Yesterday, the Supreme Court struck down a law prohibiting sexually explicit material that appears to involve minors or conveys the impression that minor was involved in its creation. The law was aimed at preventing computer-generated pornography that contains no actual children but is altered to appear as though it does.
Several other forms of legitimate art could have been affected by the law, such as the films like "Traffic" or "Lolita." The court ruled that it "also prohibits speech having serious redeeming value, proscribing the visual depiction of an idea - that of teen-agers engaging in sexual activity - that is a fact of modern society and has been a theme in art and literature for centuries."
The court's ruling is designed to protect the rights of artists against the intrusion of a Congress interested in curbing the spread of child pornography. The original justification for the ban on computer-altered images was with the intent of halting pornographers who exploit children.
The problem with the law was that it put restrictions on people who have nothing to do with the serious and growing problem of child pornography. As is often the case, Congress believed it could solve a major societal problem simply by passing another law.
Child pornography already is covered by several federal statutes, and its creation is prosecutable anywhere in the United States. There should be no reduction of effort in rooting out the unethical photographers who take advantage of children. At the same time, many depictions of sexual activity by young people, while perhaps not considered tasteful, are rightfully protected by the First Amendment.
In fact, art is one of a free society's best forms of communication. As long as it doesn't hurt children directly, such depictions can help bring attention to the cause of eradicating this societal scourge.
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Furthermore, the government should only do so much to try changing the preferences of the American people. The purpose of the government is to protect our freedoms and keep us safe, not to impose social norms or engage in societal engineering.
An excellent example of the reason why freedom of artistic expression is crucial to the ability of Americans to understand and react to their world is the film "Traffic." Its depiction of the grimy underbelly of the War on Drugs was meant to illicit a strong reaction from its audience. Passing laws that would place a blindfold over the public's eyes when it comes to such movies does nothing to help the real problem.
This is the crux of the problem; the ostrich syndrome practiced daily by average people and supported by the government in the name of "decency." The world is a nasty place, and most people don't want to know about it. News agencies are often afraid to show the really grisly stuff, fearing a backlash from those who prefer to live in comfortable ignorance.
Ever notice how when a really horrible murder takes place, the newspaper never prints a picture of the crime scene. The pictures do exist; crime scene investigators take dozens or hundreds of pictures of every murder scene for their investigation. Of course, nobody really wants to look at the pulped and bloody faces with gaping bullet holes in them over a bowl of morning cornflakes. It's easier to read the carefully neutral language the reporter uses and pretend it's no different from reading the sports scores on the next page.
How is anything going to be done about the atrocities going on in our backyards, much less the rest of the world, when it's so easy to look away from it? Why should anyone get riled up over charts of statistics that have no connection in their mind to physical reality?
As the court said in its majority opinion, children having sex is a reality. Pedophiles exploiting children is a reality. Banning pictures of it won't make it go away. Passing more laws against it won't make it stop.
Maybe if we stopped working so hard to bury our heads in the sand, we could work harder at facing the real problems in our society and get something meaningful done about them.
by Craig A. Butler
Daily Lobo Columnist
