Let’s start this topic by stating the obvious right at the outset: Nobody is in favor of child pornography. OK? Repeat after me: Nobody thinks child pornographers should get any legal protection.

Here’s another comment that I hope is obvious: All art cannot be about puppy dogs and cotton candy. Some art — legitimate and mainstream art — will and should be about difficult topics, hard topics. Even painful topics.

So, from there, here’s my question:

Today, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a child porn case, upholding a law that “sets a five-year mandatory prison term for promoting, or pandering, child pornography. It does not require that someone actually possesses child pornography.”

Opponents of this law, according to the Associated Press story ^[1]:

Opponents have said the law could apply to movies like “Traffic ^[2]” or “Titanic ^[3]” that depict adolescent sex or the marketing of other material that may not be pornography.

(Justice Antonin) Scalia, in his opinion for the court, said the law takes a reasonable approach to the issue by applying it to situations where the purveyor of the material believes or wants a listener to believe that he has actual child pornography.

So, do you think Scalia is right? Suppose a movie included a plot line in which a villain was a purveyor of child pornography? Suppose a movie included scenes (or suggested scenes) of under-aged sex (or rape) ^[4]? These are difficult topics, but they are timely and topical and may be worthy subjects for legitimate, mainstream art. Would they be verboten under the law?