treatment from a professional to help you deal with it, you can do it, thanks to that criteria.
That doesn’t mean anything, really. You can have a special exception for smut and still ascribe it constitutional protection, like we already do. All porn, from run-of-the-mill raunchy films, to playboy, to more hardcore and “alternative” stuff, including loli/shota, scat, watersports, etc have First Amendment protection unless a court rules it obscene.
And the obscenity ruling is usually restricted to that case alone, as it isn’t unheard-of for a porn movie to be found obscene once, then not obscene in the same court by a different jury within that same 10 year period. I’m currently looking for those instances.
The problem with relegating this kind of stuff to a jury is that juries are very inconsistent and are not representative of the communities they hail from. In fact, prosecutors have a significant amount of leeway in selecting jurors, often discriminating against those who would be biased. But the obscenity doctrine is literally nothing but bias, so where’s the fair treatment here??
The whole doctrine reeks of corruption. It needs to be overturned.
Some law review material criticizing and calling for the abolition of the obscenity doctrine.
It needs to go.
Pornography can already be restricted based on time and place to keep it out of view from nonconsenting adults and minors.
We already have the “harmful to minors” doctrine to deal with the unlawful dissemination of pornography to minors. We have the child pornography exception to deal with pornography which exploits minors.
The idea that “obscene” speech could even exist in an American legal sense is confounding. Rights come before feelings, and it’s quite clear that the obscenity doctrine is wholly overboard, vague, and unjustified. Any reasonable jurist could see this as so.
https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1325&context=jcl
…
https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1528&context=wmborj
The obscenity doctrine is an overbroad, vague, civil rights injustice. It is no different than the doctrine of “separate but equal”. It exists only to cause harm to sexual and social minorities, and those with unpopular tastes. It is, quite literally, a form of thought crime. You can’t get any worse than that.
The idea that morals need to be defended by being imposed upon the populace in this manner is in direct contravention of the First, Fourth, Tenth, and Fourteenth Amendments. It is fundamentally and functionally incompatible with the Free Speech, Prior Restraint, Overbroadeth, Vagueness, and Right to Privacy doctrines.
Just don’t be black and sit at the front of the bus. Just don’t be black and marry a white woman.
Just don’t burn the US flag.
Just don’t use profanity.
Just don’t say “FUCK THE DRAFT!”.
Just don’t say the lord’s name in vein.
Better yet, just don’t look at things which offend your sensibilities, or grow a spine and deal with the fact that other opinions, tastes and viewpoints exist that either contravene, or simply do not conform to your own. That’s the entire point of free speech.
Your refusal to positively appreciate or entertain the value of something isn’t a valid reason to suppress or censor it. Arbitrary content-based double standards like the one you’re arguing in favor of undermine and trivialize the grand and robust concept of free speech and expression.
The freedom of speech does not tolerate such arbitrary content-based discrimination. Either it’s all okay, or none of it’s okay (within reason).
Also, the double-standard for sex is still not justified, as the demand for videos depicting torture of any kind will still be there whether or not sex is depicted.
See above. The good image of women and children is not threatened by the allowance of speech that is immodest, indecent, or otherwise “obscene” towards women and children as mere concepts.
We already prohibit pornography made with actual children. We don’t need anything more.
