It's easy to hate a guy like this: chief of staff to a US Senator, living (pretty comfortably) in Washington, and getting off to pornographic videos of 8-year-old boys. (To be fair, he's only been charged so far, but the evidence looks pretty grim.) Yet Ryan Loskarn is the exception only as far as his congressional gig and DC lifestyle go. Apart from that, he's strikingly normal.

Ryan Loskarn


Not everyone trades in child porn, sure. But well over half of men (and many women) rely on pornography in some way. (If we're just talking about "casual" use, the numbers—at least on the male side—probably stack up much higher.)

But I'm not too concerned with numbers: do a gut check and you'll figure out that we're far enough down that path to make a few percentage points irrelevant. Thankfully, however, we aren't far enough gone to make the appearance of Loskarn's exception irrelevant. And that's a good thing. But we should be careful about the conclusions we draw from it.

The reaction to lock Loskarn up and throw away the key is understandable. What he did was vile: he's charged with possession and distribution of child pornography. The fact that kids were harmed in such a way is truly revolting; as a father of little ones, it makes my skin crawl.

But Loskarn isn't charged with producing the porn, only with having possessed and traded it. And while child pornography is especially heinous in the exploitation of those unable to consent or resist, Loskarn didn't apparently force anyone to do anything. He just watched it and provided for others. He has an itch that child porn scratches. The fix just happened to be available, so he snapped it up.

Contrast Loskarn with half of your closest friends, who routinely watch women perform "amateur" sex on camera. Imagine the level of consent those women offer—especially in the heat of the moment, cameras rolling, viewer expectations high. Consider why so many pornstars revolt against the industry when—and even sometimes before—they've finally broken free of it. (They talk about it like that, too, as a slave master rather than as an employer.) Suppose that hard drug use corresponds to otherwise regrettable life circumstances.

Ryan Loskarn should be kept away from children for a long time, maybe even for life. For their protection, of course, but also for his own. And to remind the rest of us of the unforgiving blackness of the pit around which we dance and into which we stare.

Andrew M. Haines is the editor and founder of Ethika Politika, and co-founder and chief operating officer at Fiat Insight.