The Eastern Edge

I just read on mangablog.net that Handley is due to be sentenced on January 25th. Well, it’s about damn time! According to ICv2, Handley was "charged with obscenity for possession of manga that depicted children in sexual situations." Personally I resent the use of the term 'manga' here, but that's another issue.

Or is it!?
Some speculate that Handley’s packages were opened specifically because they were ‘manga’ from Japan and that this is at least partly a case of discrimination. Maybe so, but Japan has a well earned reputation for proliferation of questionable material including child porn, so it's hardly surprising Japanese material was singled out.

Whatever people may think, though, Handley chose to plead guilty and throw himself at the mercy of the court, despite the CBLDF rushing to his aid and offering to defend him (not to mention all the people appear to have who donated - or at least voiced support for - the CBLDF specifically in reaction to this case).

It seems also that most are willing to forgive Handley for not fighting the good fight. Maybe Handley's lawyer convinced him he could get much worse if he fought and lost, and throwing himself at the mercy of the court was the way to go. But could it also be that he doesn’t want to be the poster boy for the right to possess illustrated child porn!? After all, it's much easier to sit proud on your Freedom of Expression horse to defend something like that when you aren't the one who got busted for it, isn't it!?

Try as you might to paint over the details with the broad strokes of liberty and constitutional rights, the fact is that this is not really about expression, porn or obscenity; it’s about visual portrayals of children that most societies do not consider wrong on a number of levels.
Porn will always be around and I do not have a problem with that at all. But for heaven’s sake can’t we at least leave children out of it? That, to me anyway, makes all the difference. However well-meaning you are or how big your freedom brush may be, you just can’t cover up a stain like child porn with some sort of constitutional whiteout.

It's naive to think that everyone has a moral circuit breaker that shuts down certain thoughts before they manifest themselves as anything more than a fictional piece of writing or artwork, or even just an off-colour comment.
I also think the people who say that allowing child porn may actually be a deterrent, is as flawed an dangerous an argument as “more guns, less crime”. Fighting fire with gasoline only works if your strategy is to stop the fire by burning everything down.

At the same time, however, I know that thoughts alone aren't the real danger, so while I still think child porn (and when I say child porn, I’m talking about sex and the sexualization of children, not nudity. i.e. I am not talking about pictures of the kids in the bathtub that someone may have in the family album) should be banned in all visual media, I struggle to come up with a definition other than extreme depictions of children in sexual situations. How do I define extreme? Under what age is a 'child'? Yeah, yeah, I know! But I’m not willing to say that absolutely everything should be allowed until that’s figured out.

It’s not as simple as ‘freedom of speech’ either, because everyone knows you can’t really get away with saying whatever you want, whenever you want, to whomever you want. Having said that, I do support the concept of free speech whole-heartedly, if for no other reason than to convince the dangerous people to speak up so we'll know who the hell to watch out for!

When you broaden your words from speech to expression, though, you are opening a whole other can of controversy. Expression is far too broad a word to simply attach 'freedom' to and think everything else will just fall into place and we'll live happily ever after, because some people's idea of 'happy' means things that the rest of us absolutely must not allow to happen. Freedom of expression sounds nice, but in practice expression encompasses everything from saying ‘fuck you’, to actually fucking someone!

The Handley case is expression in the form of fictional drawings of children in sexual situations. Well, allow me to also present an excerpt regarding porn and obscenity laws from The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States:
http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O184-ObscenityandPornography.html

Virtually every society has struggled with the question of what to do about representations of sexual activity. Such material is prevalent because it manifests the tensions that arise between desire and social norms. Artful treatments of sex enhance our understanding of these tensions. But because societies are ambivalent about sexual freedom and are concerned about the impact of degrading sexual depictions on the quality of sexuality, they attempt by law to distinguish proper from improper display, or to prohibit display altogether.

This struggle is particularly acute in a liberal democracy, in which the values of liberty and democracy often conflict. Liberal principles hold that all forms of expression should be protected by the First Amendment unless they cause direct, demonstrable harm to others. Although violent erotic materials have been shown in laboratory studies to make males more inclined to commit violence against women, such studies have not demonstrated direct, systematic harm. The liberal approach would limit regulation to protecting minors and the sensibilities of unconsenting adults. Democratic principles, however, endorse the right of majorities to restrain liberty in order to protect society from potential harm and to support communitarian norms of sexual virtue.

