Drawings are not people and people with drawings shouldn’t be treated like someone who hurts an actual child. One might think that this makes obvious sense, but then one likely isn’t an elected politician.
Your humble author has warned about censorious overreach:
“A clear example of this conflation comes from a The Daily Signal article by Tony Kinnett. Much of the article quite rightfully goes after LGBTQ&c. propaganda that tries to normalize kinky sex and transgendersim amongst elementary school children and earlier—often as part of formal classroom teaching materials—but conflates that with a Seinen Japanese Manga that has nothing to do with wokeness, LGBTQ&c. ideology, or even promoting anything sexually deviant (or really anything sexual at all).
“Why did they lump in a manga adaptation and interpretation of a popular light novel series with clearly pro-woke propaganda? Boobies. [sic] And that it showed evil goblins attacking females (but never showing the actual sexual assault). This does not and can not normalize anything sexual, deviant or otherwise, when it shows rape to be absolutely evil and the rapist as needing to be killed for their evil. There is more focus on the horror and evil of rape and especially of the lasting psychological damage that a rape survivor experiences.”
Under SB20 in Texas, as enrolled, an “obscene” drawing of a character that subjectively appears to be under 18 will result in a “jail felony” which mandates that “first-time offenders convicted under this law to a minimum of five years in prison, simply for owning or viewing such material”. It reads, in part:
“(b) A person commits an offense if the person: (1) knowingly possesses, accesses with intent to view, or promotes obscene visual material containing a depiction that appears to be of a child younger than 18 years of age engaging in activities described by Section 43.21(a)(1)(B), regardless of whether the depiction is an image of an actual child, a cartoon or animation, or an image created using an artificial intelligence application or other computer software”
Note that a sexy photograph of an adult with a petite or youthful body is considered less egregious than a drawing of the same person, as the bill goes on to talk about using “an image of an actual child younger than 18 years of age at the time the image was made”, but not actual photos of youthful looking adults—a distinction not made with… drawings.
Under this Texas law, the aforementioned Goblin Slayer could get someone sent to jail on sex crimes charges, since fifteen is considered the age of majority for humans in Goblin Slayer and the minimum age to be an adventurer… and goblins are noted to attack newly minted adventurers. Even more ridiculous is the the idea of a person being sent to jail for having a drawing of a flat-chested elf, over a millennium old, in a bikini.
She’s over 2000 years old. If anything, the FBI should be protecting you from being taken advantage of by her.
To put it simply, a drawing isn’t a real person, adult or child, and drawing do not have human rights nor are capable of crimes being committed against them.
Of course, considering that lack of large breasts of an adult is enough to get labelled child porn in Australia, even sexy pictures of adults could get you thrown in jail for years on a sex crime charge!
But then, people have been accused online of being a pedophile for liking a character who is an adult and well endowed in the mammary department.
Of course, this isn’t just limited to Texas. A bill in Congress (S. 1671) wants to redefine the definition of “obscenity”:
“The three-pronged Miller test considers something obscene if it appeals to ‘prurient interests,’ if it describes or depicts sexual acts in a ‘patently offensive way … specifically defined by the applicable state law’ and if it lacks ‘serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.’
“Lee’s bill would change the second prong of this test. Instead of applying state law, it would add a definition whereby content would be deemed obscene if it depicts or describes ‘actual or simulated sexual acts with the objective intent to arouse, titillate or gratify the sexual desires of a person.’”
“In a release when he introduced the bill last week, Lee’s office argued that the current definition of obscenity is ‘difficult to assess and prosecute’ and that its standards are ‘subjective and vague.’”
Yet, instead of “community standards” and statutory definitions, it allows any judge anywhere to decide what he or she thinks is too naughty or not. Anything that is “sexy” could be made to apply if a judge decides that anything even referencing something naughty and that such naughty things lack the requisite “value” as subjectively decided.
Instead of going after people doing real harm to real kids, some would rather take the easier course of moral overreach in their war to prevent the lewding of innocent drawings. It’s easier to moralize about the lewding of 1000 year old elves than to go after exploitive child beauty pageants and the convicted child molesters around that Honey Boo Boo kid.
