It should’ve been out already but I got my bag nicked and the notes were inside so I’ve had to do it again.

I do wish you would get cracking with this article. You mentioned it ages ago during the LP high/low culture threads. I think you’ll write a cracker and we’ll all be able to have a great discussion without the Stalinist jackboots of The Luvvies interfering!

1. Studies need to be done on whether viewing any sort of pornography depicting children leads to harm (acting out of fantasies, etc).

2. Drawing clearer lines on what sort of pornography is and isn’t legal. What of the mass of ‘barely legal’ sites on the intertubes featuring models that happen to look 14 but could be as old as 20?

Broadly speaking, my presumption is in favour of liberty. This is partly because prohibition in cases of self-harming activity – drugs, alcohol, porn etc – is futile, wastes police and court time and often makes the problem worse (eg organised crime). As my partner often says, it would be so much easier if prohibition in Aboriginal communities could be enforced, but it can’t, so we have to come up with other methods (my partner is Aboriginal).

When it comes to porn of whatever sort, the key issue is harm to others, not harm to the consumer of porn.

Steve: I’m a big fan of bright lines too (’simple rules for a complex world’ or ‘95% is good enough’), but the original Henson situation is more complicated than that. If drawing a bright line means that no-one can ever take pics of nude kids, then I think we need to reconsider the line.

My main irritation with Art Monthly is the deliberate ‘transgression game’ they’re playing with Rudd and the taxpayer. I don’t think the picture itself matters a crap (although I do find the upper-class/elitist sense of entitlement both the girl and her father evince to be a pain in the arse – it’s stuff like this that led to Keating and the ‘arts-luvvies’ getting crucified at the polls in 1996).

Once again, if you reject individual rights, reason and logic, as the Art Monthly’s supporters undoubtedly do, then there are no moral grounds on which to object to the hypothetical I have described above.

There are of course HYPOCRITICAL grounds on which to object, and which would unquestionably form the ENTIRE basis of the Art Monthly’s supporters’ likely objection to my photo idea – clearly, the people we are dealing with here believe that law, and what is legal and illegal, should be COMPLETELY subjected to the feelings, private tastes and emotional whims of themselves and whoever their allies of convenience may be. This can explain why they would endorse the banning of the Danish Cartoons, in order to placate the FEELINGS of Muslims.

That is to say, their position is essentially “I don’t like X, therefore X should be banned; but I do like Y, therefore Y should be allowed”. This is the basic mentality and reasoning of an Oriental tyrant, a savage, and/or a megalomaniac. There should be no place for such primitive “logic” in any public forum.

However, I imagine in the not especially distant future (possibly even right now), it should be possible to make digital kids that look as real as real ones. Where are the lines here?

The common thread here is a belief in collectivism, that is to say, socialism, which exists in complete opposition to the Axiom of Non-Aggression, and in fact advocates the opposite – unlimited violations of individual rights – to the logical end of endorsing slavery, violence and theocracy. There is no reason to oppose the seizure of another person for one’s own arbitrary ends UNLESS one has a principled aversion to aggression in every form. This includes defending children from the self-serving manipulations of predatory adults, and defending real artists – and genuinely progressive opponents of fascism and theocracy – from having their throats slashed by rabid Muslim street-nazis (holding up signs inciting murderous violence against anyone who disagrees with them).

Just as the elements cited by John Greenfield hold no genuine objection to forcing children (once again, there is no reason to believe that children can meaningfully consent to such highly controversial behaviour) to appear nude in public, in the same way, they also cannot with any enthusiasm oppose forcing secular newspapers to shut down their operations due to explicit threats of violence by reactionary, theo-fascist savages. It’s the same dislike of individual inviolability and private property that leads the “progressive Left” to endorse or otherwise lend objective support to BOTH unlimited sexual license, even if involuntary, AND religious fanaticism that would otherwise preclude the former.