Filthy porn

Via Stumbling and Mumbling I discover there is a storm brewing up about an artwork in the Baltic Gallery that has been removed because some people think that it is child porn. However that is not the only one, how about this piece of disgusting filth:



The world must be wiped clean of this degrading slime. Does this pervert, this bastard Leonardo whatever-his-name, think he can get away with such moral degeneracy. Bet he was an immigrant as well. He should be strung up. He's already dead? Well, dig him up and hang him anyway! Grrrrr!!!!

On a more serious note Nan Goldin's art probably is child porn under the current legal definition, because it contains people that could be thought to be under 18 (whether they actually are or not is irrelevant) in positions that some people think that other people might think is sexually provocative. Whether anybody actually does find them sexually provocative, something that I would find extremely unlikely in this case, is again irrelevant. Yes I did get the age right, you can legally make love at 16, but if you take a happy snap the law would put you in jail if you haven't already been killed by a tabloid lynch mob.

It is rather depressing of sign of the paranoia of our society that a photo that would a mere 10 or 20 years ago not be given a second glance has now been imbued with sexual overtones by a public desperate to create demons out of shadows.