University of Hawaii Professor Recommends Legalizing Child Porn
Update: The University of Hawaii denounced this recommendation after receiving letters from 250 Change.org members.
A recently released study from a retired University of Hawaii professor recommends legalizing child pornography as a technique to reduce child sexual abuse and child prostitution. The study not only makes a dangerous recommendation that could lead to the assault of millions of children, it forgets one critical thing: child pornography is itself a form of child sexual abuse. It's time the University of Hawaii denounced this horrific plan to legalize child porn.
Milton Diamond, a University of Hawaii professor who retired in 2009, used his university credentials when he published his recent study Pornography and Sex Crimes in the Czech Republic. In it, he studies the legalization of adult pornography in the Czech Republic and concludes that when adult pornography was legalized, sex crimes against adults did not increase. He also claims that when child pornography was made legal, sex crimes against children decreased. Therefore, he reasons, child pornography should be made legal -- for the good of children.
Diamond's study is an epic FAIL, however, in both methodology and policy recommendations. While he shows a correlation between a drop in child abuse rates and a relaxing of Czech porn laws, he offers no evidence beyond pure conjecture that one causes the other. Diamond also admits that laws regarding pornography in the Czech Republic have had unclear definitions for the past several decades, making it difficult to tell exactly what sorts of images were legal at a given time. His recommendation to legalize child pornography is also in direct conflict with just about every child advocacy and protection agency in the world, who almost universally agree the proliferation of child porn exacerbates child sex abuse.
Of course, all this is beside the point when you consider that child pornography is child sexual abuse. Child pornography is nothing more than pictorial or video evidence of a child being sexually exploited and harmed. So not only does child pornography not reduce child sexual abuse, it includes child sexual abuse in its production. Furthermore, child pornography is used to groom children for trafficking, and traffickers' threats to send dirty images to kids' families have kept them enslaved.
Diamond and team claim to have a solution for that: age regression software. While they "do not approve of the use of real children in the production or distribution of child pornography" they suggest that "artificially produced materials might serve." It's true that software exists that can make a 20-year-old woman look 12, or even sometimes 6 or 7. But even legalizing age-regressed child porn indicates to offenders that the sort of activities depicted -- violently raping a child, for example -- are acceptable. Plus it relies on the assumption that pedophiles (not a group well-known for their self-control) will be satisfied with faux kiddie porn and never seek out the real thing. And as Jezebel points out, under current U.S. law child pornography can only be prosecuted if an actual child was harmed, making age-regressed porn effectively legal today. And yet, at least 100,000 American kids are forced into the commercial sex industry each year and even more are raped and abused by family members. Sounds like Diamond's theory is already failing in the U.S.
Since Diamond used his University of Hawaii credentials to publish his recommendation to legalize child pornography, the university is implicated in this dangerous suggestion based on fuzzy science. Tell the University of Hawaii to publicly denounce Diamond's policy recommendation that child pornography be legalized and let the world know his views are not their own. No credible academic institution should support facilitating the rape and abuse of children through legalizing child pornography.
Photo credit: Ken Lund
Replies
So what's my point, I cannot depend on any Na Kanaka to help out, so therefore you are not my audience.
Ever since the abortionist (Na Kanaka men and their silent wives) passed the law to abort Native Hawaiian babies, Hawaii went into a downward spiral.
The Universtiy of Hawaii Law school was behind Milton Diamond all the way...on this disgusting project since the late 60's.
However, one need to understand what's in the fire for SB 1520 and it's roll and how it likes to 'sexuality' and it's practices!!!
Or, one can do the best thing and say nothing and allow other people to speak for you! Such as:
"
Lilikala K. Kameʻeleihiwa is a Hawaiian artist and director and professor at the University of Hawaiʻi's Center for Hawaiian Studies. Her earliest work was published under the name of Lilikala L. Dorton.
Trained as a historian, she is also an expert in Hawaiian cultural traditions and in the issues driving the Hawaiian sovereignty movement. She served as a co-scriptwriter of the 1993 award winning documentary An Act of War: The Overthrow of the Hawaiian Nation.
Fluent in the Hawaiian language, she has served as protocol officer and crew for the double hulled Polynesian voyaging canoes Hōkūleʻa and Hawaiʻiloa, and has written the first year long course in traditional navigation offered at any university in the world. Since 1987, she has written another dozen courses in Hawaiian history, mythology and culture for the Center for Hawaiian Studies.
Currently, she is working on a book on Hawaiian sexuality as reflected in Hawaiian mythology, history, poetry and literature, wherein multiple partners, brother-sister mating, and bisexuality were considered a celebration of life."
This 'whole subject of Native Hawaiian sexuality' will send mixed messages to the world and again we will return to the Kamehameha I days of sexual insaity because someone from the University of Hawaii at Manoa reconstructed history to suit the appropriations for one, and the published notions of 'who we are'.
Margaret Meads study; "In 1925, Margaret Mead journeyed to the South Pacific territory of American Samoa. She sought to discover whether adolescence was a universally traumatic and stressful time due to biological factors or whether the experience of adolescence depended on one's cultural upbringing."
Later, those that were interveiwed..." In addition, some Samoans have found her depiction of Samoan adolescent sexuality offensive."
Our sexuality and 'recognition' at the state level will be detriment to our young people. We must stand up as a living community and not just subjects of 'sick' science and 'law'.
At the time of 1978 con con not only we native Hawaiian women were countering abortionist, we were countering Jon Van Dykes need to legalize child porn in Hawaii too. My question is where the hell were you?
One needs to jump over a heap of crap to get to the real truth of whose doing what and to whom!