ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the Offense Principle and Legal Moralism, both of which were introduced in Chapter 6, to determine whether these theories justify criminalising fictional child pornography (‘FCP’). The first section considers the defensibility of the prohibition according to the Offense Principle, while the second part considers its defensibility according to Legal Moralism (and its subset Moral Paternalism). As will be seen, although criminalisation premised on offensiveness and morality is not entirely unproblematic, these theories provide a stronger basis to support the prohibition of the dissemination and simple possession of FCP than does the Harm Principle.
