Declan writes:
What's new here? *Possession* of child porn has been illegal for at least a decade. Obscenity prosecutions for writing what people find objectionable have a long history: Joyce, Miller, etc.
The legal basis for criminalizing non-obscene erotic depictions of minors is Ferber, which clearly states that such criminalization is Constitutional only when it is necessary to prevent actual persons under the age of 18 from experiencing the harmful workplace environment associated with porn production. Laws which criminalize synthetic visual depictions of the sexuality of minors, as well as written material, which do not depict actual living persons, are clearly unconstitutional under the standard created by Ferber. It is the hope of the Child Sex Hysterics, whose goal is not to protect minors, but to purge from the continuum all counterexamples to their religiously inspired doctrine on the asexuality of persons under 18, that the Sheeple have now been sufficiently programed to react with horror to all depictions of youthful sexuality. This will place the Supreme Court in the position where fabricating from whole cloth a legal justification for criminalizing all such material will be the only alternative to mass rioting in the streets the next time such a case appears before them. I'd rather just shoot the rioters, and raise the average intelligence in the sheep bin by epsilon. If you can criminalize dirty stories, which depict non-obscene sexuality on the part of fictional characters, then you can criminalize just about anything else, including chemistry and cryptography textbooks, and Tom Clancy novels. -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"