In December 2008, online photos of the Simpsons characters performing sexual acts were legally deemed child pornography, prompting Columbia University professor Anne Higonnet to question why we use our limited resources on cases against pictures of children, rather than for social workers and social programs that could protect against actual sexual abuse.
“Child pornography law does something worse than chill artistic thought. It allows us to ignore what actually abuses children all the time. Strangely, every single one of the scandals about child pornography in art galleries has involved photographs of healthy and affluent white children. Protection of the most vulnerable children, apparently, is not what concerns advocates of child pornography law. Rational protection of real children against actual abuse is not the highest priority of those who demand censorship of pictures. I almost wonder if it is the contrary. Is a strident demand for censorship of images a decoy? Does it deflect the facts of child abuse, the fact, for instance, that the overwhelming majority of cases of child abuse occur in the home and are inflicted by fathers, step-fathers or boyfriends?”
