pjz99: trouble is, the kind of manoeuver at work here (and that is what I fear to see happen in the long term) looks a lot like the old foot-in-the-door-crack. I don't know of a law that makes gay love illegal in Japan. Right now, on the national scale, gay rights are respected. The fact that a freedom exists though doesn't mean that nothing can be done to chip it off. Legitimate worry, I think. After all, they're politicians. I really want time to tell me wrong, though, be sure of that.

FightingWolf: for the sake of not causing the mods ire, I propose we carry on that exchange on a private basis, as I find many of your arguments well worth an entirely separate debate. I'm genuinely interested. Are you? If so, please, let me know :)

Just getting this in before the lockdown.  I haven't actually seen any gay hentai manga/anime, but one or two users have posted links to gay anime-style poser bondage characters and props in freestuff here (not clickable links IIRC, and they post warnings of adult content), hence there may be gay ecchi manga as well.  if true, the tokyo govt. may be targetting gay stuff FAIK.  I'm opposed to gay-bashing, and I dunno how gays are treated in tokyo.

Okay, then I don't agree with your "slippery slope" logic at all.  This law seems to have as much to do with gays as it does with people who own poodles, or people who grow carrots in their yard.

Pjz99, the only way my preventions can be confirmed or not is by keeping an eye on the thing. I certainly will...

Miss Nancy: Yup, there are. It's a market in itself, aimed to an adult audience as soon as it gets kinky at all. It's also labeled as such. Manga with gay overone exist for younger audience but without the bits that are not fit for the youngsters to read yet.

Basically, there's manga for everyone if they look for it,, with factors in mind such as gender, age, professional field, social category, favourite sports, general hobbies, even tastes in food sometimes. I'm tempted to say, just like plain text books :) For example, can you imagine a manga about a guy and his 8 years old kids fishing, with nothing else happening in the whole chapter except the three of them staring at their line, waiting for something to take the bait? Well... it exists. And making it so it doesn't even get boring to read is quite a feat. Yet, it's working.

Somehow this has always amused me :)

Quote - Okay, then I don't agree with your "slippery slope" logic at all.  This law seems to have as much to do with gays as it does with people who own poodles, or people who grow carrots in their yard.

In politics it's called incrementalism and it is an effective way of moving towards whatever ends you wish.  You start of with a small ordanence, wait a bit, and then start adding to it.

That said, I don't think this mini-ban is particularly anti-gay unless the goal is to get rid of the ero-yuri moeblobs.

This is called "riding on the coattails of an unrelated issue" as far as I can tell.  I don't think there are going to be very many gays that are going to help lobby against a law that restricts the distribution of rape- and pedophelia-related cartoons to kids because they feel it threatens gay rights.  Possibly I'm mistaken, I dunno.

jesus i cant believe how this thread went into

come on folks it's just yet another crude version of antiquity trojan horse trick !

i mean, it has been done countless time those past years (thanx to WTC assault) by so called civilised democratic countries to protect the citizens despite themselves...

takre a big threat, wave it like a flag to distract attention, propose yourself to shield people from the threat, bring on mass freedom destruction weapon that has such a large action radius that it will destroy nearly everything beyond the initial threat

patriot act was a perfect example; the past 2 years of bullshit in france is on same vein

and not to mention the dna print file in france that was at star aimed to gather information on pedophiles and sexual offenders... promise i swear only them awful people will be listed in there, good folks trust me.. for your own good and safety... then after one or two years, you find nearly every and any minor civil right offender written down inside this shit.. WORSE, VICTIMS are blended up together with offenders all the same in same national police file

what do we have here ? let me put it very simply for retarded people around who like to see anything else that basic simple facts:

stage 1) hmm; i am mister suchi harakiri thing tokyo politician, i hate XXX (lets say gay)

stage 2) LOOK people ! lolicon and rape are SURE awful things, it's huge threat to your children, even (especially?) in visual fictionnal depiction

stage 3) my protective might will shield you:l i'll bring up a law to PROTECT you AND your children from such disgusting things

stage 4) i bring a law which wording is so evasive and cloudy that it can apply in a VERY broad rangE/area of topics and facts... it can apply to nearly anything that would slightly displease me

stage 5) I decide what might be threats i have to protect people from what i find displeasing

stage 6) i'm now remembering stage 1

jesus folk it is you americans who had a great president who once told "if you trade your freedom for some kind of security, you will get neither of them"

there is no such thing as "gay is as evil as pedophilia... stop missreading the way it pleases your polemic mind.

 there is just a law that is worded such way it allows the one who apply it to label as "evil" anything from pedophilia to gay thing alike, on an equal basis and scale... no need for those things to be related at all (they are not), just need one guy that want to willingly blend them together in same gruesome pot... and he will. period !

