All this fuss over a sex toy?

So, I was going to post a mini-rant about the battle I constantly find myself having about where I stand with the website The Smoking Gun in general, when I saw an article that caught my eye.

What I had planned on writing about was how I find the website to be a good laugh occasionally, but how finding contract riders being published for the general public kind of irks me. The curious kid in me likes to read them, but the music business asshole in me thinks it is an invasion of artist privacy, and that whoever gave the rider away is morally corrupt. But I digress...

I was reading the news section and stumbled across this gem of an article. Now, if I'm totally off base by the end of this argument, I apologize.

First off, I think people who take advantage of children sexually (be it filming/photographing them for their own pleasure, selling said materials to people who get their rocks off on it, or doing the actual physically molestation part) are fucking sick. This is by our cultures standards of course. We have been raised to never think otherwise. In ancient Greek times for example, adult males and young boys having relations were a perfectly normal part of their daily life and society in their eyes. I'm not saying that makes a whole hell of a lot of difference, I just tend to ramble and spout off random facts that Im sure most people know to begin with.

Anyway, so I read this article and I'm sure it was meant to shock and appaul me (or in the very least make me laugh?), but the only thing I could think of was, "It's just a miniature version of the common blow-up doll". Sure, it was dressed in children's clothing and the girl doll was probably a little flat chested, but wouldn't you rather child molesters take it out on plastic dolls than real children?

So my question is: If no child involvement happened to create and distribute these dolls, is it actually a crime?

In this article the man had videos and other such things, which is why they got a warrant and searched his home in the first place. BUT hypothetically, what if the doll was the initial spark to start an investigation, would that be justifiable? I mean, what if s/he was into midgets? What if s/he couldn't afford a full-sized doll because of financial problems? What if this was his/her "travel sized" doll for business trips? The scenarios are endless.

Maybe I'm jaded from working at an adult store for two years. We did, afterall, have a 3 1/2 foot blow-up doll called "The Perfect Woman", which was a blow-up doll that could double as a place to set your beer when sitting in your favorite chair watching TV...

Note: This blog was inspired by both the "Cartman Joins NAMBLA" and "Miss Teacher Bangs a Boy" South Park episodes... oh and from my Art History classes in college.



PS: When trying to find the website link for NAMBLA on Google, it gave me the homepage. I clicked on it to get the URL to put into HTML to link it to this blog (as seen above) and it was all numbers. IP address. Great. Now I'm probably in some government listing somewhere for going to that page. Don't worry, the link above is from Wikipedia.org instead. At least you will be safe.

Goddamnit.