OT: You Might Be An Idiot If

[Saber Cherry]

Did I ever say kiddie porn was victimless? It's not. The illegal drug industry is also not victimless. In either case, there are lots of evil people that have revoked their right to be considered human.

But also, in each case, there are end-user addicts who are not hurting anyone, don't necessarily want to hurt anyone, and pose no danger to society. Crack is filthy, and child porn is filthy... in my opinion. But I don't see how society is helped by tossing people in jail for being addicted to one or the other. If everyone with an abnormal tendancy was tossed in jail, there wouldn't be anyone left to work.

Of course, crack can be dangerous to other people, so people in important places (military, police, medical, pilot/driver, and so forth) should be thrown in jail for using it - because they ARE a threat to society. But jail is a place for reform, and if someone likes kiddie porn, tossing him into jail isn't going to change that. Unless there is some reason to believe that they actually PRODUCE said porn, or have a realistic chance of attempting to abuse an actual child, there's no justification for jailing them. You just get into a Big Brother situation, saying, "Ok, Bob has a collection of naked cupids that look like naked children, but have wings. He's OK. Joe cut the wings off his collection of naked cupids, so they are no longer cute and Christian, so he's a disgusting pedophile and goes to jail for 125 years. Dan read a book that contains explicit child abuse, but it's a national bestseller, so that's OK. Pete is writing a book that contains explicit child abuse, and we find that it is not of national-bestseller quality, so into the slammer with him." And so forth. See what I'm getting at? Just because there are crimes and victims, doesn't mean that everyone associated with a concept should go to jail.

-Cherry

Edit:

Ok, I changed my mind a little. I guess anyone who collects and enjoys looking at child porn is a danger to society. I certainly would not want to live near somebody like that. But I like the idea of a thought police even less. People's thoughts, interests, and activites should be private until they start hurting others. It would be nice to live in a society where future sex criminals could be identified at birth and destroyed, but that's not possible. So we have to choose one of 3 things.

1) Jail people who commit real crimes.
2) Have the thought police jail people who do suspicious things like collect child porn, which indicate that they might commit a real crime in the future, just because they MIGHT commit a real crime.
3) Label activites like collecting child porn as crimes, just because you find them disgusting, even though the act of collecting and viewing child porn does not actually hurt anyone.

I vote for option 1, because I like a free society, even though we'd all be safer from child molesters with options 2 or 3. Heck, we could execute XYY males at birth because they're 10X as likely as XY males to commit felonies, but I don't see any of you cheering for that.

[ October 16, 2003, 17:37: Message edited by: Saber Cherry ]