Ok,here goes my 2 pence/cents/sou etc.
 
Now, I have just become a father.  I am no teenager.  It(she) is my first baby.  I am 56 years old.  I am also a Paneite.
I will begin with your quote, pasted below:
 
"Perhaps we might be able to agree that child porn requires the abuse of
minors, since we don't consider them able to give consent to take part
in the creation of the pornography.  I don't know if everyone agrees,
but isn't child porn the product of child abuse?"
 
Now, child abuse, porn etc. are highly emotive subjects, not unlike capital punishment, abortion, serial killers, and human beings.
 
Since we don't consider (children) able to give consent to take part....blah blah blah...this requires the abuse of minors.
 
As a new parent, I have noticed that my baby (5 weeks old and 3 days)  is not able to give consent on ANYTHING whatsoever.  You are therefore suggesting that everything I do as a parent is child abuse.  Your argument is fatally flawed in total.  I'm sorry , but looking at that (your ) statement objectively and fairly, you have said a very stupid thing indeed.  Child porn may OR MAY NOT be the product of child abuse.  Would you condemn everyone without the evidence?  Nothing is ever black and white.  A few years back,  parents were arrested because they had taken and developed photographs of their own children.  Is (was) this child abuse?  Perhaps they were going to sell them on the street.  Perhaps they were going to publish them in a child porn magazine or a child porn website.  Or, just perhaps, they might have had a healthy loving attitude to human beings, children, the human physical form as naked and/or nude.  I suggest your reading material might include Kenneth Clark's (Not his waywardly stupid tory son) "the Nude".
 
Like anything else in life, nothing has caused me to behave against my nature.  I have seen pornography.  I have seen US news footage of people being killed in Vietnam on TV.  I have seen most of the WWII footage and am aware of much of man's inhumanity to man.  As a matter of fact, I have painted and photographed human beings in many different situations.  Some or many or most people might even accuse me of being a pornographer.  Beauty (or porn) is in the eye of the beholder.  I have known personally pornographers.  I have also known the Archbishop of Canterbury.  I am an adult.  I have had the best parents one could ever wish for.  I am proud and humble to know that I am not a Milosovic, a Saddam, a Ghaddaffi Duck, Margaret Thatcher or a Hitler or Nixon or Stalin or a murderer like jnr. (Bush).  I am grown up enough to make up my own mind about what I see, experience, do.  As I would no one to tell me what to do, I would tell no one what to do.  Freedom brings a great responsibility.  Do unto others as you would others do unto you.  This is a golden rule.  Yes, it only works for sane people. The psychopath will only take, therefore it does not work with him/her.  But that is society's problem.  The answer lies in giving teachers proper respect and proper money in return for creating a good society in the future.  But we, and no government is willing to do exactly that.  Until then, people like you will rant against child porn.  Sex is good.  Love is good.  Anything is good as long as there is true love involved.  End of story.  It is said and determined that Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ, was 13 years old when the Son of God was born.  Did the Holy Spirit rape Mary and break the law by getting an under-age girl pregnant?  Other religions do not accept Jesus to be the son of any god, but just an arab scratching out a livlihood in the desert.
 
I am happy that my whatever URL is seen by the world and that somewhere on it lurks some child porn.  I live in the world.  I feel uncomfortable that there are members of my species, homo sapiens, who do unspeakable things to each other.  I am ashamed to be human.  It is very sad that our species is extinct.  But it is no tragedy to be extinct.  I rejoice.  I rejoice because Mother Nature or evolution, whatever you want to call it, Life is indestructable.  Because we failed species can not destroy life, I rejoice.  Because life and evolution is all-powerful, human beings are not allowed to succeed because if we did survive, we would eventually destroy life and the universe.  Child porn exists, just like AIDS and CANCER and everything else that's bad.  Goodness exists also, even though it gets a very bad press.  The tabloids try to stamp out goodness, but they will fail at that, too.  If someone wants to look at child porn I say that he or she or it is free to do so.  I don't have to look at it.  My baby does not have to look at it.  She will see porn one day. She will read/see the news one day.  She will experience society one day.  She will go through some sort of institutional "education" one day.  What I do not want her to experience is censorship and ignorance.  I am adult and mature enough to say "Yes!" to life.  I accept it warts and all. 
 
Elephant Ivory is part of every good decent piano.  Since I'm a new father, here's a very old nursery rhyme that I only read today.  My mother never recited it to me when I was young.  It's from   "The Baby's Opera" and illustrated by none other than Walter Crane.  For over 100 years these rhymes in this publication was printed, sold and distributed in the USA as well as the UK. This one rhyme is called "Mrs Bond".  It goes like this:
 
"Oh, what have you got for dinner, Mrs. Bond?" 'There's beef in the larder, and ducks in the pond;" "Dilly, dilly, dilly, dilly, come to be killed, For you must be stuffed, and my customers filled"
2. "John Ostler, go fetch me a duckling or two;
John Ostler go fetch me a duckling or two;
Cry dilly, dilly, dilly, dilly, come and be killed,
For you must be stuffed, and my customers filled!"
3. "I have been to the ducks that are swimming in the pond,
And they won't come to be killed, Mrs. Bond;
I cried dilly, dilly, dilly, dilly, come and be killed,
For you must be stuffed, and the customers filled!"
Mrs. Bond she went down to the pond in a rage,
With plenty of onions, and plenty of sage;
She cried, "Come, little wag-tails, come, and be killed.
For you shall be stuffed, and my customers filled!"
 
That's where the baby's rhyme ends.  You go figger out what happened to the ducks.  And the customers.  You have to break eggs to make an omelette.  Nothing is for free.  No one ever asked to be born.  The world, life, universe is what it is.  I love ducks.  I cry to see them killed.  I cried when I shot them.  I thanked them when I ate them.  I love ducks.  It is a hard fact of life.  If human beings make ducks extinct, so be it.  Humans are stupid.  If human beings make elephants extinct, so be it. Humans are stupid.  Blame the teacher.  The teacher has no respect and no proper pay for the work he/she/it does.  Child porn is the least of humans problems.
300 million people living in the richest , most powerful nation in history have turned their backs on the Kyoto agreement and the saving of the planet.  What's a little child porn in comparison to that crime?  For that matter, what's a LOT of child porn in comparison to that crime?
 
I am a visual artist.  I am also a musician.  I hold in my creative juices and hands, the responsibility of the leadership of humanity.  I object to your suggestion of denying the visual.  You throw the baby out with the bath water.  Ugly is as ugly does. Did you know that male babies ejaculate inside the womb before they are born?  Perhaps, one might think that all males are perverts?  Some people certainly do! 
 
No! Never!  I will fight to the death the right of anyone, especially pornographers, to express whatever they can dream up.  That goes for neo-nazis as much as Margaret Thatcher, jnr. , A. Hitler, S. Hussein, Milosovic, Stalin, Tony, or any other shit you care to name.
 
"...I am presuming that we are
in agreement that we don't want to support them."
 
NO. A THOUSAND TIMES NO.  We are not in agreement.
 
Yours in Thomas Paine,
Sincerely,
Stephen Bennett




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