Much has been made of the fact that technology now makes it extremely easy for teenagers to send pictures of their genitalia to one another. I, for one, think this is fantastic. Sending fully or partially nude pictures to your boyfriend or girlfriend, or "sexting," represents the ultimate in safe sex. There is virtually no other sexual activity that incurs a literally 0% risk of pregnancy or transmitting sexually transmitted diseases.
Unfortunately, our current laws have not yet caught up with the technology and teenagers around the country are being hit with child pornography charges. This makes no sense whatsoever. The point of child pornography laws is to prevent children from sexual abuse and exploitation. Clearly, there need to be laws protect children from being used in child pornography. But, let's think clearly about this. The bad thing that we are preventing is not the production of any image containing the nude bodies of teenagers. What we are preventing is child abuse. By prosecuting teenagers who send each other naked photos, we are criminalizing normal sexual behavior.
Adolescents are quite skilled at getting themselves into all kinds of trouble and need our help in so many ways. We don't need to further mess up their lives by punishing them for what is normal, healthy activity.
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I was looking back at an old postand happened to read this comment. In response, I wrote the following: Thanks for the thoughtful response to my post, Parlancheq. You wrote it almost a year ago and I just happened to...……