Child pornography has been a powder keg for a long time, especially in St. Albert, where "sex" and "abuse" are considered by many to be one and the same and where people protest an "adult" store opening in the Riel Industrial Park.

Possessing photos of minors naked or involved in sex is illegal in Canada, for no one can ascertain how the photos are obtained. Are the models/subjects coerced into posing, simply young exhibitionists, kidnap victims, raised by hippies to "be natural," or people of accelerated physical maturity, thought to be adult, but simply full of hormones already? Canada's law always assumes that they are victims.

Lewis Carroll, author of Alice in Wonderland, photographed nude young children. He was extremely fond of little girls. He always had the permission of the parents and the comfort of the model before he photographed. His relationship with young girls was tender, admiring, and benevolent. Log onto http://www.rleggat.com/photohistory/history/carroll-2.htm. Standards about this issue depend entirely on context; ancient Greece exemplifies that.

Most people of the shoot-first-ask-questions-later mentality are surely condemning Sharpe for being a "boy-lover." But what is a particularly intelligent, mature, responsible boy was a "man-lover"? He would have the Midas touch; his lovers would all go to jail. Forcing people to do things against their will is wrong. What about preventing people from loving who they want to love?

Sharpe's lifestyle aside, the judge noted that the writing does not advocate sex crimes against children, and said that if that was the case, "then literature describing murder, robbery, theft, rape, drug use and other crimes in such a way as to make them appear enjoyable would likewise be said to advocate or counsel the commission of those crimes." And yet the moral high guard of St. Albert surely let their children watch the hyper-violent cultural artifacts exported by Hollywood.

Writing about something and doing it are obviously different. Prosecuting Sharpe for his writing does not protect children any more than stopping a film about assassination protects Prime Minister Jean Chretien.

How many Canadians protested the films Kids and Happiness, or award-winning Canadian director Atom Egoyan's films Felicia's Journey, The Sweet Hereafter, or Family Viewing? Or novels like Nabokov's Lolita and Piers Anthony's Firefly?

Paul Delany, chair of the English department at Simon Fraser University and the prosecution's literary expert, said Sharpe's writing is crude, banal and offers one-dimensional accounts of the rape and torture of children.

The judge noted that Delany took the stance that his judgment of Sharpe's writing was not subject to moral considerations, and consequently said, "I do not accept this evidence."

The point is that, as Canadian Alliance justice critic Vic Toews said, lawmakers must walk a fine line between freedom of expression and protecting society's most vulnerable members.

Renata Aebi, with the Alliance for the Rights of Children, said "Children's rights have been completely absent from this case." They were as absent as the rights of women in any rape scene in a book, the rights of Jews in a scene involving anti-semitism, or the rights of owners when someone pens a story about theft.