The Perverse Law Of Child Pornography

Amy Adler
Associate Professor, New York University School of Law

The Columbia Law Review
March, 2001   

External link: 
< http://eon.law.harvard.edu/ilaw/Speech/Adler_full.html >

"[...] in this Article I raise questions about the censorship imposed by child pornography laws. I argue that these laws, intended to protect children from sexual exploitation, threaten to reinforce the very problem they attack. The legal tool that we designed to liberate children from sexual abuse threatens to enslave us all, by constructing a world in which we are enthralled - anguished, enticed, bombarded - by the spectacle of the sexual child."

"In our present culture of child abuse, is child pornography law the solution or the problem?
My answer is that it is both. This reading pictures law and culture as unwitting partners. Both keep the sexualized child before us. Children and sex become inextricably linked, all while we proclaim the child's innocence. The sexuality prohibited becomes the sexuality produced."