Severin, speaking for myself, I have no desire to watch child pornography and have said so on several occasions. I find your comment both insulting personally and unrepresentative of my views. Please amend it.

Severin:"to be able to watch child pornography such films have to be made. This requires the exploitation and coercion of children."

So you believe that all photography of children involves "exploitation and coercion" of those children? You may be right - my Nanna was very insistent that I should be properly scrubbed and smile "happily" for the camera during those interminable photography sessions that afflicted every event, regardless of my own preference to be off doing stuff that made ME happy. The photos were apparently for her own gratification and to be shared with other similarly child-obsessed women. Funnily, I never thought of Nanna as a pornographer, but now that you've pointed it out, it's obvious...

Severin:"the fact this same was father was accused by his own children of inappropriate behaviour."

Which was only "inapproriate" because he had a conviction for having possessed waht was deemed to be child pornography, including pictures of young girls both dressed and undressed and which the Judge described as at "the lower end" of the CP scale. On the evidence available he didn't have any pictures meeting the definition of CP you provide.

Both of my children have routinely slept in my bed all their lives. As a wilfully childless person, I'm not surprised you fail to understand the innocence and trust implicit in such a course of action. There is nothing "inapproriate" about it except in the dirty minds of wowsers like you and your recently bereft hangers-on.

I'd go further and suggest that most normal parents allow their children to sleep with them, which makes such behaviour not merely "appropriate", but reasonable.

I note that you too, are keen to minimise the real and serious problem of child physical and emotional abuse and neglect, which is overwhelmingly a problem within single mother households, in favour of hysterical beating-up of the much smaller problem of CSA.

Why is that? Don't you think negelected and abused kids deserve our help?

Antiseptic: << Far too much social "research" is of the form "I'd like a result like this, what do I need to do to achieve it". People like Flood and pynchme and CJMorgan then collect that self-serving dross as though it were finest research steel and try to fashion arguments from it, wondering why they keep falling apart. >>

I find your comment both insulting personally and unrepresentative of my views. Please amend it.

P.S. Welcome back Severin :) I've decided to give no more oxygen to rstuart's campaign to legalise child porn - see you on another thread.

CJ Morgan

Agreed. I haven't bothered to read Anti's latest excuses and insults.

I'm back - people's antipathy and biases will not deter me from presenting my honest opinions.

Cheers m'dear.

@benk: The research that you have cited has failed to prove that viewing porn leads to sexual assault of adults.

@benk: Yep, the availability of porn increased at the same time that the incidence of sexual assault decreased.

Your first statement was a odd way of putting it. Neither the research quoted nor I were attempting to prove viewing porn leads to sexual assaults, so we could hardly be said to have failed to do it.

@benk: you claimed that " kiddie porn can partially satisfy a paedophile's urges", leading to less CSA.

I put things as clearly as I can, and it still gets twisted. You asked: "@benk: What is the psychology behind this assertion? What is the mechanism that might make this claim plausible?" So in good faith I attempt to answer your question, but prefix the answer with "Let me put what I am about to say into perspective. I don't consider it much better than a wild arsed guess." And now you claim I was trying to prove it was true!

@benk: You have a fair way to go before you will have proved that one.

Claming I proposed an absolute proof is doubly annoying in this case because it implies I have some fundamental misunderstanding in how science works. There can be no absolute proof.

What I have said over and over again, is the statistics show when the availability of porn rises sex crimes don't. I have provided several examples of where sex crimes dropped while the availability of porn was increasing. You say the Japanese example may not apply to Australia. I doubt this but even if it is true the near static level of sex crimes in Australia during the rise and rise of the availability of porn via internet makes it clear it does apply here.

If you think I haven't made my case it would be helpful if provided counter examples, ie where the increasing availability of porn was matched by increasing sex crimes. No one to date has done that.

@Severin: Nothing has changed, Rstuart and Antiseptic continue to argue the following: Their 'right' to view any type of pornography.

An odd claim, since I personally specifically avoid making claims about absolute rights. I don't believe they exist. The only thing that gives us "rights" is the law, which is a man made construct. I haven't see Anti make any claims about rights either.

What I have said is that:

1. There is no evidence the increasing availability of child porn causes more harms to kids, and

2. Prosecuting fathers and others on the basis of possesing child porn harms kids.

3. Kids aside, perusing child porn with the righteous zeal you show here does cause a lot of unnecessary harm to people and families in our society.

Nowhere is there an argument about "rights" of any sort. You invented that.

@Severin: All the while avoiding the fact that to be able to watch child pornography such films have to be made. This requires the exploitation and coercion of children.

You turn me into a bloody record, answering this same nonsense over and over again. Obviously reality television features people committing crimes of all sort. Obviously they make money out of this, and so obviously this means the TV is exploiting the pain of victims to make money. Lets an it all!