POV: Dan, Dakota, and Morality

[Steve]

--- In HPFGU-Movie at yahoogroups.com, "susanbones2003" <rkdas at ...> wrote:
> > 
> > bboyminn:
> > 
> > ...
> > 
> > ... For example, in our zeal to protect children we 
> > frequently go to extremes. I can think of once case 
> > where a guy was prosecuted for video taping a child's 
> > birthday party, but because the video tape tended to 
> > show all the children photographed from the neck 
> > down, they we sure he was thinking dirty thoughts. ...
> > shows how extreme things can get here. 
> > 
> 
> Jen interjects:
> Steve, ... you sound like you are poo-pooing ... child 
> pornography which exists in spades here and most 
> westernized countries. Please don't confuse the current 
> vogue of blaming everything wrong with America on 
> "fundamentalists and fanactics" with the dedicated people 
> working to end the heart-breaking crime of child pornography.
> 
> ...

bboyminn:

I'll try and keep it short, since we are straying off topic. Although,
'keeping it short' is part of the problem. The very point I was making
is that this person was prosecuted in Federal Court for something that
wasn't even remotely close to 'child pornography'. These children were
at a normal birthday party, all fully clothed, all doing normal kid
birthday party things, all under the supervision of their parents. 

But, since he photographed them from the neck down, others thought
that implied that he was thinking 'dirty' thoughts. So, the problem
here wasn't the actual video, it was that someone else thought this
guy was thinking bad things, and they were determined to prosecute and
pursecute him for it. 

Plus, in reality, it's not just hyper-rationalized fundamentalists but
hyper-rationalized liberals too. How did this case even make it into
the court system? Why is the Federal Government wasting their time
being the 'thought police', when real dangerous explotative and
generally unconscionable child pornographers are out there running free?

This man's life was destroyed for what someone else thought he might
be thinking; not for his actions but for someone's preception of his
thoughts. As a society we simply can not allow that to happen.

On the subject of real child pornography, that simply can not be
allowed. Children are defenseless, they count on adults to guide them
through life, to tell them what is right and wrong. When adults
exploit that emotional and intellectual vulnerability, they do great
immeasurable harm to those children. So, I am absolutely against REAL
child pornography. 

But, my central point was that what this man did could not by any
stretch of the imagination be considered child pornography, and my
further point was that it seems unlikely that this kind of irratoinal
travesty could occur in liberal Europe. Yet, here in America, the
unlikely and irrational (as exampled by many other cases) did occur. 

So, on the issue of real child pornography, I'm with you 100%.

Steve/bboyminn