Saturday 14th June 2008 - I am saddened

"Once upon a time, a just-pubescent girl stripped naked in front of a middle-aged man, who gazed at her physique, judged its best angles, and how her image might best be presented to the world, and he photographed her. Then she dressed and went about her life, and goes about it still. While we discuss Bill Henson’s work and its putative merits, and the fate of our society-gone-bad, just hold that thought in your head, and let it temper your response." That quote is from this article "Henson exhibition - In your outrage don't forget the subject", in the June edition of the Melbourne Anglican. Jane Still wrote that. I sort of think maybe she is the girl she writes about.
And this From the June edition of the Australian Christian Lobby's e-news letter, under the heading "Art controversy highlights need to address sexualisation of children"
"ACL believes the wrong test has been applied on this issue. The question should have been whether it was right to use, whether there is parental consent or not, a child to pose naked for photographs or any art meant for public consumption and ultimately profit. We believe that the fact that no charges can be laid points to a flawed law, not a weak case.
Justified public outrage over this issue has also highlighted the highly sexualised environment in which children are now raised."
Who is right and who is wrong.
This is what I wrote in two separate emails to friends in the last 24 hours over this issue.
"Have we become so paranoid in our efforts to protect our children that we have allowed ourselves to be paralysed in that fear? Stan"
"I am really saddened that the ACL have taken this stand. You see, Dave, as I said in my other email, we are so frightened of offending so called sensibilities that now we now are denied the right to take certain photo's. Not every photographer is a pornographic paedophile. And, yet this is exactly what we brand people who take such photo's. What next? The thought police will now have a look at the photo's we take of our own children?

In our efforts to protect children from paedophiles we have paralysed ourselves completely.

Stan"
I haven't seen these photo's. So as to the content of the photo's I can't/wont comment. And I don't take nude photo's of my girls. That also is not an issue. What is at issue is the media driven, and may I suggest even possible Feminist driven hysteria over what should be a celebration of the human body. In their collective efforts in protecting the innocence of these children, they are actually making sexual objects out of them.
I am reminded of a conversation I once had with a now departed Aunt of mine. I had noticed she had some pictures of sculptured body's complete with "those" bits. I called them dirty pictures. She admonished me not to call what God had created beautiful, dirty. That conversation occurred over 40 years ago.
In the intervening years a lot changed. We came up with all sorts of discrimination and harassment laws. Now we must be the master of "correct" speak. Now, if you are a single man, you do not under any circumstance lay hands in any manner on a young child, or for that matter, a teenager. You may well find yourself branded "paedophile". If you game enough to speak to one of the opposite gender, don't. You may find yourself up before the sexual harassment board. Do not under any circumstance call an Englishman a "pom" or you will be up before a race discrimination court.
Presume everyone guilty before they open their mouth.
Better still, wrap every one up in cotton wool, don't allow them access to a camera, gouge out their eyes so they can't see and let every one live in isolation.