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• Sunday, October 5, 2008 10:19 PM

  @ hyblaean

  "I think the heart of the matter is that Governments torturing people is as appalling as porn producers torturing people....He (Glenn) says it's a matter of law, not of humanity. Aka Smith differs. She thinks they are both wrong. I agree." - you

  I think you misuse "torture" - there seems to be a difference between prisoners of war (or enemy combatants or terr-rists) and porn actors. One is being paid for a job they willingly signed up for, while the other is being held as a prisoner of war - captive - against their will. Needless to say, the porn actor can get out while the POW can't.

  The issue in dispute, as you define it, is also kind of circular because it just begs the question: what is consent? Or, what is free will? You're essentially saying that the porn actors can't choose, or they're not old enough to choose, or they're being coerced in some way. But we know they can choose, they may not be old enough which is a separate legal/criminal issue besides obscenity, and we definitely know if they're being coerced. In this example, the actors in question were not. So that's kind of a wash.

  So then it seems you're saying Max Hardcore's porn is "wrong" as in "immoral" or "something that doesn't sit well with you," but I think that perspective has already been established as irrelevant to the point of Glenn's post, which seems to be to highlight the hypocrisy of a government jailing people for fictionalized, consensual scenes of humiliation/degradation while protecting or ignoring its own tendrils that actually do those things in reality to non-consenting prisoners.

  Ironically, inherent in your claim that it's a matter of humanity instead of law is a negation of the validity, or even existence, of choice - which many would argue is essentially to negate the thing that makes a human a "human," as distinct from all other living beings. Conscious choice. After that, your contention that it's about "the humanity" is kind of self defeating.

  I'm not trying to be snarky - if I understand the definition of that term correctly.

  —Ontologer Read Ontologer's other letters
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