Back when Liz Longhurst began here campaign to outlaw violent pornography, I wrote about how such laws were ridiculous. Next week, two years on, those laws will be finally passed. I'm disappointed.

I can understand that Mrs Longhurst lost a child to a man who appeared to be acting out fantasies of sex and violence that he regularly looked at on the Internet. But two things have never been proven to me. Firstly, that looking at images of violent pornography on a screen makes a well-balanced person want to engage in violent, nonconsensual acts in real life. Secondly, that clamping down on violent pornography doesn't provide a much safer outlet for the less well-balanced individuals.

Because here's the thing: you can't help where you get your kicks. It's not a decision or a choice. It's impulsive and subconscious, and also, its entirely natural. This includes people who like violent sex images, and it also includes paedophiles (before its suggested I have an inconsistent double standard). Condemning people for having any sexual kink, socially acceptable or unacceptable, legal or illegal is ludicrous because its not something you can control. What you can control is how you choose to act on it. Actually having sex with a child is reprehensible. Looking at images of people having sex with a child is also wrong, because a child still has to be involved, and most probably, not by choice. Violent rape is also reprehensible. But is looking at images of violent sex? And, for that matter, is engaging in violent, but consensual sex? Photos can be staged, and even if there not, the activities of two (or more) consenting adults are no business of anyone else, especially not the government.

Prohibition has never worked - drug statistics tell us that. And what's going to happen to the urges? It's unlikely they'll disappear because tending to them became less easy. This law won't crackdown on any of the associated crimes which are already illegal, and rightfully so - sex slavery and forced prostitution. The industry will be forced 'underground', which plays right into the hands of the actual criminals.

What it will do is make criminals of individuals that are not, as it were, hurting anyone else, because the people with the power find something distasteful (or even worse they don't, but they think their voters do). We used to say the same thing about homosexuals and mixed racial couples, and really, its just a matter of degrees. If there were a way to allow paedophiles some outlet without compromising the rights of a child, it should be legalised as well, but so far I can't think of one. But the same thing can't be said, univerally, for those that are turned on by, or want to engage in, anything from rough sex and S&M to rape fantasists. But of course, we can't let that get in the way of persecuting the "sick and depraved".

I'm not into this, before you ask. Again.