Stop the Government's
Censorship
The Home Office has begun a process to make it illegal to possess extreme adult images.
These plans could lead to people being imprisoned for viewing images on the internet.
This is a step too far from a government determined to regulate every aspect of our lives and quash individual expression.
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Backlash is the campaigning organisation bringing together individuals and activist groups to oppose this legislation.
The Government gives six main reasons for this intrusion into people's private lives. Interestingly enough, none of them work.
On top of that the unintended consequences in the form of potential for miscarriages of justice and other problems would be huge.
In addition to this summary, there is a more detailed discussion of these issues available, supported by evidence.
The interesting thing here is that the Government admits in their own consultation paper that it doesn't have the evidence to support this claim. It is irrational to admit this and make the claim anyway.
In fact, it's worse than this - the bulk of recent evidence undermines the claim.
You can't legislate people's sexual orientations out of existence. Ask anyone who was gay when that was illegal.
As for supply, nearly all the material is hosted abroad, and the UK is not a big market, so legislation here would have barely any effect.
If the scenes are acted no one is actually getting hurt (as in any "normal" film), so where's the need for protection?
Some material shows real acts, but if people consent to them and the injury isn't serious or permanent, there is no need for protection there either.
Material featuring real non-consensual acts violate existing laws everywhere, and anyone foolish enough to put such material on the web would be offering evidence of their crimes to prosecutors. So those who might be thus harmed are already protected.
Why is exposure something we need protecting from? Because some people might find it offensive or distasteful? Is that a good enough reason to curtail other people's freedom? If so, what are we going to ban next?
And let's be real here. This stuff isn't widely advertised; you have to go and find it. So the members of society that would be protected here would mostly be those who want to see it.
This argument is always used selectively by the pro-censorship lobby. Of course children shouldn't be exposed to this sort of material. Nor should they be exposed to normal pornography or certificate 18 films, both of which are far more widely available, and therefore more likely to be encountered by children. Presumably, then, these should be banned too (along with anything children shouldn't see, but might).
The Government keeps coming back to this, presumably because the justifications that need evidential support don't hold up.
Well, some things are "abhorrent" in the sense that they're morally wrong. But sometimes "abhorrent" just means what you personally happen to find distasteful. It's easy to confuse the two.
A lot of people - a majority, even - used to say homosexuality was "abhorrent". They talked as if it was morally wrong to be gay, but really they were just expressing their own personal taste.
The Government can't muster the evidence to show that the material is actually harmful, so it keeps repeating the word "abhorrent" in pretty much the way that word was used against gays. If anything is immoral here, that is.
So the justifications don't stand up. But what about the unintended consequences if the legislation does get through ?
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