DIDCOTT J
[93]
The issue that remains is whether section 33 (1) of the Constitution saves the prohibition
pronounced by section 2(1) from nullification. It does not in my opinion. For the intrusion into
personal privacy that flows from the prohibition fails, I am satisfied, the first and second tests set
for its tolerability, the tests requiring it to be reasonable and justifiable. The viewing of obscene
or indecent pictures by their possessors was blamed in argument for contributing, through its bad
influence on some viewers, to the commission of sexual crimes and other socially repulsive
behaviour.
Such a causal connection is a controversial subject on which psychologists and
penologists disagree, however, and the results of the research that was drawn to our attention
neither prove nor disprove it empirically. So there we can come to no definite conclusion either
way on this occasion. Much was also made of obscene or indecent pictures which exploited
women and children, degrading the ones portrayed and insulting those who were not depicted but
felt humiliated as a class. A ban on the possession of material so pernicious was said to serve a
useful purpose in the campaign against its production. The market for it diminished once law
abiding people departed from that, and the incentive to prepare it was then reduced. The
production of pictures like those, and of further types equally depraved, is certainly an evil and
may well deserve to be suppressed. Perhaps, as a means to that end, the same even goes for their
possession, making it both reasonable and justifiable for society to mind the private business of
its members. Such questions do not arise at present and are best left unanswered until some future
case confronts us with them. But the trouble one now has with section 2(1) is that it hits the
possession of other material too, material less obnoxious and sometimes quite innocuous which
we cannot remove from its range while it lasts because the parts of section 1 giving it that effect
are not satisfactorily severable from the rest. A better target at which to aim in the battle with
unbearably vile pictures as matters stand for the time being, a target under fire already from
52
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