Inappropriate photos in art gallery seized by police., page 13

There are so many things that I want to say to everyone in this thread that I'm afraid I have neither the time, the patience, or the willpower to sustain me through all of it... but I shall endeavor in the least to try.

I've long been a voice of dissent against anyone who tends towards a righteous set of beliefs, self contained and fulfilling in ones own expectations. Whether it is something I agree with or not, I look to the corners and niches of arguments that people had best not say out of fear of their fellow man.

But to start of somewhat light and in response to something Jamie has cited in various posts in this thread, and others have trumpeted; It is not the governments responsibility to protect children.

It is yours. And if you fail in that protection, you have nobody but yourself to blame. It isn't the governments responsibility to protect any of us, at least here in the U.S.A. it isn't. People, when you abdicate your responsibilities as a parent, you abdicate more than merely the safety of your children...

You abdicate your own safety by allowing the government to redefine you as children.

That being said, on the subject of Pornography, Sexuality, Art and Human Dignity... art is not merely the grecian beauty of the classical oil paintings during the rennaissance. Art is the subject of Russian Disdain, it was the project of crushing oppression in the film Equilibrium. Art is the freedom of voice and soul and spirit. It is the essence of life that pushes us beyond our comfortable limits, brings us to tears, stirs us to emotion.. anger, lust, loss, fear, sadness, hope, whimsy and whit.

Our society is so afraid of itself, our modern civilized nature so tainted and impure with fear of Humanity in its rawest and most bleak or inspiring. Clinging to our mediocrity we hug it to our breast like a blanket from heaven, afraid to step outside our boundaries and to embrace the wonderful, the monstrous. We fear to dream lest our dreams be shattered by the expectation and grinding need of society for its safety.

Safety.

And in the puritanical hearts of those who decry the visage of pubescent blush fresh on the supple form of an adolescents first steps into the world of sexuality, sensuality... and awkward metamorphosis... they cannot see what is wrong in their own hearts.

Father's and Mothers, you will never protect your children from Sexuality. Your daughter's will have sex, and a lot of them will like it. Even more of them will eventually get pregnant and have children of their own. Your son's will spend their tender tweenage years yearning and fantasizing of visceral, primal sex in practically every situation that their hormone poisoned minds can envision... about most of every female around them.

THIS is normal. THIS is humanity. Pubescence IS sexuality. Pubescence IS adulthood, Pubescence is the power of procreation and the bodies of blushing young maidens and lanky, lean squires desire.

Or have you adults so soon forgotten your own panting, heated yearnings of those first moments when you recognized with agonizing vision a sexual attraction you had NEVER experienced before?

And teenagers? Teenagers have sex. PRETEENS have sex. Where they can get it, IF they can get it, they'll do everything they can to get it because their bodies are raging for it in those akward years.

Of course, the proprieties of a civilized society will curb some of this tendency, it will attempt to delay and stave off the lust with as ineffective a strategy as one might surmise.

Yet sexuality in youth isn't the only thing... there is a lot of confusion as well. A lot of self esteem issues in relation to the changes going through their bodies... and in our great Western Wisdom, we demonize the flesh and anything sensual.

What? No, not just for teenagers. FOR EVERYONE. There is such deep seated shame and embarrassment about sex in our culture, and much of it starts from those awkward pubescent years where we never truly feel confident in ourselves, and then the real world hammers that sensation home.

Some of you here rant about the sexualization of our teenagers, and how unwholesome things have become. None of you have read much, have you?

Three to four generations ago, a goodly portion of our populace were marrying at 12 to 15. Girls were having sex then too. IN fact, what we define as "CHILDREN" were having sex as soon as they were recognized as capable of doing so in a lot of cases.

You go, you ask the eldest of your family members what age they got married at. What age their first children were born at.

And then you come back here and rant at me about how we shouldn't be using the past as example, all the while you whine and moan about a fictitious past where preteens and teenagers were wholesome and revered and protected from sex, sexuality, nudity and what have you.

If your whole family is somehow the reflection of this puritanical epitomy of perfection, I'll eat my hat.

Let me make myself as clear as crystal, I've never been in support of harming, molesting, raping or otherwise damaging children in the least. I find it just as heartbreaking and traumatizing as any of you...

But I won't equate any of those actions with Seeing children or preteens in a sexual or sensual light. Such appreciations have been made for AEONS people. I personally don't have such a prediliction, but who are YOU to condemn anyone for finding something sensual or sexual or provocative?

Take the plank out of thine eye.

Naturally, this post won't ever be enough to elaborate the nuance and tenor of my perspective. I welcome the accusation of pedophile, the word throwing of immoral or morally degenerate...

Those who offer it are intellectual cowards for not contemplating my words carefully, and for reducing the myriad complexities of a person down to pedantic slurs and simplicities that serve only to comfort the boxes of your minds.

Naturally, my posts are provocative and antagonistic... I wish to provoke, I WISH to antagonize with words and thoughts. For what worth is there in speaking if you cannot find the strength to SAY something of ANY worth or originality?