Tuesday Debate: Sexting

By Glenn and Jake



Sexting is the act of sending nude pictures over a cellular telephone. This debate is not whether it is morally right or wrong to do such. I think we can all agree that it is very right. I would love it if somebody sent me nude photos on my phone. What we are here to debate is whether or not it is morally right to arrest 15 year olds who send dick and vag pics to fellow 15 year olds for child pornography.


Jake: Look, if these 15 year old Casanovas want to get beaver pics on their cellular telephones then they have to be ready to face the music when they get caught. It's illegal!

Glenn: Is love illegal? No matter how much Robert Greenwald might want it, we do not live in the novel A Brave New World. You can't arrest a teenager for being in love any more than you can arrest them for driving drunk.

Jake: First of all, that argument is completely ridiculous! Teens should be arrested for drinking, period. Everybody who drives drunk should be arrested and have their license taken away. These 15 year olds have no ability to be in love. They only know how to be in lust. Their lust mixed with their low self esteem causes a chemical reaction that forces them to sext nude photos to each other.

Glenn: You are correct that my argument is ridiculous; it was purposeful to make all ensuing statements I make seem more reasonable. I agree that teens should be locked up if they drive while intoxicated, but certainly drunk driving - which KILLS millions of teens a year - is worse than sexting, which has never killed anyone. In fact, it has done the opposite of killing to young libidos. If you want to make the case sexting kills more teens than drunk driving, I think we'd all like to see you try.

Jake: I would not make that case. I know sexting is not the game of a murderer. The point here is not to compare sexting to drunk driving, but rather to debate whether or not those 15 year olds should be incarcerated for getting images of nude males or females on their phone (ones that are also under 18). I say that yes, of course they should. They are committing a crime by having nude photos of <18 year olds on their phones, even Pete Townshend would agree with that (but he'd also still do it). As the old saying goes: you do the crime, you do the time.

Glenn: I will concede the technical point - nude pictures of <18 year olds are illegal - but think about the ramifications if we go to the extreme of arresting teens for sexting. Is it not unreasonable to think some teens will be arrested for simply owning naked pictures of themselves? What about teens who look at their own naked bodies in the mirror - are they not technically looking at child pornography? Where does it stop?

Jake: Much like a ferris wheel, it starts and stops in the same place. These kids need to get it through their meat headed skulls that owning a picture of a nude under 18 year old is illegal. If they want to look at nude pictures of women that look like they are under 18 they can go to the newsstand and pick up a copy of Hustler's great publication Barely Legal. That is illegal for them to own, technically, but the punishment is far less steep. If a young boy gets caught with an issue of Barely Legal then they'll probably just get yelled at by their mothers. Women can probably get a magazine similar called Twinks Monthly or Just Twinks. Something with 'twinks' in the title.

Glenn: I guess this all hinges back the earlier point you attempted to make and I, by failing to acknowledge, implicitly accepted: that teens are incapable of love. For me, love, lust, naked pictures or cell phones were never an option. But for the new generation, all of these things are happening more often and sooner. Children are getting cell phones as young as 11 and having sex for the first time as young as 10. Girls are getting their periods at the age of eight! You're trying to tell me that this theoretical 16 year old girl - having been menstruating for eight years, sexually active for six and talking on a cell phone for five - isn't ready to sext?

Jake: All I'm saying is the law is the law. While anybody under the age of 21 is legally incapable of love, they can still rub their genitals together awkwardly, as long as they aren't videotaping it (if they are under 18). Teens are growing up extremely fast, this is true. When I was 16 I was too busy wondering whether the Ultimate Warrior was the same Jim Hellwig as the late 80s and early 90s Ultimate Warrior. 16 year olds nowadays are basically rewriting the Karma Sutra and have never even read an Andy Capp comic strip. Perhaps I don't understand these children. I don't understand their sex bracelets or their mini-bikes. I never will. What I do understand is that we live in American, the land of the free. That freedom has a price tag and the price says "no children under 18 can have nude photos taken of them" and their is no bartering allowed. If there was don't you think Mark Foley would have bartered like a cowboy at a pelt shop?

Glenn: Unjust laws are meant to be broken. Moreover, obsolete or technologically unadapted laws do not NOT have to be enforced. It is completely up to school administrators and prosecutors whether these kids should be punished. Plenty of white collar criminals go free every day because they aren't prosecuted and plenty of school bullying goes on every day because school administrators choose to ignore it. I wish all child pornography laws would be repealed, but if that's unfeasible they should at least not be enforced upon children themselves.

Jake: While that makes sense, who are we to argue with the law makers of the USA? The only thing we can do is call our local officials and ask them to change the laws. If they don't then all we can do is to adhere to them.

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Hopefully this has shed some more light on this decades-old debate. As Jake said in regards to local officials, if you are not willing to make your voice heard you must silently fume about injustice. Instead of keeping quiet, we ask that you use those fumes to power a turbine and use that energy to write a comment with YOUR opinions on sexting.