Re AC @ 15:50
In my opinion, the British came to a big fork in the road where reality took a left but they hung a sharp right.
They try so hard not to deal with the problem and shun any viable solution.
Take drawings. They're illegal here, which is something I'm vehemently against. (No, I do not condone the banning, criminalization or censorship of victimless speech, thought or expression.)
Esp. since it criminalizes Japanese anime/doujinshi/hentai/manga/visual novels/etc. (Yay for an awesome culture!)
Take lolicons (those who harbor an attraction to young anime characters), lolicons are not pedophiles, in the same way that pedophiles are not child molesters. (Only if they carry out the latter do they become that. Please, people, try learn the difference between this already...)
Real child abuse is _abhorrant_ and illegal for a very good reason. (It has an actual victim.)
But drawings?
"Well these drawings are illegal for a reason!"
Yeah, people like yourself said the same thing about homosexuality sixty plus years ago.
"It corrupts! They'll encourage you to go out and do X!"
You mean like how everybody who plays video games where you can kill people winds up a serial killer?
I mean, murder's a crime, how is say... killing people in Battlefield or whatever is any less abhorrant than actual murder? Shouldn't you be banning those?
Money corrupts as well, shouldn't you ban that? And what about libraries? (Libraries contain books, and books give you knowledge, and knowledge is power, and power corrupts, and corruption is a crime...)
(I actually remember a comment on slashdot a few years back from a girl who had been sexually abused as a child, she said that those who can't tell the difference between a drawing and an actual child are no different from the ones who abuse real children.)
And then there's Paul Beresford MP who wants to make textual depictions of child abuse illegal (so that's Romeo & Juliet and Lolita gone...), which I think is currently being discussed or put through?
Time for a random example:
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Say somebody invented the holodeck from TNG (granted that won't ever happen for the forseeable future), and people use to have sex with holographic children; you'd have the inevitable cries of "THINK OF THE CHILDREN!" from Cameron and the Daily Mail reading ilk, demanding some kind of system put in place to prevent that.
So, what? You'd prefer child molesters go out and abuse actual children? Instead of acting out their fantasies/lust/whatever in a situation where nobody is getting hurt?
I'd prefer that child molesters do that rather than go an harm an actual child.
But no, let's keep on being counterproductive and pretend we actually have the children's safety in mind when we clearly don't.
I don't ever want children, and even if I did, I would never want to raise them in this country.
"Hey, have a good day at school! But don't say this, or think that, or draw this, or do that..."