Applying sideways logic to pedophilia!

I remember having seen the movie Brainscan on video back in the 1990s. I remembered liking the movie quite a bit back then, and thought that the story was clever enough that I should ~~force my wife~~ allow my wife to enjoy it with me. Surprisingly, the special effects on this held up fairly well for being 15 years old; there isn’t anything so fake that it takes you out of the movie (possibly one scene where we see a foot being cut off, but eh, I haven’t ever amputated a foot, so who knows). The story was still good enough to make the movie watchable, although the huge surprise twist ending aspect was completely lost to me since I had already seen the movie, but also to my wife -since it was foreshadowed pretty much from the opening credits. That is the risk you take when you try to go back and watch movies you remember fondly from your younger years though; you may have simply been easier to fool when you were younger.

At some point during the movie, the main character is watching a young lady through her bedroom window (here I use the term “young lady” relatively; she was supposed to be around 15 years old for the story of the film, though I can’t figure out which actress it was, so I can’t find her true age) and it appears as though we are going to get to see her topless. I turned to my wife and said, “Ooh, I think we get to see her tits!” And the wife said something like “She’s too young for you to be looking at them.” To which I replied, “This movie came out in 1994, she’s at least 30 now.” Game, Set, Match. Right? Well, it turns out that the wife thinks that just because she was (or was supposedly) underage at the time the movie was made it makes it perverted to look at her naked -despite the fact that she has obviously passed the age of consent in the mean time…

Leave it to a woman to come up with some crazy shit like that.

Which leads me to the sideways logic and its application to pedophilia. For the purposes of this example I am going to have to make a lot of suppositions. I know that the situation could never present itself exactly as I will describe it, but nothing in life ever does. I want to try to separate this down to its barest form to try to determine exactly where the moral boundary is, where the legal boundary is, and whether the moral and legal boundaries even intersect. This is purely hypothetical, of course, and the only question I am concerned about is the end question, not how or why we arrive there…

A family lives in a house with two small children. Unbeknown to anyone, there are cameras hidden in the bedrooms of the children. The cameras run to a DVR somewhere that records thousands of hours of footage, but it is never viewed by anyone. The children live in the same house until they are in their 30s, at which point they discover the DVR. The video contains a lot of footage of each of them totally naked, dressing, undressing, etc. Knowing there is a market for such material, they decide to sell the video. Is this wrong?

Legally, of course, this is wrong. Distribution of naked images of children is a crime. The legal theory, however, is that it is exploitation of the children, and in our scenario there has been no such exploitation, as the photos were never seen by human eyes until the children were fully grown, they were never made to pose for the photos, and they themselves are the ones that are distributing them. So while it is legally wrong, it seems that the basis of the laws that make it wrong do not take the welfare of the children into consideration at all. But illegal is illegal, and distribution of this would be against the law.

How about morals? Is it morally wrong for them to distribute this? I am asking if it is morally wrong for them to distribute it here, not whether it is morally wrong for someone to look at it. Obviously it is morally wrong to look at photos of naked children, but is it morally wrong for them to sell them? If it is morally wrong to sell the photos, is it morally wrong to give them away?

Personally I think it is definitely immoral and illegal to look at the photos. However I can’t really get my head wrapped around how it could be immoral or illegal for them to sell them. I am absolutely sure they would get convicted (if caught) of distributing the photos of naked children, but I just can’t imagine a jury convicting someone for selling photos of themselves.

What do you think?

July 2017

Cancer: 6/22-7/22
For 34 years you have been painstakingly removing a single hair from the head of each of woman you murder -with plans to weave them into a belt. A mishap involving a a candle-warmer, a vacuum cleaner, and the police breaking down the door to take you 'dead or alive' will bring your collecting days to an unfortunate end.

Leo: 7/23-8/22
Your plan to rook your boyfriend into marrying you by faking a pregnancy will fail this week. There are several reasons why this plan will fail: 1) you have denied him sex for your entire relationship, promising him that flower on the honeymoon. 2) You actually are pregnant. 3) You've been wearing a T-shirt that says 'Gold Digger' on it since the day you met him. 4) The single strand of hair that the Cancer (horoscope above) pulls from your head will be the one and only time he leaves his own DNA at the crime scene.

Virgo: 8/23-9/22
Okay, maybe the stars have been a bit harsh. They know you are a good guy, but you've made a lot of mistakes. The stars are willing to meet at Gina's Coffee Shop on July 12th at noon. If you aren't there, you may as well write off visitation of your kids.

Libra: 9/23-10/22
98% That is the specific number you will give your wife before you jump out of the plane. That optimistic chance of survival will slowly fade as you realize that gravity doesn't care a great deal if you have your arms out or not: Terminal velocity is terminal velocity. Your attempt to recreate the famous scene from the movie Point Break will end just as it should have in the movie: A horrible mass of flesh and bone several miles away from the guy who actually did have the parachute.

Scorpio: 10/23-11/21
The stars have a huge "to do" list. As such, your childhood wish to have sex with Anna Nichole Smith will finally come true this week. No, there's no way to stop it. The stars do apologize for the lateness of the fulfillment of this request, but they think your friends will count it anyway.

Sagitarius: 11/22-12/21
You've seen the movie The Number 23 exactly twenty-two times. You've built your life around avoiding that number. You''ll feel supremely confident when you leave your house on 07/12/2017. But, on 07/12/2017, you will step onto the sidewalk only to be struck and killed by a drunk driver. The time of impact? Exactly 11:01:00am on 07/12/2017. You will have exactly enough time to add up the digits of the date AND time: 1+1+0+1+0+0+0+7+1+2+2+0+1+7=23. Your realization that any date, time, or irrelevant number can be made to equal 23 will be moot.

Capricorn: 12/22-1/19
The stars have been watching you. And your daughter. Oh my, how we have been watching your daughter... Blah, blah, something about a star rising in Orion, blah, blah. The stars will definitely offer you better guidance once that daughter is of legal age.

Aquarius: 1/20-2/18
Every man wants to die a hero. That's human nature. But you have obsessed about it. When little Johnny accidentally starts a fire in his trash can this week, you should calmly walk out of the house with everyone else. If you happen to stand in Johnny's room screaming "take me, I'm the one you want!" That action may be ill-perceived by the police. The firefighters aren't even going to respond; the trash can fire burned itself out without even melting the plastic of the can.

Pisces: 2/19-3/20
Billy-Ray has been wearing that mullet for thirty damn years, so you figured yours would be fine, too. You'll soon realize that Billy-ray can rock that hairdo because he doesn't have to get it near the shake machine at Dairy Queen. You, on the other hand, have to get those lovely locks right up in there. Or, your now-naked scalp did.

Aries: 3/21-4/19
While the police report will read "failed attempt to jump the Grand Canyon", and the coroner's report will read "severe blunt-force trauma", everyone who knows you will know that they should have read "Eh, I think I can make it."

Taurus: 4/20-5/20
Rape. It's a big, scary word. It will also be the most appropriate word for what the biggest guy in jail is about to do to you. Please confer with a Cancer for advice on how to handle it.

Gemini: 5/21-6/21
Yeah, your Lyft driver is also carrying a knife. Unwanted advances will also result in removal of the penis. Keep it in your pants. Unless, of course, the Uber driver already handed it to you. In that case you can wave that thing around like a flag. You're probably not going to get a ride, but you are going to be one in a very exclusive group of men who can 'wave it around like a flag'.

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