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But his blog's raison d'etre is the massive violation of the law under the Bush Administration. He wasn't talking about good or evil, he was talking about the hypocrisy of going after obscenity convictions while pardoning torturers.
Secondarily, he is strong on free speech issues, and likely would never feel comfortable with any kind of censorship conviction. On the other hand, I don't think he would raise an eyebrow at rape or assault charges. Frankly, I tend to agree.
Thirdly, outside of personal moral judgment, if we are to take action against evil people, we can only do it under necessarily arbitrary yardsticks. At what point does a nudge become a bump become a push become a shove become an assault become aggravated? The pornographer may be an evil man who exploits and abuses young and stupid women, but as long as we have set an arbitrary yardstick of 18 years old for self-determination, whatever our moral judgments, we cannot punish one crime (abuse of adult women) by convicting of another (obscenity), let alone a crime like obscenity which is far more ridiculously arbitrary than arbitrary age of adulthood, and thus a very dangerous tool in the hands of the state. I agree with this also.
As to whether the pornographer in question in fact is an evil man who abuses and exploits women, or an unusual person engaged in unusual but consensual activities, I really do not know. He is in a dirty (literally) but legal business, where there is an awful lot of extreme behaviour and many questionable individuals, and a good deal more lying and hype than fact and information available. For certain, there is material easily available on the internet that is a good deal more vile than what he got convicted for.
And finally, if he is indeed fully guilty of conning young adult but naive women into being exploited and abused, I agree that that is wrong and evil; but compared to torture, to years of solitary confinement of teenagers, to assassinations, to mass killings, to support of vile dictators, well, I feel fairly comfortable judging his crimes as significantly lesser than those of the Bush Administration.
But, in the past, AKA has never wanted to make those kind of comparisons, has never shared the same sense of urgency and outrage over them as I do, because the urgency and outrage she feels over the abuse of children and women is about as much as she can bear. And I respect that, if I don't share it.
