The principle that the Supreme Court affirmed by rejecting the Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996 is, if you think about it, quite simple: It’s not child pornography if it doesn’t involve children. Or, to put it in another way: A 20-year-old woman with a body that looks like that of a 13-year-old is still an adult and has the right, if she so wishes, to have pornographic pictures of herself taken and distributed. (Don’t accuse me of sexism: A 20-year-old man has exactly the same right.)

The majority opinion of the court makes it quite clear that the pre-existing law exceeded any reasonable boundaries: “”For instance, the literal terms of the statute embrace a Renaissance painting depicting a scene from classical mythology … these images do not involve, let alone harm, any children in the production process.”” Moreover, the opinion states, “”The CPPA applies to a picture in a psychology manual, as well as to a movie depicting the horrors of sexual abuse.””

The harsh penalties that the law prescribed are also criticized: “”With these severe penalties in force, few legitimate movie producers or book publishers, or few other speakers in any capacity, would risk distributing images in or near the uncertain reach of the law.”” The law, in other words, was designed with a scare tactic in mind; its uncertain boundaries and harsh penalties would inhibit speech well beyond its literal reach.

The Supreme Court found very little ground for such a broad prohibition, to the point that even the dissenting opinion of notoriously conservative Chief Justice William Rehnquist recognizes the need to “”construe the CPPA.””

While it is not surprising that the Supreme Court decided to strike down the law, it is more surprising that such a bill could be passed to begin with and that the decision of the court should provoke the controversy that it did. Two aspects are interesting and worth analyzing, revealing of the status of contemporary American culture.

The first aspect is the increased liberation and autonomy of images from their referents. Images have acquired an independent reality, not only as depictions of something else, but as autonomous subjects of cultural discourse. The Platonic disdain for images (as mere copies of copies of the true Ideas) has been reversed to the point in which what we used to call reality is but a mirror of the image world. A world in which, for instance, images do not register the existence of celebrities, but create them.

The CPPA is a sign of an imperfect transition between a culture of referents and one of images. While the law recognizes the complex universe of images and their multiform signification modes, it tries to correct the primacy of the image by extending the signification relation to nonexistent referents — that is, by creating virtual referents, with the same legal protection of the real ones.

This is, quite frankly, a step into madness. The Supreme Court correctly argued that even in a society of images, the law must recognize the difference between being and appearing.

The second aspect is the political attempt to legislate morality — the act was passed in 1996, at the time of the infamous “”Contract with America”” by one of the most liberticidal (the neologism is well-deserved) congresses of the century.

The sad irony is that, in this act, Congress trivialized the crime of child pornography and reduced the importance of its true victims: the children. If laws against child pornography are designed to protect children for only this purpose, then the moral status of a man who gets excited looking at children’s pictures must not interest us. You and I might think that the man needs serious medical attention, but as long as no minors are involved, this is no concern for the law.

If, on the other hand, the mere image of what appears to be a minor is punishable, then what we are punishing is the morality of using such depictions. But on one hand, as the Supreme Court opined, “”It is … well-established that speech may not be prohibited because it concerns subjects offending our sensibilities.”” On the other hand, by focusing on the immoral nature of the conduct, the law diverts attention from the essential element: the protection of the children.

Child pornography is an aggression to children and a violation of their special status as forming individuals. As such, it should be punished. The enjoyment that a person may have by looking at a computer-generated image is not for us to judge.

The only way synthetic images could be made relevant is by showing that the presence and availability of these images will increase the demand and the production of pornography involving children, but the Supreme Court found that “”the government has shown no more than a remote connection between speech that might encourage thoughts or impulses and any resulting child abuse.””

Short of this justification, a law that punishes the possession of pornographic images for their effects on adult individuals, rather than for the involvement of minors, is an attempt to regulate thought and morality, and has no place in our jurisprudence.