A man has been convicted of possession of child pornography for having pornographic drawings of characters from “The Simpsons”.

Since Bart shows his wee-wee in “The Simpsons” movie, I guess we’d better shut down Best Buy for selling child porn.

@ Mike Lorah: Yep… I see now that I misattributed the quote to Mr. Gaiman. I conflated the talk of what Gaiman said on his blog with what followed. That’s what I get for doing stuff at work, when I’m trying to be sneaky about. I think cold medication may have played a small part as well. For the record, my original post could’ve worded better itself.

Take away the parts that the judge ruled were unconstitutional, and he call still be found guilty for obscenity, which will be decided by his peers.

All the prosecution has to do is convince the jury that the manga exists simply to grant sexual gratification by using drawings of underage children (by the standards I provided in my first post), and the guy’s done.

From what I’ve gathered, the defense seems intent on not defending the value of the story the porn occurs in but attacking the law, when the best way to attack the law is to prove the stories weren’t made for the sole purpose of dirtying Handley’s socks and try to establish precedent in case any other prosecutors would attempt to do the same.

They will probably try to defend porn as art, but it won’t stick (ha, get it?).

And Shaun, not everything comes back to being George Bush’s fault.

If it is “just art” then that shouldn’t be a problem.

I’m not trying to be snarky, I would just like to know what I’m arguing about. While I personally don’t think “Lost Girls” was a story that needed to be told I also don’t think of it as “porn” either. I can see the merits that it has as a story and art and literature.
If the books that Christopher Handley purchased are actual stories and not just “Cherry Pop-Tart” with minors in manga style then I guess that I can understand why the CBLDF thinks this should be a case for them.

Robert, in particular, I’m with you when you ask, who has been harmed by this “crime”? If there’s no victim, how is there a crime?

Kelson, thanks for posting Neil’s thoughts. His post inspired my entry here, but I didn’t want to re-iterate Neil’s thoughts since he already did so in his own effective and persuasive manner. Perhaps I should’ve highlighted his key-point to underscore my own, more gutteral reaction.
I’m still getting the hang of this blogging thing.

“The Law is a blunt instrument. It’s not a scalpel. It’s a club. If there is something you consider indefensible, and there is something you consider defensible, and the same laws can take them both out, you are going to find yourself defending the indefensible.”

Otherwise, if a such a law is successfully used to attack stuff you don’t like, it sets a precedent that it can be used to attack stuff you do approve of.

As an example, he cites a short comic adaptation of a story from the Bible that was prosecuted in Sweden for depicting violence against women.

Or how about anyone that rents the Jeremy Irons film “Lolita” or the Dakota Fanning film “Hounddog”? or the movie “Kids”?

Or how about a 12 year old boy that draws a cartoon of himself engaged in an adult act with Wonder Woman – should he be charged with possession of child pornography?

If a pictographic representation is illegal should a narrative representation also be illegal? A well written story can be just as titillating as a picture.

It is a dangerous and slippery slope whenever morality tries to become legality. The logical definition would be that for a representation of a crime to be a crime, a crime must have been committed in the production of the representation. If the book had been photographs of real underage people then a crime may have been committed in the taking of those photographs and perpetuated by the purchase of the photographs. If the book were CGI representations of real people – then the rights of those real people may have been violated – but neither is the case – this is the case of handdrawn line images of people that don’t exist.

Who was hurt and requires justice?

All of that aside, the PROTECT act was written to deal specifically with cases of virtual child pornography that was indistinguishable from the real thing. No one would mistake hand drawn line art for reality. Some lawmakers, at the time, expressed concernt that overzealous prosecutors could carry it further than was intended – and that is what appears to be happening here.

I linked to Neil, but the entire content of the blog is my personal statement on the issue. Neil’s on the board of the Fund, last I checked, so he’s doing plenty in addition to his monetary donations.
Sorry if that was unclear.

Ken, that’s why I support the CBLDF and vote, to make sure that the laws are interpreted in a way I consider fair across the board.
I don’t believe that lines on paper can harm anyone. They may be in poor taste and against what I believe, but that doesn’t make lines on a paper illegal. I’m intelligent enough to make up my own mind, and though I have crushingly little faith in my fellow man at times, I hope that s/he is as well.

Anyhow, while I agree with just about everything Gaiman said, one thing gave me pause: “if I lived some high-stepping, lavish lifestyle, I’d probably give them a lot more money than I do”

Now, I don’t know Mr. Gaiman and I’m not saying he lives some crazy, extravagant lifestyle. But he makes it sound like he’s not hugely successful author who’s had several best-selling novels, some of which have been made into (or had the rights sold for) feature films. That’s not even counting his comics work, pretty much all of which has been highly successful as well(duh, Sandman!).

