Emma Rush is to be commended for her article today Sep 26 on the sexualisation of children in and through the media. It is no game, and it isn't yet another "moral panic", as commentators such as Catharine Lumby are wont to claim.
No doubt more of that thinking will be aired in the ABC's A Difference of Opinion this Thursday 27th on this topic.
It's a great pity that the motion passed in the Senate on Aug 15 referred the issue only to ACMA, and to the review of Codes for TV and Radio. The greater contribution to the problem probably comes from the advertising and marketing industries, who run their own self regulatory systems. When is the spotlight to be put on them?

I guess when they stop paying so much money to major media corporations. Then the media would turn on them and governments would take action. How's that for cynical? ( :

To me..the MOST important issue is:

"Is it inherrently EVIL.. and IMMORAL.. to sexualize children and use them for the sexual gratification of adults..

OR..

is it purely culturally and historically relative" ?

As far as I am concerned..it is IMMORAL and EVIL.. to sexually exploit and use children.. whether it is in the guise of
-marriage or
-advertizing or
-religion.

UNLESS we can come up with a definitive answer to this crucial question.. those of us who wish to defend children from the predatorial and exploitative use by adults will simply end up wringing our hands.. and bemoaning the unchallengable fact of increased child abuse.

WE NEED A REASON to say it is 'bad'..........

If we try to argue that it is 'bad'... psychologists and anthropologists and historians will tell us it is culturally relative, because in most places, and in the past.. children (mainly female) were passed around from family to family.. Old men taking child wives.. etc..and it is difficult to point to identifiable 'ill effects'...yet I absolutely guarantee that most of us would say "Its as plain as the nose on our faces" that there is something terribly WRONG with little children having their youth stolen by old people and 'chanelled' into marriages and sexual abuse when they are so young that they are simply 'programmed' into believing it is 'ok'.

In my view.. common sense plus an appreciation of the dignity of each human being based on the pattern of Scripture (Old and New Testaments, with the New being the final and complete word) will provide an adequate basis for declaring the sexualization, sexual abuse, sexual commodification of children as EVIL, and IMMORAL and that such conclusions are IMMUNE to some new 'research' which may seek to show otherwise.