Thought Crime....
Taken From...
/news.bbc.co.uk/
A mother whose daughter died at the hands of a man obsessed with violent internet porn has won her fight for a ban on possessing such images.
The government has announced plans to make the possession of violent porn punishable by three years in jail.
It follows a campaign by Berkshire woman Liz Longhurst whose daughter Jane, a Brighton schoolteacher, was allegedly strangled by Graham Coutts.
Mrs Longhurst's campaign was backed by MPs and a 50,000-signature petition.
So, once again 'thought crime' has reared it's head in our society.
Simply looking at something that others find distasteful is punishable by imprisonment. Again.
Should anyone possessing pictures of the holocaust be tried for war crimes?
Should movie actors be imprisoned for inciting violence by performing fake murders on screen?
The murderer of Jane Longhurst was a lunatic who deserves no pity and frankly, less mercy. But to assume that watching violent pornography was the cause of his lunacy is to assume that anyone who watches 'Schindlers list' is likely to become a Nazi, watchers of 'The Godfather' will become gangsters, or watchers of 'Eastenders' will become barrow-boys.
Most people who view any kind of images or media for their own entertainment, do not then go on to commit crimes based upon it.
Before the advent of tv, the internet, movies, magazines, even books, some people chose to kill, maim, rape, murder,abuse and harm other human beings. Some people always will.
As a knee-jerk reaction, our ever-so clever law-makers have made it a criminal offence to look at images which were in all likelyhood posed by people who chose to do so, were paid to do so, or even possibly enjoyed doing so!
So you can beat the shit out of each other in the privacy of your bedroom, you can even be paid for doing it, but if someone looks at the pictures, they are a criminal.
Welcome to the asylum.
/news.bbc.co.uk/
A mother whose daughter died at the hands of a man obsessed with violent internet porn has won her fight for a ban on possessing such images.
The government has announced plans to make the possession of violent porn punishable by three years in jail.
It follows a campaign by Berkshire woman Liz Longhurst whose daughter Jane, a Brighton schoolteacher, was allegedly strangled by Graham Coutts.
Mrs Longhurst's campaign was backed by MPs and a 50,000-signature petition.
So, once again 'thought crime' has reared it's head in our society.
Simply looking at something that others find distasteful is punishable by imprisonment. Again.
Should anyone possessing pictures of the holocaust be tried for war crimes?
Should movie actors be imprisoned for inciting violence by performing fake murders on screen?
The murderer of Jane Longhurst was a lunatic who deserves no pity and frankly, less mercy. But to assume that watching violent pornography was the cause of his lunacy is to assume that anyone who watches 'Schindlers list' is likely to become a Nazi, watchers of 'The Godfather' will become gangsters, or watchers of 'Eastenders' will become barrow-boys.
Most people who view any kind of images or media for their own entertainment, do not then go on to commit crimes based upon it.
Before the advent of tv, the internet, movies, magazines, even books, some people chose to kill, maim, rape, murder,abuse and harm other human beings. Some people always will.
As a knee-jerk reaction, our ever-so clever law-makers have made it a criminal offence to look at images which were in all likelyhood posed by people who chose to do so, were paid to do so, or even possibly enjoyed doing so!
So you can beat the shit out of each other in the privacy of your bedroom, you can even be paid for doing it, but if someone looks at the pictures, they are a criminal.
Welcome to the asylum.
posted by Stevie at 10:15 pm
7 Comments:
Fact is that sexually violent porn is already illegal in the UK - you can't buy it legally. All the government is doing is extending this to the web as well, which seems fair enough to me.
They should make it all illegal. You can't compare it to pics of the holocaust etc .Humans are sexual beings and there are sickos out there who dwell on it and are obsessed with it and commit terrible acts due to it.It happens all the time.Rant over :).
Thin end of the wedge people.
I guess it must sound narrow minded - but my opinion really has come from reality. A person I had a lot to do with as a child - a person in a position of trust - was obsessed with the stuff. He did things he shouldn't have to myself and others - I'm not talking full on here BUT down the track he went further with a girl, and by this time things had changed in that through education the girl knew to speak out, that it was wrong. In the 70's, none of us knew to speak out - that you were allowed to "dob in" an adult. I carry guilt for what happened to that girl because if any us us had said something, it would have been inpossible for anything to happen to her. But that guy was fuelled by porn, he lived for it.
I don't know anything about the specifics, and it sounds pretty grim, but I am deeply convinced that someone like that is not 'created' by exposure to porn in the vast majority of cases, otherwise the world would have been a lovely fluffy place before it came along.
My main concern here is with the fact that censorship of material of any kind justifies the censorship of something else. It's a slippery slope to a 'controlled' society. Obviously there have to be some rules in life, I just think making someone a criminal for looking at yet another kind of picture is another step down a dark road.
Yeah, I shouldn't have put that out there. I guess I just question why people would want to possess this stuff in the first place. I know what you're saying about the 1984-ish scenario,but in another light it could be seen as a form of protection? I guess i'm just making you cranky now :).
Shouldn't worry about that, if I don't want my opinions to be challenged then I shouldn't be voicing them so publicly:)
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