Droopy, you again have no idea what you're talking about. The Ashcroft decision was based on the fact that NO REAL CHILDREN WERE BEING EXPLOITED.
Pornographic magazines depicting sexual acts in the form of drawn pictures or digital graphics are still pornography, and still exploiting human sexuality. Material depicting children as objects of adult sexual desires are still exploiting children because they are artistic analogs to the actual exploitation, and hence, they're purpose is to incite the consumption of further material.
If you knew anything about sexual addiction, you would know that enough is never enough, and abstraction never stays at the level of abstraction.
I have represented victims of child sex abuse in court, Droopy. The only thing you're doing is proving that you are simply parroting what you heard on talk radio and Hannity. The statute in Ashcroft was held to be over-broad and unconstitutional because it was seeking to protect child victims WHO DID NOT EXIST BECAUSE REAL CHILDREN WERE NOT BEING EXPLOITED.
So a cartoon, let's say, depicting sexual acts between adults and children, is not exploitative of children.
This standard would seem to imply that "exploitation", to be such, must involve actual individual exploitees. But to exploit something such as human sexuality, it would seem that I need do nothing more than present it. In the presentation resides the exploitation, and the child pornography industry was not built upon, nor is it maintained by, artistic or digital imagery. This is nothing more than another "niche" in the sex business, and a part of a systemic organism.
And does not pornography
per se exploit, not only its participants, but the concept around which its participants are congregating...human sexuality and its prurient disply as entertainment, as well as all who view it by making them voyeurs?
Would this be debates like when you said that "life, liberty, and property" is a phrase from the Declaration of Independence, and not the Constitution?
I don't believe I ever stated that these words as stated exist in either document.
You mean "child porn" THAT DOESN'T INVOLVE ANY REAL CHILDREN? Why don't you quote for us the precise language in Ashcroft that said real sexual exploitation of real children is protected speech? I haven't found it, and neither has anyone else. But who needs to read the actual decision when you can just regurgitate whatever you read on The Drudge Report?
The crux of the matter is that pornography
qua pornography is not speech, and has no relevance to the first amendment at all.
Yes, if I think other people should have the right to make their own decisions, it necessarily means that I agree with whatever those decisions are.
Freedom just isn't the simple, dualistic either/or concept of dogmatic libertarian thought. Freedom is not an ultimate principle of social organization; it must be mediated, governed and conditioned by other principles and priorities. Hence, we must ask the question, "free to make what decisions, under what circumstances, in what context, and in relation to and in tension with what other aspects of the social order?"
And of course your talk radio assumptions about what Ashcroft held are still there. "Freedom" means the right to make choices that the government thinks are moral.
That' s the leftist standard, not the conservative. You are confusing the need for ordered liberty with naked repression - a standard mental set among militant secularists.
And everyone agrees with Bork's ideas about the Constitution, don't they?
Bork is
right, about this aspect of it, so I could really care less who concurs.
Art and literature also are "simply visual imagery the creates/incites emotional, psychological and physiological responses." Art and literature must not be "speech," either.
Well, literature is quite obviously speech, isn't it? "Art", if by this you mean the plastic and visual arts, are not speech per se, but do imply speech through the ideations and perceptual states they create. We talk about art, we criticize it, philosophize about it, and rate in relation to other art. The art itself, however, is not speech.
I think a good argument could be made that art with political overtones or connotations should never be censored by the central government precisely because of the speech implied in the visual representation.
Pornography, however, has no intellectual content in this sense. It is
political speech, above all, that the 1st amendment was created to protect.
Barely Legal is not strictly protected speech under the 1st amendment for the simple reason that it, and all material like it...have nothing to say.
This would be yet another 10th amendment issue, were it not for the uniquely socially destructive effects of pornography. Pornography, whatever else it is, is a menace to civil society, and local governments and states, through elected, accountable bodies, have the right to control its availability and use.
But you are clearly right. If I don't think the government gets to legislate morality, I am of course amoral. It could not possibly be the case that the government should try to enforce some kind of cohesive social order, and private moral choices are not the government's business.
Again, for Mr. Crusoe, you certainly have a point. For a large, complex society, however, a deep philosophical problem arises as just to what the nature of the demarcation line between "private" behavior and public effects, and how it is to be negotiated in a free
and civil social order.
So much for art and literature, I guess. I wonder if the idea that in a free society, some people are going to make choices you don't like is too subtle for the AM radio crowd. I guess so.
Art and literature, like marriage, is not, broadly speaking, within the scope of the 1st amendment, and hence, in the 10th amendment sense, is free to do as it wills. When it becomes a menace to civil society, however (through, like pornography, its ability to destroy healthy relationships between men and woman and subvert marriage, family, and the civilizing responsibilities of home life), the people have the right to control and condition it, on a case by case basis on the state and local levels.
We still seem to have that problem of allowing other people freedom means you condone what they do about it. If I think people should be free to speak out in favor of Nazism, then that makes me a Nazi.
There's no confusion at all, only philosophical sloppiness on your part. I think people should be free to support Nazism. That does not make me a Nazi.
If, however, I support the production and distribution of child pornography, while that does not make me a child pornographer, it does mean, by definition, that I support the production and distribution of child pornography. I could say "I don't believe in it", but it would not be logically possible to claim that I did not support its production and distribution.
Your analogy here is a bit rubbery. One's support for the freedom to be a Nazi is not quite the same as one's support for the freedom to produce and distribute child pornography.
Nazism is an ideology; it is a philosophy, a political program, and a worldview.
Pornography is imagery intended to incite and stimulate passions, feelings and emotions. It is not speech, but
ideation, and ideation per se is opaque to the constitution.
Tell us, Droopy, would these high moral notions be imputed to the Founders who purchased and sold other human beings as chattel, or would this merely be based on the faith in the Bible and the divinity of Jesus Christ and traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs about God held by America's Founders----like, say, James Madison? Or Thomas Jefferson?
Slavery, at that time, was an institution, thousands of years old, to which was attached no moral stigma. It has been practiced by virtually all peoples throughout history in some form.
Pornography, up until the early seventies, had always existed on the fringes, or underbelly of society, and had to be "domesticated" by sheer saturation of the culture with it before it became "mainstream".
This is not, obviously, a defense of slavery, but only to show that the moral equivalence you are drawing is strained. The Founders wouldn't have approved of pornography then any more than we approve of slavery now, and, indeed, their moral framework resulted in the overthrowing of the entire concept of human beings being bought and sold as property.
It was they who initiated the theory and practice of liberty and left the
Ancien Régime behind.
The irony here is that pornography is a deep and decisive threat to freedom, both personal and societal.
In what way is defending someone's right to view pornography the same as philosophically supporting it?
I'm not sure there is a "right" to view pornography any more than a "right" to eat tuna fish. To a modern lawyer's mind, it would appear that everything must fall somewhere within the perimeters of some law, rule or regulation.
Everything must lie within the constitution somewhere, or either it does not exist or it must be defended as a right regardless of its consequences upon the larger culture.
At this point, I'm not at all sure that the concept "lawyer" and "liberty" can be defended from the charge of self contradiction.
A reasonable person who isn't a Hannity zombie realizes that these things are not the same at all. What Droopy really means is that "freedom" under the Constitution means that the government should impose Droopy's personal value judgments on the entire citizenry of the United States.
Still not willing to move beyond simplistic libertarian platitudes. Too bad. Real philosophical discussion is a rare bird these days.