Reading Neil Gaiman's blog today I saw that he'd posted a letter from a fan. The fan was discussing a recent court ruling in New South Wales regarding the issue of cartoons and child pornography. It's humorous and chilling at the same time. Here's a portion of what he wrote:
A New South Wales judge has found that a man found with crude, fan made pictures depicting Simpsons characters Bart, Lisa and Maggie having sex.
Apparently these drawn images are "people" in the eyes of the law and there is no distinction made between this and actual photographs of pedophilic acts.
The magistrate was correct in determining that, in respect of both the commonwealth and the NSW offences, the word 'person' included fictional or imaginary characters .
As Gaiman points out, the Simpson children not only aren't real people, but given the age of the show, they're all over 18.
Oh this world we live in!
How 'bout we try saving the real abused children out there and leave the fictional ones to be victims of the twisted imaginations of people like me?
