When I mentioned the new anti porn law (to come into effect on 26^th January 2009) to a man who is into ball bashing. He refused to believe me. He said that can’t possibly be true because it would criminalise most of the UK.

But sadly it’s true.

The law has come about from the efforts of a family whose daughter was, very sadly, murdered by a homicidal maniac. 

Unfortunately they decided that the problem wasn’t with the mind of the man who did this, but had to be because he had been looking at internet porn.

If the problem really was internet porn corrupting the minds of those who view it into wanting to torture and kill people -  then most of the UK would be homicidal maniacs.

But, since the streets aren’t full of maddened people inflamed by internet porn looking to murder the next unsuspecting person to cross their path, it seems  pretty obvious that porn can’t be to blame.

After all, Jack the Ripper didn’t browse internet porn sites before going out and murdering women. He did it because he was a violent man who was mentally disturbed.

And, whilst mentally disturbed, violent men will browse internet porn sites, it doesn’t follow from this, that it is the internet porn that is causing the problem. More likely than not that man would have committed that sort of crime anyway, with or without pornographic imagery.

And the new law is truly draconian. Punishment for possessing an image considered to be both pornographic and extreme and likely to cause severe injury to the breasts, anus or genitals or to be life threatening, now carries a three year prison sentence and having your name put on the Child Protection Register for life.

An extreme image is defined as one that grossly offensive, disgusting or otherwise of obscene nature.

Whilst the words ‘extreme porn’ and ‘severe injury’ might sound as if they do not pose much of a threat to adult mages that’s not the case, because how do you define extreme and severe?

Life threatening images are also banned. But how do you define life threatening?

If you tie someone up and gag them and take pics of them it can now be argued that this is life threatening, because if you weren’t there to remove the gag, they could suffocate.

And how can you be sure that someone, somewhere wouldn’t consider having just about anything inserted in the arse might not constitute some sort of risk to it?

I am sure if you asked the medical profession whether it was ok to insert some toy up the arse they would hastily tell you that it wasn’t recommended.

Yet millions of people both enjoy doing this and like to view others doing it.

And by possession of an image, we are not just talking about adult websites displaying these images, we are talking about someone downloading a pic or buying a magazine that shows double anal, or ball busting or whatever.

Because the purpose of the new law isn’t to take action against porn websites. This being pretty well impossible since so many of them are located outside the UK, it is to criminalise the UK population as individuals. You, your brother, your son, your husband, your wife, your boyfriend, your girlfriend and yes, also your daughter.

Because women like porn too.

This new law comes into effect on 26^th January 2009, after which you have 61days in which to delete any images which might fall foul of it.

Of course even if you are aware of this new law (and most aren’t – see above) you are not going to have a clue what sort of image might fall foul of it.

This new law is the direct consequence of having a government with no policies, and who try and curry favour with the public by reacting with knee jerk enthusiasm to whatever story is currently being printed by the media.

And it is widely considered that this law is going to come a cropper since it will put the UK in breach of the European Convention of Human Rights.

One rather wonders how Jane Longhurst would have felt about having her name permanently linked to what is about to become an internationally infamous law?

Wouldn’t she have preferred to have her life commemorated in some more positive way?