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Sunday, October 5, 2008 12:00 AM

Porn producer invokes the Bush/Yoo defense -- unsuccessfully

Citizens who produce fictitious films depicting "humiliation" and "degradation" will be sent to prison. Government officials who do that in reality will be immunized.

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  • Monday, October 6, 2008 12:59 AM

    Porn producers don't torture people

    There are several problems with the analogy of porn and battlefield torture. (Disregard for a moment that what one person defines as torture, another would not. Consider "torture" your definition of torture, the details are not important here).

    In civilian context it is immoral and illegal to kill most of the time, in war context there exists a designated group of people (the "enemy") the killing of whom is not only legal but sort of compulsory.

    Many times not killing the enemy will result in one's death, too many refusals to kill enemy designees will result in the enemy winning, which no moral person should allow to happen to his neighbors, relatives and sundry acquaintances. Torture of the few, compared to the killing of the many, is the diminutive lesser of two evils. It is a bad thing nevertheless, and the tortured does not participate willingly. He/she often ends up dead, or maimed for life, mentally and physically.

    This is just to show that war and peacetime are two very different worlds, with different goals, mindsets and morals.

    An S&M porn film is one in which the participants cooperate voluntarily. These are generally people who are sexual masochists or sadists with an exhibitionist bent. The masochist positively enjoys experiencing pain in an erotic context. Yes, Virginia, there are actually people like that.

    On the surface (taking the analogy at face alue), it is bizarre for a government to leave torture by a soldier unpunished while punishing the "torture" performed by the producer of an S&M porn flick.

    A bit below the surface it looks different and the analogy begins to break down. Whereas torture in war context is part of war activities and is often seen (agreeably or disagreeably, but SEEN) as necessary, and the tortured, but often the torturer also, are not willing participants, "torture" in the porn flick context is a voluntary and enjoyed acivity between consenting individuals.

    But at the deepest level the analogy totally disapepaers. The reason for that is that "torture" in an S&M movie scene is not any more actual torture than crying in a "normal movie", for instance Hilary Swank's performance in $1M Baby, is actual depression, EVEN THOUGH during the moments of acting the pangs of emotional or physical pain are truly felt.

    Torture should be viewed as a subplot or war, to be avoided as much as avoiding wars is possible. There are other subtypes of torture, such as child abuse, satanistic rituals, that a clearly criminal.

    S&M porn movies are not torture and they have no basis for comparison with military or other forms of torture.

    Making and selling S&M movies should be legal NOT because "if Abu Ghraib is legal then S&M movies shoud be legal" but because they are voluntary activities among consenting adults. Even if military torture were absolutely illegal and punishable by death, making and selling S&M movies should still be legal. The two have nothing to do with each other.

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