A man in Britain has been convicted for his
fantasies.
Robul Hoque, 39, was found guilty of downloading “prohibited
images” of cartoon girls, some in school uniforms, doing dirty
deeds. The fact that these manga drawings are available on
legitimate sites did not sway the judge. Nor did the fact that—oh
yeah—there were no actual humans in the pictures.
No humans. So how old, exactly, is a cartoon? Is the cartoon 7,
or 9, or just shy of 18? Trick question: A cartoon doesn’t have an
age, because a cartoon is never born. The life meter never started
ticking.
If owning or admiring the mere drawn image of something illegal
is grounds for sentencing, wouldn’t we have to sentence anyone who
goes to the Louvre and parks himself in front of Ingres’ Odalisque?
That there’s a concubine and bigamy is against the law. Move on to
the Mona Lisa or you’re under arrest!
More immediately: What if you yourself bought a T-shirt with a
big pot leaf on it? Isn’t that like drug possession, or at least
fantasizing about drug possession? Wear that outside of Colorado
and maybe you should expect a knock on the door.
And while we’re at it, what would Hoque’s judge, Tony Briggs,
suggest we do about all those people—most still in grammar
school—who own toy dragons? Aren’t dragons illegal pets—or at
least, wouldn’t they be, if they existed? It doesn’t matter that
they’re not real, right? Reality seems to be just a trifling
detail. So wouldn’t the kid with a stuffed Puff be guilty of owning
(or wanting to own) a dangerous (if non-existent) beast with the
power to both toast and eat people?
Lock ’em up!
Police found about 300
images—some still, some animated—on Hoque’s computer, none of real
people. He pleaded guilty to 10 specimen charges and received a
nine month sentence suspended for two years, according to The
Gazette Live. What’s more, Hoque’s first encounter with the
law was in 2008 when he was found guilty of making “Tomb
Raider-style” pictures of fictional kids.
You may not love a guy who spends his spare time doing that—or
you might. Because either way, we’re talking about a hobby. Less
disingenuously, we’re talking about someone who wants to look at
pictures that probably excite him. Sort of like lots of people find
NCIS exciting, even though they don’t intend to go out and murder
anyone. No kids were violated by Hoque’s hobby, so why is this
anything other than a private matter?
As Hoque’s barrister, Richard Bennett said:
“This case should serve as a warning to every Manga and
Anime fan to be careful. It seems there are many thousands of
people in this country, if they are less then careful, who may find
themselves in that position too.”
We’ve seen just this past week how third-rail the issue of child
porn is. Author John Grisham was practically pilloried as a child
rapist for wondering if our
child porn possession sentences are too high—a thought bubble
he felt forced
to deny ever having had. (See Radley Balko’s “In
Defense of John Grisham” for a gimlet-eyed look at how
dangerous it is to even suggest there might be some overkill in our
child porn laws, even though guys with a small stash of the stuff
can end up with much
longer sentences than men who actually raped a child.)
So perhaps Judge Briggs is onto something: If you want to fill
the jails, just arrest anyone who has ever had a sexual fantasy
that involved something other than one man, one woman, a notarized
letter of consent (just to be safe) and a condom (ditto).
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