The United States Federal Government should legalize child porn Wylted vs Bluesteel and Mikal

(1) Children cannot consent I think we're all on the same page her but just in case let me repost what I posted in round 1. "I'm not advocating for the sexual abuse or sexual exploitation of a minor. It would still be illegal to produce child porn for profit or sell it for profit. It would still be illegal for an adult to have sex with a minor. It would be illegal for an adult to coerce children into having sexual relations with each other." As I've shown in round 2, Child porn is something created by offending pedophiles to document their crime. If there is a profit motive for this crime it would still remain illegal, however if you film yourself having sex with a child you would only get the charge child molestation. I think with the FBI releasing their extensive database of child porn it would kill any for profit motive that was out there. If it is out there. If you want harsher sentences for people who take advantage of kids sexually than make the penalties stiffer don't tack on this extra charge. I have defeneded my position on this. My position is that law makers with special interests in mind will use these production of child porn laws in an abusive way, so that 16 year old girls are getting arrested for distributing child porn when they sext. This might seem like a slippery slope fallacy but it isn't. This is history. Special interests have used child porn laws to send a message about sexting or to legislate their own morality. There would still be the same laws protecting children from sexual abuse. If an aunt, uncle or any other family member showed a video of themselves coercing a child into a sexual act or performing on or with a minor they will be put in prison with the video used as evidence. The problem with labeling something as pornographic is it's subjective nature. If a person posts a video on Youtube of their 2 year old taking a bath than they can be charged with producing child pornography. What I'm advocating takes a lot of the subjectiveness and throws it out the window. Under what I advocate for you and your kids can go join a nudist colony and take pictures of yourself and post them online without big brother coming in and throwing you and your spouse in jail for something completely innocent. My opponent's plan doesn't protect these innocent people from being abused by the law, by some judge who is trying to prove a point. Think about this. These pornography laws that prevent people from documenting the rape of a child could actually hurt conviction rates. Right now if I catch somebody in the act of murdering somebody I can videotape it and turn it in to police as evidence, but if I catch somebody raping a kid, I have to think twice on whether I want to hand over the child pornography I just produced. If I turn it in the perp would likely spend close to 4 years in prison according to the stats I provided last round, but me catching the guy and providing the evidence to convict him could get me a production of child porn charge which lands me more time in a prison than the actual bad guy. We can't depend on the common sense of prosecutors and law men in this either. They've proven that they can't be trusted to use common sense[7] and that's why even my opponent argues for a change in the status quo.<br><br> (2) Viewing child porn increases the likelihood that the person will molest a child "As James Wolak explains in American Psychologist, pedophiles who view images of child pornography become more likely to molest children because viewing such images serves to *normalize* their fetishization of children and strengthens their urges." This quote seems to have nothing to do with the article my opponent cited. The quote sounds like pure conjecture and seems to not go with the theme of the articele. While I don't doubt Wolak said those things I do believe it to be just pure conjecture based on no scientific evidence whatsoever. Here is a few quotes from the article summary to give readers a feel for what the article's publishers is saying it's about. "The publicity about online "predators" who prey on naive children using trickery and violence is largely inaccurate. Internet sex crimes involving adults and juveniles more often fit a model of statutory rape." "This is a serious problem, but one that requires approaches different from those in current prevention messages emphasizing parental control and the dangers of divulging personal information"[1] If the article was specifically about the type of predators who are going to be largely discussed in this debate I'd purchase it for the $12 but it doesn't appear to be so. This is more than likely an offhand remark. "The studies bear out these conclusions. A longitudinal study of convicted child molesters in the U.S. found that those who consumed more child porn were *more likely to reoffend* after their release." This study looked at a very small subset of people. First it looked at child molestors not your average child porn watcher. second among child molestors it furthered narrowed it down to high risk child molestors (people already likely to reoffend) and lastly it looked at frequency of watching child porn.[2] This I think for the most part is just common sense. People who have a problem controlling their urges are more likely to obsess over child porn and watch it more. The obsessive porn watching would indicate a lack of willpower in these high risk offendors. It's the same lack of willpower that causes them to reoffend. This is a classic case of correlation and it's a more obvious case of correlation than my study on lower rates of child sexual abuse. I think the study I pulled up is highly suggestive of the ease of access to these types of images correlating to lower incidences of sexual abuse of a child. My opponent does bring up the infamous Butner study[3] as his main piece of evidence. According to Hernandez the individual involved in 2 of he studies my opponnt brought up; "Some individuals have misused the results of Hernandez (2000) and Bourke and Hernan- dez (2009) to fuel the argument that the majority of child pornography offenders are in- deed contact sexual offenders and, therefore, dangerous predators. This simply is not supported by the scientific evidence. The incidence of contact sexual crimes among [child pornography] offenders, as we re- ported in our studies, is important and worthy of considerable empirical examination. However, it is not a conclusive finding that can be generalized to all child pornography offenders."[4] This isn't the only problem with the Butner study. The Butner program is as stated by Judge Robert Pratt and the supreme court determined. "the Butner Study is not credible. The Butner Study's sample population consisted of incarcerated individuals participating in a sexual offender treatment program at a federal correctional institution.....the program is "highly coercive." .....Unless offenders continue to admit to further sexual crimes, whether or not they actually committed those crimes, the offenders are discharged from the program. Id. Consequently, the subjects in this Study had an incentive to lie..........that the Study's "whole approach" is rejected by the treatment and scientific community. Id, Complicating this bias is the fact that the Butner Study did not report on the nearly 23% (46/201) of individuals in the treatment program who left due to "voluntary withdrawal"......." [5] The study refused to show it's methodologies or explain any of it's apparent deficiencies. The study is crap. On top of that the evidence besides me showing a reduction in sexual assault of minors all points to the fact that legalizing child porn reduces child molestation and is the lesser of 2 evils. A meta analysis was done of 21 studies and 4500 child porn watchers showed that there was only a 2.1% chance of them reoffending with a sexual contact charge.[6] Conclusion I skipped making rebuttals for my opponent's 3rd category because it uses the same Butner study for it's data. Some rebuttals were touched on by my opponents in the previous round and I will address those on my next turn. I wish my opponents good luck and look forward to their rebuttals. source [1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov... [2] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov... [3] http://tinyurl.com... [4] Andres E. Hernandez, Psychological and Behavior Characteristics of Child Pornography Offenders in Treatment, presented at the Global Symposium on Examining the Relationship Between Online and Offline Offenses and Pre- venting the Sexual Exploitation of Children, at The Injury Prevention Research Center, the University of North Car- olina, Chapel Hill, April 5-7, 2009, at 5, available at http://www.iprc.unc.edu... [5] http://law.justia.com... [6] Public Hearing Before the U.S. SENTENCING COMMISSION on Federal Child Pornography Crimes 3 (February 15, 2012) (written testimony of Michael C. Seto, Royal Ottawa Health Care Group) available at http://www.ussc.gov...- [7] 18 U.S.C. §§ 2252, 2252A, 1466A (2011). 16 Radley Balko, You Can Have Sex With Them; Just Don’t Photograph Them, REASON (Feb. 28, 2011), available at http://reason.com...