Boy, talk about Miss Prissy Panties deciding for everyone what we and they can handle! The notion that somebody can arbitrarily set a standard and impose by popular (read, dumbass masses) opinion some opaque and immeasurable standard (I can’t define pornography, but I know it when I see it), is one of the most sickeningly UNjust, flatulently boorish and downright bullying proposals this author has EVER heard!
And, the idea that a KID can be punished as a predator of KIDS is the most bassackwards, arrogant, unjust, unnecessary, vitriolic, irrational, cruel (but I’m afraid less and less unusual!) abuse of power and authority (and the best arguement that it is undeserved and YES – THEREFORE! – invalid) is likewise peeing-your-pants laughable but for the devastating consequences it can have on a most ironically too-young-to-know-better-but old-enough-to-destroy population, as well as a bone-chilling implication for the prognosis of justice and decency for America and humanity alike.
What a Catch-22! What a disgrace! The diminutive intellects that conceived of this legislation (or “discussion”, depending on where on the red-blue continuum your state falls) have the gall to argue that, essentially, “it’s for your own good, dear” that your record be permanentaly blemished, and very seriously likely your reputation, career and legal (and thus financial and social) trajectories – your LIFE – is essentially RUINED because of the age you were when you decided to make the very youthfully impulsive misjudgment to share revealing photos and depictions OF YOUR OWN BODY!
Read that again. It’s their own body! It’s their own autonomous self and will! Funny how this bodily autonomy is a claim to moral justification in some circumstances, and convenient dismissed here. The only thing the two have in common is a contempt and hatred for children and childhood.
This idea that one segment of the population can govern, prosecute, and punish – with blood-curtling consequences – a mutually exclusive “other” segment of the population, when those same-said claimed privileges cannot be claimed likewise by that “other” population – and because of THE defining attribute of that population (their age) – is tyranny, as observed by none other than Patrick Henry himself (and, of course, many of his peers – then and now, yours truly proudly included).
You CANNOT set rules for one set of the population that don’t hold true for yourself. You may say that it is consistent – that there is no double standard. Oh, really? Can an adult, whether it is tasteful or advisable or not, legally transmit an image of him/herself to one of his/her contemporaries?
Yes.
So, to suggest that another class of citizens (ie, the young) does not have the same right of the ultimately literal expression of….um…SELF…(that is, his/her very own body) is, aside from being a breach of one of the most vital bedrocks of democratic ideolgy and jurisprudence – and in America, anchored in our government, culture, and very identity by order of THE law of the land: our Constitution; and fittingly, that it be the FIRST principle addressed in this miracle of self-determination come to life in this country’s first and most important draft of OUR own selves as a people – is an insult, a hypocrisy, and tragic injustice.
Should it become a crime for one segment of the population to express themselves in a way that another segment of the population can do freely and legally?
No! Hell no, and absolutely not. It is a most contrived and hostile “nudge, nudge, wink, wink” to say that RUINING a person’s life for making a decision about his own autonomy (that would be enjoyed only after reaching some randomly imposed age anyway!) belies any and all notions of “the greater good” and especially that “it’s for the children”.
It’s not just a lie. It’s a damned lie. It is cruel. It is arrogant. It is a double standard and an affront to integrity of all people. Anyone who has the power to wreak such havoc revokes, by doing so, any authority (moral or otherwise) to affect any decision, rule or precedent they would have the gall to claim.
This proposed legislation, no matter its stage of development or procedural status, needs to be lambasted, ridiculed, shot down, and laughed – angrily and bitterly laughed – right out of town, out of this land, and as far as this author is concerned, blown to gory smithereens right off the face of existence.