Polycarp: "harm to others can be defined in many ways"

Yes it can. Nonetheless, provided the definition is based on something independent observers can verify I'd probably accept it.

Polycarp: "Simply because a homosexual was displeased with his terminology."

This, as you present it, doesn't meet that criterion. It could well be real - the homosexual probably is displeased. However we only have his word for it. There is no way to independently verify his displeasure. Unfortunately a minority can and do fake this displeasure for all sorts of nefarious reasons so we can't rely on an individuals expression of displeasure as proof. Even when a person is appears to be under extreme emotional stress we can't take their word for it. We see actors fake this sort of stress every day on television. Sometimes this rule is very harsh and the consequences extreme, but that is life.

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2008/05/16/1210765091402.html

As for your suggestion that homosexual behaviour is unnatural - well that is really off base unless you have some perverted definition of unnatural. You are aware homosexuality is more common in sheep then it is in humans, aren't you?

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1582336,00.html

HRS/Timkins: << C. J Morgan, I’ve always thought of you as being very intellectual, in a very base way. >>

Ooh look - Timmy's come out from under his rock to make a typically inane comment. At least nobody could mistake him for an intellectual of any kind.

Bowden's still in great intellectual company here I see - with learned and rational supporters like UNCRC, Boazycrap, runner and Timkins, he doesn't really need detractors on this thread.

C J Morgan,
I think if naked or semi-naked photos of you were hung in a gallery, there would only be one person who would look at them, and it wouldn’t be your mother.

With all the publicity surrounding Hensen, I also think that people who want their photos taken by Hensen would have to be somewhat narcissistic, or have a desire to be seen by others.

I’m not sure if narcissism is a form of art.

>Peter Bowden: An excellent, succinct piece which emphasizes well the child protection argument demanded by this subject. I'd like to attend the Sydney café debate, but am in Melbourne aka “Wowserville” (or is that Adelaide?)

>Col Rouge: you seem to use a rather creaky and mechanical thought process on JS Mill, with logical myopia re implications of prohibition in traditional liberalism.

Rouge postulates: “Who is exercising 'power', certainly it is those who seek to curtail Henson...” Well, no: those who successfully exert or practically exercise power in this case are those who sought to allow, even endorse, Henson's activity against the will of myself and many others (we're a large majority too according to some polling). That leads to Bowden's following explanation of JSM's justification for exerting such power i.e., “to prevent harm to others”.

Rouge, you seem to have missed Bowden's (and child protection advocates') important points about the implicit harm of such artistic soft kiddie porn. More absurd, your slow-motion argument fails in its attempt to apply a traditional liberalist defence for Henson. Your notions are libertarian, not liberalist in such traditional and authentic senses. I suspect that you (like most of us) have had much neoliberalist brainwashing to that point where we develop a reflex to consider as “bad/harmful” any effort to curtail any enterprise that involves consenting parties. Consider the absurdities: what if the art is HARD-core kiddie porn, or child prostitution, with formalities of consent from parents and/or exploited children? Many notorious cases involve parental and child consent in such brutal exploitation; that touches on the whole reason many like myself oppose vehemently the neoliberalist cult that has tried to commodify and debase us all. Libertarians/neolibs may as well complain (as some do!) when the state acts to prevent someone from following through on their free choice to become a degenerate, dehumanized ice junkie.

That is why Henson's artsistic kiddie porn too is truly degenerate. It is not Klimt, and emotive canards about Nazism, Hitler, etc., distract us from the clearly fascist implications of such brutally exploitative artistic kiddie porn.

">>For example.. when Pastor Ake Green was convicted of the 'crime' of 'insulting homosexuals' in Sweden... we find the problem well illustrated.<<"

Gay is far more than an moral/equal rights issue. If 20% of humanity becomes gay, then humanity will not last more than a few generations. This makes the gay issue an existential one for mankind, even more precarious than incest - and incest cannot be legally negated if equal gay rights is condoned.

Ironically, the best protection for gays is not equal rights, but gay rights - because equality does not factor in here, and equal rights will prove the most harmful factor to gays.

"I think if naked or semi-naked photos of you were hung in a gallery, there would only be one person who would look at them, and it wouldn’t be your mother."

Art must depict something new by articulating what is not well rcognised, and elevating this for the senses. Exposing an underlying child's nudity is hardly a depiction of the unrecognised, but only a titilating factor of what is correctly not a revelation. Making something a controversy is not an act of art - it does not enlighten: we know about children, and we know it as not sexual - thus uncovering a child does not say much.

We know a child has the same organs as an adult - we also know a child does not possess the same affinity, consciousness and disposition as an adult, and making them alligned is an abuse, hiding behind an otherwise noble premise. Simply uncovering a child, and exploiting sensuality, is not art: there was no contribution here. We know our parents engaged in sex - but is it art if we expose it?