Quote - retarded people

Nice.

edit: lemme sum this up:  If you think it's okay to restrict distribution of explicit rape and pedo cartoon porn to kids, you are:

• anti-gay

• anti-freedom

• retarded

About right?

As I said. My worries are about how this law could very well, in a not too distant future, drift away from its alledged duties to protect the kids, to plain and simple censorship of whatever material displeases Mr Ishihara & Co. When you hate specific categories of people and you can write a morality law, first thing you'll do is to target really despicable materials and people so you can have the public opinion backing you. Having shown how righteous you are, it becomes so much easier after that to take on those you really, really hate not because they would deserve it or anything, no; just because you hate their guts. Read his wikipedia and you'll see that's a lot of different kinds of topics and people. It includes black people who live in Japan, by the way. How long before he finds a trick to reclassify stories involving a rmance (and I didn't say sex, ok?) between a japanese univ student and an african exchange student attending Toudai? Leave him enough room and he'll find a way.

I have expressed what I'm worry could happen later. I simply really, really hope it won't and that somehow, a balance will be found. Cartoons are meant for entertainment. I just want to be sure they won't go apeshit and start hacking off some perfectly harmless books in the future in the name of political fanatism.

Who knows? If the governor's team were smart, they would create a committee involving their own delegates and a group of actual manga artists, old and well respected ones maybe, who would serve as a contradictor's voice should things get too much out of hands? I feel that somehow, if you are going to take decisions about the products of a given profession, you should meet the professionals.

I hope I was less sketchy in exposing this. With that I rest my case. It is usually said that once you've told your story entirely, you should let it go, which I do now.

Goodnight, good people, and may the polygons be with you.

aaaah thanx i expected such kind of answer to confirm my initial thought.. thanx for making up my day

as i suspected, you read in diagonal line, pick up some random words in simple syntaxed sentences, to gather them up together and twist them in the way you can express your own twisted version

i dont remember saying pedophilia or rape were ok

i dont remember saying one shall not restrict it

my point was: waving such topics as a front flag/excuse no one would ever dare to oppose or contredict, just to, at the same time, promote a totally irrelevant and unrelated opinion about some other topic, as some bootlegg cargo in a pretty freigther, is just wrong.

no matter that a guy says pedophilia or rape is wrong (in fact it is wrong), if in fact, what  he is doing underneath is using it as a cover shield to label something else as equally wrong

if he wants to fight against those, then just let make a law that says depiction of pedophilia or rape are illegal

if i want to ban pitbulls or attack dogs, i wont say "any domestic 4 legged pets that could present any kind of potential damaging threat to people" unless i dont like cats and want to get rid of them all same way

what is this cloudy wordtrick about "any socially disturbing/questionnable behavior", cant you see how broad range it does cover ?

especially when the person that decide what is socially unnaceptable is not the majority of folk but one single man. everyone consider pedophilia or rape as unnaceptable behavior... ok but it's not "everyone" but him who will apply the rule under his standards...

in fact i dont even see the point of explaining myself over and over again in any new different ways to just say same basic thing especialy when there will always be someone to turn the words upside down. it's a loss of time, i just laid some traps for someone to fall in and wasnt either surprised or dissapointing.

using pedophilia as a crusade flag is disturbing because one USEs people who already suffered from molester for one's own interest.

the two trojan horses of nowadays democracies are terrorists and pedophiles. Nobody would oppose or contredict any law project which openly display the goal of fighting them. when you build such laws in such a way it can be used to fight nearly anything else at same scale and extent as if it was pedophilia, you in fact dilute/lessen the seriousness of such offense when you match it against something totally irrelevant and not offensive at all.

the new tokyo law is worded in such way that one can decide gayness is socially unacceptable, and punish it with as serious sentences as he would punish pedophilia alike. is that ok for you ? cause for me it's not.. because gay shouldnt be sentenced as if it was a crime, neither the less as if it was as serious a crime as pedophilia, on top of that. but that's EXACTLY the plan out there. it's not MY plan, it is not MY thought or MY opinion... it is what is written between the lines of this politician's bill !

so think what you want, as far as i'm concerned i'm rather unsurprised with your predictable and obvious semantic shortways.

Quote - i just laid some traps for someone to fall in ...

You realize you just came right out and said you're trolling, right?  Nice.

right.

Time for the Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator. You're blocking my view of Venus.

Laurie

I feel this has gone way off what the topic was suppose to be over. I can only see this thread going down hill from here. This thread is now locked.