I would like these posters to define pornography and please don't say "You know what it is when you see it"

malingerer: << The funny thing about the latest uproar is society now seems to examine all representations of children through the eyes of the 'paedophile'. >>

I find this to be one of the most interesting aspects of the current brouhaha. While there's certainly a large element of good old fashioned wowserism among the hysterics, others seem to be imagining how the minds of paedophiles work and demanding that the art be banned on that basis.

That is truly bizarre to this art lover.

Fortunately for Bill Henson, and more generally for Australian liberty, the courts are required to apply the actual law to the actual facts rather than bow to public hysteria. A court will determine whether or not Henson's work is pornographic, and I suspect it will conclude that he is no pornographer (that is assuming the police ever get around to laying charges).

No obscenity trial has yet succeeded in Australia. Such trials invariably arise from witch hunts and are a complete distraction from the task of apprehending real child abusers, most of whom do not visit art galleries.

Far more alarming than Henson's photographs is the revelation that so many Australians see a sex object when they look at a child. Clearly, it's the censorious, paedophilic critics in this debate that need to be watched by the police, not the vanishing few who appreciate Henson's fine photography and explorations of reality.

A scholar in Cambridge, now in Philadelphia. Wonder if he’s ever been in Australia to know how ‘hysterical’ we are? And it’s funny how we have always been wowsers, but with Henson, we are “new moralists”.

The author’s Max Harris quote is quite silly – just as silly as people who say the law is an ass. People who lambast laws are invariably those who may be affected by the laws, or who have been affected by the laws. Most of us, who abide by the laws, are quite happy with them and the protection they give us and innocent children (in this case).

This author is a fool; totally out of touch with reality and common decency.

The only thing to be gained from his article is that, in runner’s comment, we see the hypocrisy of these permissive twits

If you think images of naked children are sexual and respond to them in that manner, then you are an admitted pedophile, by definition.