In this case I'd say it's more about sinuses.

But as far as I know, obscenity laws are completely different from the law/s against child pornography. The difference being that obscenity laws do not regulate possession, only distribution. You can't be prosecuted for owning something that is obscene, only for distributing it.

Actually... No.

Well to be perfectly honest... I'm not that familiar with the american arguments on this subject, but I'm familiar with an argument by european proponents of this type of legislation... And that argument has nothing to do with the harm of the material itself, and this is specifically why their argument simply cannot be defeated.

Why?

Because they don't argue that the material itself causes harm. They argue that the material itself IS THE HARM. (sorry for the capitals, no \emph here)

When they look at it from that perspective, there's simply nothing that can change their mind because it doesn't matter what effects the material itself has. It doesn't matter whatever studies you show these people. Their argument is simply that the material itself is the actual damage done, and it must be forbidden.

If the IQ study is the one I think it is, it was based entirely on convicted child molesters, and not on the population of pedophiles as a whole. Therefore if, say, lower IQ causes these people to molest, then it also makes them more likely to get caught.

It'd be really interesting to see studies on the entire population, not just on incarcerated subsets.

Actually while I agree with what you're saying in general, I want to ask

1: Do you have any sources or links to such studies as you mention in the beginning of your post?

2: Comparing countries is a bit problematic because there might be a differences between two countries in terms of how likely people there are to go to the police following a rape. (though with japan it's probably a special case seeing that there's a study confirming that reported incidents of rape decreased as availability of porn increased, and it doesn't seem likely that japan became so much more sexist since the end of world war 2 that report frequencies changed as a result)

Could be worse. Could be javascript.

The belief that abortion should be considered murder is absolutely fucking retarded, though.

Yeah right...

But what the schools are doing isn't necessary what the culture at large is doing.

You'll have to look beyond school. What is media telling men and women about IT?

Proponents of common sense rarely have any.

Most people I've heard speak highly of common sense tend to have a very superficial understanding of whatever they're 'invoking' common sense in response to.

Whoever invented the "who would have thunk it" expression should be shot.

The conservatives will just claim that the scientists involved are all biased and "politically correct".

"Social scientists, and I use the term 'scientist' very lightly here, tend to only want to consider the facts that don't hurt people's feelings"

Or perhaps those things you call facts simply aren't actual facts.

That's your opinion, sure...

Why should the other Muslim nations give a shit?

There's such an obvious power imbalance between Israel and Palestine. Palestinians will keep attacking out of pure spite because there's absolutely nothing they can do to change the situation.

"They could stop firing the rockets" you say.

But yeah. Like that's going to happen. The "country" is so fractioned that there's no central control over these acts. Who is going to make them stop? Heck, even if some central authority managed to make the attacks stop somehow there'd still be armed independent groups active and I'm fairly sure they'd keep on firing rockets.

Israeli retaliation will only kill more people, and that will make even more people hate Israel. It's a never ending spiral of hate, and the only realistic way for this to end is for Israel to calm down.