Carl Trueman: When law falters

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LINDSAY MAST, HOST: First a warning for those who have younger listeners present. Our next discussion may not be appropriate for children.

Today is Wednesday, November 19th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Lindsay Mast.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Up next, WORLD Opinions contributor Carl Trueman says a court ruling in Canada shows how legal ambiguity can invite real harm. When the law fails to draw clear lines, those most at risk are children.

CARL TRUEMAN: In a recent ruling, Canada’s Supreme Court decided that the mandatory requirement of at least a one-year prison sentence for possession of child pornography was unconstitutional. Why? Because in the thinking of the court, it tied the hands of judges who might need to take other circumstances into account. The ruling is highly problematic. To be sure, it reveals a lack of clarity when it comes to legal definitions…but even more troubling is what it says about the overall direction of Canadian—and 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. The court argued in such a case 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 children being abused. It is deeply sad that we live in a culture where the phenomenon of teenage children sending nude pictures of themselves 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 minimize 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 is a society that has already accepted the sexual objectification of underage children as a part of life. Acts that lead to permanent humiliation of girls are very serious and are due serious penalties.

This challenge is set to become even more intense. The whole notion of so-called “victimless crimes” is rearing its ugly head with the advent of AI generated pornography. 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? For starters, it’s a crime against himself. One can argue that the man who finds his satisfaction this way is dehumanizing himself and the fake children he stares at. Though does not the same apply to violent pornography involving consenting adults? Are not women degraded by it? 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? We have. And it hamstrings our ability to make important distinctions.

Pornography is already a cultural nightmare. It’s set to become a legal nightmare too. The fear relative to child pornography is that in the West we already have a culture that makes the weak very vulnerable and routinely thinks of children as highly sexualized. Just 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 supposed “harmless” crime.

Yes, the law needs to calibrate the range of crimes relative to child pornography. It must distinguish the idiotic hormone-addled teenagers from the predatory pedophiles. But I am cynical that our legal systems are up to the task. We live in a culture that routinely glorifies evil and is deeply obsessed with transgressive sex. The arguments made by the Canadian Supreme Court without further qualification will ultimately serve the wicked and make the weak, in this case children, even weaker.

I’m Carl Trueman.

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