Legalized and normalized evil

In a recent ruling, the Supreme Court of Canada decided that the mandatory requirement of at least a one-year prison sentence for possession of child pornography was unconstitutional because it tied the hands of judges who might need to take other circumstances into account. The ruling highlights problems, both in terms of legal definitions and the overall direction of Canadian (and likely Western) culture.

One specific scenario the court examined was that of an 18-year-old male who receives an explicit picture of a friend’s 17-year-old girlfriend and looks at it (and keeps it) on his cellphone. In such a case, the court argued, some kind of strictly monitored probation, rather than a custodial sentence, would be appropriate.

Most would agree that this case is of a different moral register to that involving someone who enjoys watching videos of little children being abused. It is deeply sad that we live in a culture where the phenomenon of teenage children sending nude pictures has become part of life. The legal problem is that the law has not itself kept pace with the various facets and levels of sleaze that now exist. Until and unless the law makes the above distinction, this blanket transformation of criteria for judgment creates a terrible situation. The most evil and intentional consumers of the most vicious pornography will now find legal arguments to mitigate their guilt and the type of punishment they receive.

Having said that, 18-year-olds are considered adults. A society that treats the production and distribution of explicit pictures of underage girls as something less than criminal and worthy of serious punishment is a society that has already accepted the sexual objectification of underage children is part of life. Acts that will lead to permanent humiliation of underage girls are still very serious and are due serious penalties.

This challenge is set to become even more intense. With the advent of pornography generated by AI, the whole notion of “victimless” crime will rear its ugly head. Does the man gazing in the privacy of his living room at the abuse of children who do not actually exist commit a crime? If so, against whom? Who is hurt when all that is involved is a screen full of pixels that have no objective reference in the real world? One might argue that the man who finds his sexual satisfaction that way is dehumanizing himself and the fake children at whom he stares, but does the same not apply already to violent pornography involving consenting adults. Are not women degraded thereby, and is the voyeur not reduced to a creature of appetites who treats others as mere instruments for his depravity? Have we not already surrendered the moral imagination of our culture to the normalization of sexual evil that hamstrings our ability to make important distinctions?

Pornography is a cultural nightmare and is set to become a legal nightmare too. And the fear relative to child pornography is that in the West we already have a culture that makes the weak very vulnerable (Canada leads the way in assisted suicide) and routinely thinks of children as highly sexualized. Look at the books sexual revolutionaries want on shelves in elementary school libraries. Such a culture will tend towards trivializing pedophilia, particularly when virtual pornography will make it a “victimless” crime.

Yes, the law needs to calibrate the crimes relative to child pornography and distinguish the idiotic hormone-addled teenagers from the predatory pedophiles. But I am cynical and believe that in a culture that so routinely glorifies evil and is so deeply obsessed with transgressive sex, arguments of the kind made by the Canadian Supreme Court, without further qualification, ultimately serve the wicked and make the weak, in this case children, even weaker.