Hi Squirt, all....
Squirt - my problem with this entire prosectution isn't that the prosecuters are going after published CP per se.... they are prosecuting more than CP. According to this indightment, there are also issues of watersports (I don't really care who pee's on whom), D&S (I've said, "Yes sir may I have another" a few times myself), *********** (Pets are safe around me, but I sort of understand the fantasy....)
The thing is - who gets to decide what is and is not allowable to think about and discuss? Who gets to decide what is literature, and what is not? Where do we draw the line? ONLY on CP? What if the CP in question is about an overdeveloped 14 year old? Are those fantasies OK (as long as no one actually DOES anything?) 12? 16? Or are we to pretend that no one has ever looked at an adolescent and thought - wow?
We live in a society that sexualizes children - where little kids are put on TV in crop tops and lipstick, where 13 year old fashion models are presented as the norm for adult women to aspire to. Frankly - in the realm of actually protecting children, I find commercial advertising that sexualizes kids and normalizes a sexual viewpoint of young girls to be FAR more dangerous.
It was STUPID for Rose to allow underage stuff on her site, and perhaps morally reprehensible - if I were her lawyer I would charge extra. At the same time, I have a serious problem with the prosecution of what amounts to a "thought crime" -
All across America, kids are molested by thier parents (usually step parents). Not in a stupid online story - but in real life. Prosecutions for these very real crimes are extremely rare - beause, for the most part, children are viewed as the property of thier parents. Children are sexualized in the mass media on a regular basis to sell stuff. We have a deep puritanical streak in our culture that tends to result in more children being hurt rather than protected.
I think the prosecution of these thought crimes is a very easy way to pretend action on a very real and difficult problem - while actually protecting not ONE real child. And in the meantime, another chink is put in the wall regarding how far the government can go to regulate what is being discussed - not ONLY CP, but homosexuality, D&S, and other things that the religious right finds "icky"
