Would you like to see, or should others be allowed to watch, full-colour, full-motion video of children having sex with each other, with adults or with animals?
Until recently, this would have been an easy question to answer. But in an age where we can produce near-perfect digital versions of real-life events, without the slightest involvement of real people, it is far less so. If these videos or photos were created by some talented animator in his home studio, and distributed to consenting adults, who is getting hurt?
Most of us can agree, without too much argument, that real child pornography is unacceptable, and should remain a criminal offence. An offence to consume and, especially, an offence to produce and distribute.
The reasons for this are so obvious they do not seem worth stating. However, since they are germane to a later discussion, let’s list them here:
1. Since it requires children to produce, it contravenes our generally held belief and ethic that says a child should not engage in sexual acts.
2. In general, we can assume that in order to create child porn, an act of child sexual abuse has taken place, both by definition and in that children would presumably need to be forced, or at least manipulated, into engaging in a sexual act.
3. As a society, we generally regard adults engaging in sexual acts with children as repulsive and — at our most generous — mentally ill. As such, paedophilia is both a crime and a psychological disorder.
4. Although not needed once the above three are stated, the fourth reason is that the distribution and consumption of child porn encourages and legitimates the practices therein, and allows for at least visual sexual gratification of those with a taste for this kind of pornography, which as a society we also want to outlaw.
The relevant legal Acts would state this differently, but I’d guess this is the heart of it.
And it’s hard to imagine any time when we will want to change our views on this. While there may be a small minority of people in every society who do not (even cannot) see the problem, or who argue that children are being wrongly protected from early sexual behaviour, they are the same kind of distasteful minority who may want to legalise rape or wife beating. They should be ignored and probably locked up.
However, what about “virtual child porn”? Here, the first three reasons disappear. No child is involved, so no harm is being done to any child. Only the fourth reason, the distaste we have for imagery of this sort, remains. Presumably one would have to make an argument similar to that of hate speech to curb the freedom of expression that seems to underpin the right to consume this kind of stuff.
As it turns out, in 2002, the US Supreme Court struck down a law banning the distribution of exactly this kind of “virtual child porn”, saying the law was too restrictive and in effect banned “artistic” work that dealt with the subject of child pornography. At the time, the late conservative Chief Justice William Rehnquist dissented and said “the computer-generated images are virtually indistinguishable from real children”.
In South Africa, this kind of issue has never really been tested in a court. However, according a lawyer friend of mine, Vanessa Jacklin of BKM Attorneys, the courts in South Africa tend to interpret the Child Protection Act widely to protect the rights and dignity of children. The Film and Publications Act prevents “visual presentations” of children under the age of 18 engaging in sex. But what if they aren’t children? What if they’re just computer images having sex? The controversial Film and Publications Amendment Bill, which hasn’t yet passed through Parliament, apparently has an even broader definition and, according to William Bird, director of the Media Monitoring Project, would definitely prohibit such material, real child or not.
But thinking this through raises a lot of questions. Try some of these on for size:
I’m not taking a firm position on this stuff because the idea of a society crawling with this kind of material scares me. It scares me because I don’t know what the effect of allowing people to indulge the darkest parts of their souls will mean, and where exactly the ethical line is.
However, I will say this: when people can be arrested for making certain kinds of pictures on their computers and sharing them with their friends, I think we’ll have made a mistake. This is not unlike declaring the picture of the Prophet Muhammad so holy that its existence is an offence. Or is it?
And who will the moral guardians be anyway? A lot of private sexual practices are distasteful to others, but we agree as long as there are consenting adults involved, they should be allowed to do what they will. So without someone, anyone, being harmed, what line is being crossed?
And I will also say this: we already in this world I have described here. Maybe the technology isn’t quite there, and one can still tell animation from reality. But have a look at the graphics in a game like Crysis; or the CGI in recent movies from The Lord of the Rings to 300, and you’ll see that it’s a stone’s throw from today. This stuff is coming, and it seems important that we know how to react when it does.
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