Excellent article, Caroline.

I find it strange and a bit too Orwellian that the UK has take this sort of step to regulate what people can look at, find arousing, and utilize for sexual pleasure, or that the feel they can regulate fantasy.

I also find it typical to see people conflagrating child pornography with pornography which is made by adults in a legal industry- where proof of age and consent are regulated pretty heavily.

There is nothing anyone can say that is going to make me think the following is not more than a little off: I, as an adult woman, can make a pornographic image I find to be erotic. I can consent to it, even enjoy it, and see that everyone else involved has consented. I can have legal documentation backing up this fact, I can send it freely to someone in the UK, and they can be arrested merely for looking at it, even though they were not involved in it’s production at all. They can be arrested for it’s possession, on the slim chance it “might” make them harm another human being.

I wonder if the UK has a plan to arrest those in possession of music with violent lyrics, books with violent passages, televisions which show violent and sexually violent shows or movies, art that is violent, video games which are violent, or hey, alcohol (which is a factor in many cases of rape and violence).

At this point, Caroline, people in the UK could be arrested for looking at my blog.

And the idea that women could not or do not find “extreme” pornography erotic? That, simply put, is erroneous.

This mentality of censorship is well-rooted in Australia thanks to a coalition of christians and feminists.

The Holy Bible has the best description of the problem when it says in Jeremiah 17:9 that "the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked...".
What we feed it will live to do actions, one way or the other.
I see pornography as "What kind of world do we want to live in?"
A world with at least some discipline and a lessening of the sex crime rate... or a world where anything goes.
The porn issue is not a complex one.
We ban it and allow civilisation to breath again...or fail to ban it and we live with the crims and the increasing misery they bring to women and children.
I believe we stand right now, today, in 2008 on the very edge of a fall into apocalypto.
I hope wisdom prevails.

G'Day from "Thought Crime Britain" ;-)

It's good to see that news of this ludicrous law has spread to the rest of the world and that others agree that it is completely ridiculous and draconian.

The idea is that, somehow, viewing images of consenting adults engaged in consensual activities will so derange us that we'll go out and commit violent sexual crimes, even though there's absolutely no evidence to back that claim up.

Unfortunately it's depressing to see people like "runner" bringing up the red herring of child pornography when Coutts was not convicted of any such offence.

It's similarly depressing to hear "Les" echoing Liz Longhurst (and Lord Hunt and Mary Whitehouse) that *their* personal tastes should determine what *we* can see. Personally I consider Neighbours to be tosh that should never be broadcast, but I don't say others shouldn't watch it because I don't like it!

BTW, Les, given your exposure to "abhorrent" material at work, how many violent sexual offences have you committed? None? But surely it's so corrosive that you *must* have been influenced by it! Or are *you* a paragon of Moral Virtue, but we "others" cannot be trusted to behave in a sensible and adult way?

Of course if people actually checked facts instead of just spouting what they "believe" (which is as useful in a sensible debate as "I heard from a bloke in the pub") they'd find research like that from Professor Milton Diamond PhD of the University of Hawai'i which studied the increasing availability of pornography in the USA and Japan and concluded:

"It is certainly clear from the data reviewed, and the new data and analysis presented, that a massive increase in available pornography in Japan, the United States and elsewhere has been correlated with a dramatic decrease in sexual crimes"

http://www.hawaii.edu/PCSS/online_artcls/pornography/prngrphy_ovrvw.html

Still, why let the facts get in the way of good old Moral Outrage?

PS RenEV says "I wonder if the UK has a plan to arrest those in possession of [...]", the answer is probably "All in good time" from those who passed this law...

It's true runner. A terrible thing that children are naked underneath the God-given clothes provided for them. Shame on the Sydney artist for turning anyone who saw those images into a pervert!

Although I think there is a more important campaign for you to energetically pursue. Animals. Yes, animals. Much ignored but animals are free, according to pervert secular law, to roam around naked. I saw two dogs the other day in public, engagin in acts which was clearly immoral and unnatural.

I urge you to cast your energies towards a campaign to ensure that animals are clothed in public. It's disgusting that they parade around like they do!

The Bill Henson issue is a completely different matter, it's about minors, and not adult pornography, so I don't know why it is making an appearance here.

For all those who are spitting the dummy about the recent Henson fiasco here in Sydney, I challenge them to the following question:

If you were the parent of a 12 or 13 year old child, would you let nude images of your child (posing in the same manner as the confiscated images) be uploaded onto a web site for the world to see?

Yes or no?

Artists use sensationalism all the time so they can make a buck, and that is what Henson has done. All those images are darkly lit, they're like basic photography 101, and yet, because of the name, they are now equivalent to Picasso? LOL

I'm really interested in the follow up or the investigation into the parental consent issue because the child models weren't Australian, they were from Europe, so it raises another question:

Why didn't Henson use Australian or American child models?