How he spends his money is his own business, but I’m guessing he’s got a lot more than most of us on these boards.

You said lines (drawings) don’t harm anyone. The stereotyping of blacks, with Sambos and Mammies, the stereotyping of Jews in Nazi Germany, on top of being offensive, all harmed those groups due to helping facilitate hostility towards them and make those groups appear less than human. They were contributing factors.

Your comments about Tom Sawyer don’t fit here, because that is a literary work, that has value to society. It’s also an historical piece which allows for the things written in it (can you hand me that oar, N-Word Jim?) to be allowed, because it shows what was occurring at that time in history. Porn has no such value.

“As for your legal arguments, I’ll opine that Handley shouldn’t even be found guilty of (a) or (c). Sure, I expect the books are pure smut, but so what? Community standards are ludicrous. So it’s okay to own those books in my neighborhood, but not in Iowa? And who’s to be the arbiter of “literary, artistic, political, or scientific value”?”

The community, in this case being the citizens of Iowa. Jury of your peers, all that jazz As such what is considered decent and obscene changes with the times. You choose to be a part of a society, and in doing so abide by what a majority of peers believe what is and isn’t acceptable, as well as what is and isn’t obscene. Don’t like it, get your representatives and elected officials to change the laws.

Allow me a couple examples:
1. Neil Young’s song “Rockin’ in the Free World” is often used as a pro-America, pro-democracy, rah-rah song. Yet the chorus is ironic, and the verses are attacks on the policies of then-President George H.W. Bush.
2. School libraries have banned Tom Sawyer, claiming it to be racist based on the (repeated) use of a single word. Yet the character Jim is the most honorable person in the entire story.

Point being, because anybody says this book portrays something in a positive, negative or any other light doesn’t mean it does. Each of us makes up our own mind about that. You and I would probably agree that the books in question are crap, but there are also people out there (and you know they exist) who consider Identity Crisis or Pulp Fiction indefensible. There’s the slippery slope Matt mentioned. You let them have an inch, it won’t stop when your stories are threatened.

Ken, please keep that line and this whole thread. Keep it and spend your time waiting for me to slip up. Because I never once said it wasn’t offensive. I said it’s not illegal. If a work of fiction offends me, I’ll do exactly what I said above: I’ll close the book.

Besides, I have a complete collection of Spirit Archives (you’ve seen Ebony White, I assume?), so believe me, it’ll take a lot to rile me up.

As for your legal arguments, I’ll opine that Handley shouldn’t even be found guilty of (a) or (c). Sure, I expect the books are pure smut, but so what? Community standards are ludicrous. So it’s okay to own those books in my neighborhood, but not in Iowa? And who’s to be the arbiter of “literary, artistic, political, or scientific value”?

Decisions, decisions……

For posterity’s sake, I’m going to save this article because of that line, just in case there is a controversy in the future regarding a racist cartoon or stereotype and you come out offended by it or write that it hurts a certain person’s character.

Anyway, this is dealing with obscenity, of which a jury needs to convict him by saying that all three of these things occurred with his child porn comics, from the CBLDF’s own statement:

(a) whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest

(b) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law

(c) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.

a & c will get an affirmative, no doubt in my mind. It’s b that is iffy.

But this part of 1466A:
“(c) Nonrequired Element of Offense.— It is not a required element of any offense under this section that the minor depicted actually exist.”

Would probably push b into the affirmative.

Violence in a comic tells a story, and a story has value, as shown in the guidelines for (c) above. Porn is not art. Porn is people having sex (even on page) so that someone else can get their rocks off. It has no value besides that, and that is probably why this defense of Handley will fail.

Why would you buy a lolicon comic for something other than wanting to get off on seeing a young person having sex? When the prosecutors bring that up, Handley’s done.

Also, it would be really nice if someone could fix trying to post a comment in the blogs here, without running into errors and jumping through hoops. It’s only been mentioned repeatedly for the past months.

Well, there was Zombie King by Frank Cho, but that was a zombie, so it was some weird blend of bestiality/necrophelia.

But generally, I think that making the depiction of a crime illegal and prosecutable is an amazingly slippery slope that would clear bookshelves if enforced fairly, rather than because of of the value judgments of prosecutors. Not that I have any answers, but to make the possession of a depiction of a crime a crime in and of itself seems to be a partitioning of the First Amendment.

And can we please stop the “so you’re in favor of child porn then?” line of argument, or keep it from coming back up?

Maybe I’ll add my own two cents when I have a minute to think about it.

The CBLDF is an important cause and I second Michael in encouraging everyone to make a tax deductible donation.