"UNCRC I just read the Telegraph story. The judge convicted the tutor, but in a way which said he essentially wasn't guilty - sentenced to 150 hours of community work. In sentencing he said that there was no improper motive in taking the photographs, and that they had been taken at the invitation of the children's parents.

I think that it is extraordinary that a civilised country would have such draconian legislation and that anyone could support it."

The only draconian points you need to get your head around is that if Bill Henson does it in London, he is going to jail, and he is staying in jail because he is a child pornographer, and that if you can't sell it in London, it isn't art.

That's a real world analysis. Some of the galleries in Croggon's letter have banned Henson's child porn material. Henson is a sick puppy, the sooner he is arrested the better, and he will be arrested somewhere, he can't hide in Oz forever.

"I'd be surprise if what you are saying is right. Australia has the some of the strictest rules in the Western world concerning child nudity, and our censorship authority (OFLC) has given the OK to Bill Henson. Check their website:"

I live in the UK, Bill Henson's mterial is child pornography and banned here. It is illegal to sell his kiddie fetish material.

Australia has ( by our standard) remarkably lax laws on child pornography as does Japan. Both countries have problems.

Bill Henson has been a major police prob for years, he is smart enough to hang out in cpountries which allow child pornography.

He'll be clocked like Gary Glitter eventually. It is only a matter of time before Bill Henson is put in jail. Henson is promoting child pornography, he is a pedophile icon.

"We live in a nation of equal individuals, with a respect for the rights of others but with no one subservient"

This appears to be your fundamental error. The community DOES retain transcendent rights and priority over the individual.

UNCRC really tells it like it is: embarrassing, because Oz truly does have a problem on this. It's a result of the old “cultural cringe”, trying desperately to say “yes, we do get ART”, as well as the status anxiety of many who have got rich from nothing but a speculative casino economy; such people feel a desperate need to say “we have CLASS too! Look at our art stuff” (like that useless ponce Malcolm Turnbull announcing proudly in parliament that he has Henson photos in his collection).

I don't normally re-send previous comment – too much like spam. But there was a clear precedent for such repetition earlier on this thread. This following challenge too was unmet, just like my questions on “pedo art principle” and hard core kiddie smut:

“...imagine the response and comparison if I had made “art” from Hensonized photography of say Halle Berry or Erika Heynatz. Would anyone have been upset when people stated the obvious by saying that my work fell within acceptable limits of mature and legalized “soft core porn”? And on aesthetic grounds, would anyone dare bleat to oppose the label “soft porn” for my kitsch art, or defend self-righteously by conjuring notions of what it could hardly be i.e., a supposedly “empathetic, non-sexualized, non-exploitative, non-pornographic” oeuvre of “true, high ART”?

So IamJoseph: I mean by the above point that, rather than trying to debate Hensonites on principle and theory (futile with libertarian relativists and their sophist methods), it can be far more effective to actually demonstrate the absurdity of their claims. Of course, whether those claims are from cynical, covert pedophiles or from pretentious, status-anxious parasites is a separate matter for consideration.

IamJoseph “This appears to be your fundamental error. The community DOES retain transcendent rights and priority over the individual”

Really?

I do not see you as the arbiter of the “communities transcendent rights or priorities”

I see nothing in your posts which are held as a “foundation of community value” or even an embellishment on community value, just the reposts of the impotent.

Otherwise people like me would have been burnt as heretics or butchered by the moralists inquisition.

Seems to me, like I said before, the values of -

“a person constrained by dogma and indoctrinated with someone elses preordained values, possibly beaten into you when a child.”

An anachronistic perception of the relationship between community and its participants.

Contemporary values have empowered the ordinary individual.
The dogmatic authority of religious and social institutions has dwindled, largely due to their internal corruption to the point, the one time figure an indomitable parish priest, is reduced to a creature of deep public suspicion.

I guess that is your error, the ‘authority’ to which you cling died some decades ago.

Of course, the philosophical debate has moved on too. Like you, Bowden is step locked into supporting an historic anachronism.

Gay rights is good; equal gay rights is bad - it hurts gays more than helps them. Gay is not a moral/ethical issue, nor a free choice one - the existential factor over-rides. Consider that if 20% of humanity became gay, it would not survive more than a few generations.

Protection of gays can only come from implementing and mandating Gay rights - but equal Gay rights do the reverse - knowing this difference shows the way to go. Both Hetros and gays become subserviant here to the laws impacting humanity as a whole. Too bad that many hetros and gays see otherwise, and concluding their doctrines on that basis.