Well, therein is the difficulty in a liberal democracy, because liberalism is often beaten up and shown the door when the majority leans toward conservatism on an issue. Look at healthcare, for example. Conservatives are intimidating the hell out of the supposed democratic majority. Why? Explain that and you’ve just told me why you can be arrested and jailed for comic book child porn in the United States and nearly every other democracy in the world. If there was ever a topic that can make otherwise reasonable people angry, it’s the issue of protecting children.

In the end this whole argument may be a moot point as far as Japanese comics and animation goes, because even though most Japanese think Americans trying to ban Dragon Ball because it shows a penis and contains lewd jokes, Japan isn’t getting any freer either, folks! Japan is slowly but steadily caving in to international pressure to toughen their laws against child porn. Japan still allows possession of real stuff because apparently (or this is the excuse, anyway) they can’t determine the difference between a sexually abused child and a naked kid at a swimming pool. But that’s another topic…

For every person who screams freedom, there is a person who is afraid of that idea of freedom. For every person who wants protection, there is a person who feels oppressed and screams freedom. Like a never ending Spy vs. Spy comic, it's a constant knock ‘em down drag ‘em out struggle for balance. Balance between conservative and liberal views. One side pushes, the other pushes back, and hopefully you find some common ground to stand together on in the end.

But remember, freedom fighters, the U.S. passed the PROTECT Act, which;

makes it clear that obscene child pornography in any form — including cartoons — is still unlawful and not entitled to any First Amendment protection. The law says in part that anyone who "knowingly possesses a visual depiction of any kind, including a drawing, cartoon, sculpture, or painting, that (1) ( A ) depicts a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct; and (B) is obscene; or (2) ( A ) depicts an image that is, or appears to be, of a minor engaging in graphic bestiality, sadistic or masochistic abuse, or sexual intercourse, including genital-genital, oral-genital, anal-genital, or oral-anal, whether between persons of the same or opposite sex; and (B) lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value; or attempts or conspires to do so" shall be subject to penalties provided by law.

[ http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/speech/internet/topic.aspx?topic=virtual_childporn ]

I'm going to stop the legal crap there because in the end both Handley’s defense and the people who would like to see Handley burn are both wrong. Initially, I was wrong too. But the fact is laws regarding child porn such as the above were debated, passed into law, and still stand. if it is so wrong, where is the massive movement to strike it down? Who wants to stand up and say you want virtual child porn legalized, instead of making it the one exception you can just bloody well live with? No compromise from you, means no compromise from the conservatives either. You have to give a little to take a little, and judging by the changes in all media over the past few decades, it seems to me that the liberal freedom advocates have been largely on the take for a very long time now. Congratulations! (and I'm not being sarcastic, I mean it) but it's time to either make some concessions or brace for a hard push back. If you want it all, you have to be ready to sacrifice everything. Are you? If you have to make just one concession before putting your foot down forever, I would argue that child porn is the one perfect concession to make. Because really.. is their anything worse?

My point of view is that democracy is like a plane that will come crashing down unless it's got two solid wings to keep it in the air. If one side is too strong the whole thing spins out of control and kills all of us. Some may argue that we’re already tilting dangerously to the right in this Handley case. I am beginning to lean more toward the idea that that is most likely true. However, I have not changed my basic views and I have a serious problem with Handley being held up as a heroic victim of the enemies of freedom.

I like to consider myself politically ambidextrous. In other words I can and will give the finger with my left or right hand. In this case I no longer see anywhere to go but to stand in the middle and flip a big double middle finger salute to both sides of this argument.

Anger caused me to leap too far too fast to the right initially, but I’m now bowing out of the ultra-conservative side of this argument. However, I won’t fight for the other side either. I am strongly against the subject matter of the material in question, I disagree with some of the logic used to justify it, and I will never, ever take a side in an argument that might give power to people who say ‘freedom of speech’ when they actually mean freedom to indulge in child porn without fear of prosecution.

I honestly hope Handley doesn't go to jail, but I'd be lying if I said I'd have much sympathy for him if he did. He does deserve some form of punishment, even if it's only counseling, but the humiliation and time already served may just be more than enough.

Whatever does happen, I expect the reaction to be huge and I hope people speak up about it when the judgment comes down. I know I will and I'll be rubbernecking like Mr. Fantastic to see what everyone has to say.