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Hypothetical laws against reckless child indecency

Posted by Lysander on 2017-January-12 21:24:11, Thursday

On 29 February 2016, while hearing the case of Voisine v. United States, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas asked a question on the bench for the first time in 10 years:
Let's say that a publisher is reckless about the use of children, and what could be considered indecent displays, and that that triggers a violation of, say, a hypothetical law against the use of children in these ads, and let's say it's a misdemeanor violation. Could you suspend that publisher's right to ever publish again?
Justice Thomas was using an analogy to make a point that it's as unconstitutional to take away someone's gun rights for the rest of his life on the basis of his having committed a misdemeanor reckless act of domestic violence, as it would be to take away someone's publishing rights for life because he committed a misdemeanor offense of recklessly displaying children indecently.

It's interesting that he has to use children in his example. That's because child porn is one of the few kinds of speech that isn't considered protected by the First Amendment.

Anyway, the response he got to his question from one of the litigant's lawyers, Ms. Eisenstein, was, "Your Honor, I don't think you could suspend the right to ever publish again, but I think that you could limit, for example, the manner and means by which publisher --"

It happens all the time that people convicted of child porn offenses lose their right to use a computer without having the government's monitoring software installed on it. I guess that's what Ms. Eisenstein meant by limiting "the manner and means".

Anyway, I'm not aware of any misdemeanor offenses involving indecent displays of children, anywhere in the United States. As far as I know, they're all felonies. Maybe this is a sign that in the future, Congress will pass legislation reducing child porn offenses to misdemeanors, or that Justice Thomas would be willing to strike down those felony child porn statutes as unconstitutional? It's clear that he's thinking about the possibility of misdemeanor child indecent display statutes existing. What does this indicate about where his thought process might go next?

And once the penalties for child porn offenses have been reduced, can it be far off that we'll see adult-child sex completely decriminalized, so that I can start banging kids, including my own prepubescent offspring, without any state interference? I don't know, but I don't mind letting my imagination run wild with the possibilities, now that this unexpected development has befallen us. I will continue having recurrent, sexually explicit fantasies regarding small children whenever I want, and as often as I want, and no one's going to stop me!
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