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Providing Liberty for Our Children
By Christine Rodgers, Winsted
In April, the Supreme Court of our land voted on the constitutionality of a law intended to crack down on the production and distribution of virtual (another name for extremely realistic) images of children in pornographic situations. This group of nine appointed individuals voted with a 6-3 majority to favor the rights of the licentious over the rights of the innocent. (The Supreme Court case was Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition; the law being challenged was a part of the Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996.)
It was with dismay and utter disbelief that I heard this reported. How can any thinking citizen condone the use of photographs that can only serve as a stimulant for perverse behavior? Every nightly newscast lately has been filled with the tragedy of young people being raped, sodomized and/or killed, or at the least traumatized for life, by teachers, athletic coaches and members of the clergy of all denominations. The reasoning of the Supreme Court judges was that real children are not being hurt or exploited in the creation of these images. I wanted to scream when I heard the utter stupidity of the supposed intelligentsia. What can they possibly be thinking?
Now, with the death of Christina Long, a 13-year-old killed by a man whom she met on the Internet, members of our U.S. House of Representatives have decided to expand the authority of the police in order to wiretap the lines of sexual predators. The reason it took so long to pass this bill (Child Sex Crimes Wiretapping Act of 2001, H.R. 1877) is that Congress was concerned about infringing on the First Amendment rights of the public.
Perhaps the Supreme Court and Congress should take a closer look at the preamble of our Constitution. At its inception it declared that its purpose is to "insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity." If our Congress insisted that the Supreme Court act responsibly in their decision-making, then perhaps we would be more able to provide the same freedom and liberty for our children that we have enjoyed.
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