The United States Supreme Court today struck down a law banning virtual child pornography. It held that previous rulings prohibiting child pornography applied only to real children and not to images that merely appear to depict children engaged in sex. Both the Clinton and the Bush administrations worked to defend the law that was struck down today.
Catholic League president William Donohue commented as follows:
“It was Justice Byron White, who died yesterday, who once said that child pornography was a ‘category of material outside the protection of the First Amendment’ and could be regulated regardless of whether it met a test of obscenity. That was 20 years ago. Now, in a 6-3 decision, the justices of the high court have declared that there is no connection between computer-generated child pornography and the actual exploitation of real children. If this isn’t proof that many lawyers have become unhinged from reality, nothing is.
“Perverts love child pornography and most use it to act on their impulses. They will be delighted that a half-dozen judges on the nation’s highest bench have just given them the green light to indulge their sickness as much as they like, provided, of course, that the images of child pornography are not drawn from actual pictures of little kids. Computer-dummied versions are quite okay.
“The whole country is upset with instances of child sexual molestation in the Catholic Church. Will everyone now be just as upset with the U.S. Supreme Court for its latest ruling? Will they protest authors like Judith Levine who argue in favor of adult-child sex? Will they finally question why there is a professor at Princeton University, Peter Singer, who maintains a soft line on bestiality?
“This is cultural schizophrenia. We don’t like the consequences of perversion but don’t have the guts to deal with its sources.”
