Monday, May 19, 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court sent a significant signal that they may be returning to sanity on the issue of child pornography. By a 7-2 vote, the Supreme Court ruled that Congress and state legislatures can pass laws that criminalize the advertising and promotion of child pornography. This is the first time that the Supreme Court has upheld a federal statute that regulates Internet sexual materials.
The law upheld by the Supreme Court passed in 2003. The legislative intent was to protect children from the danger of being sexually exploited on the Internet. The law was challenged by a Florida man who was convicted after posting this message in an Internet chat room: “Dad of toddler has ‘good’ pics of her and me for swap of your toddler pics or live cam.”
“Toddlers?!” How can anyone concerned about children argue that free speech rights protect this kind of disgusting speech and activity? Surely our societal obligations as adults to protect children trump the supposed “rights” of individual adults to pander and pimp this type of material.
The Supreme Court’s decision will make it easier to protect children, and I pray it is but the harbinger of even better decisions to come in the future.
The two dissenting justices? Justices Ginsberg and Souter. Has there ever been in the history of the U.S. Supreme Court a justice who was a more catastrophic disappointment to the president who nominated him than David Souter? If there has been, I don’t want to know about it. It would simply be too depressing.
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Diana Butler Bass is a religion scholar and author of Christianity for the Rest of Us: How the Neighborhood Church is Transforming the Faith. She blogs at 
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