The Simpsons porn case

So now you can go to prison for owning sexual Simpsons cartoons.

The Simpsons child pornography case from Australia is just scary. The western world is slowly turning into weird surreal fascist states. I think it's just completely ridiculous, treating cartoon characters in the legal system as if they were real children.

As someone points out in the discussion when you follow the previous link, The Simpsons were created in the late 80s, so they would all be more than 21 years old today.

And how would a judge deal with a character like Peter Pan (as used in Alan Moore's "Lost Girls") who is ancient, but refuses to grown up? And how would you deal with murders in comics, if you follow this new line of thinking? is watching a murder in a comic book like watching a snuff movie? How about classic literary novels featuring coming-of-age sex scenes with underage characters? Will they soon be outlawed?

The implications of this case are scary and staggering.

(Edit: Sorry. that was just an incoherent ramble. I really should write something more coherent)

Neil Gaiman writes:

I think it's nonsensical in every way that it could possibly be nonsensical. The Simpsons characters aren't real people. They definitely aren't real children. (Given that they first appeared in the late eighties, they're also all over eighteen now...)

The famous 1967 Wally Wood "Disney Memorial Orgy" poster (http://flickr.com/photos/25308024@N08/2509508040/sizes/o/>(possibly not safe for work, might prompt embarrassing questions from small children, do not click on this if a small reproduction of cartoon characters doing softcore filthy things upsets you)is a parody of Disney's image, an attack in cartoon form on the idea of consumerism and the innocence of cartoon characters, as the Disney characters let their hair down and indulge in a memorial orgy for the late Walt Disney. The idea that you could be arrested in the Western World for having that image in your computer is mind-boggling, let alone for owning Lost Girls, or for doodling members of the Peanuts gang doing things they tended not to do in the Schulz comics, or for reading Harry Potter slash, or owning the Brass Eye Paedophilia special. And, I should warn members of the Australian judiciary, fictional characters don't just have sex. Sometimes they murder each other, and take fictional drugs, and are cruel to fictional animals, and throw fictional babies off roofs. Crimes, crime everywhere.

The ability to distinguish between fiction and reality is, I think, an important indicator of sanity, perhaps the most important. And it looks like the Australian legal system has failed on that score.